Twilight said, "I don't even see what's wrong with this paper, except for some spelling mistakes. But your teacher says you need to rewrite it and resubmit it so it gets at least a B, or you won't pass the class?"
"Yeah. If I flunk, I won't be allowed to play for Canterlot High in any tournament games until I get my GPA back up."
"Hmm," Twilight said, "At Crystal Prep, they thought winning was everything. So if you transferred there, maybe they WOULD give you passing grades in all your classes, just so you could play and help them win their championships."
"But you HATED that school. They were a bunch of jerks!"
"They were. But that's the price you sometimes have to pay, to 'win' no matter what. That, and someday after you graduate, you might discover you have problems because there's a lot of useful stuff you don't know, like how interest rates work on credit cards, or that Canadian ISN'T a real language."
"Hmmph," Rainbow snorted. "You're not really helping. Eyes on the prize! I need a B or else, you know?"
"Sure. Let me try to figure out what's wrong with this paper. But just in case...what was the original assignment about?"
"Here's the handout." Rainbow passed a sheet of paper across the table to Twilight.
Twilight's eyes scanned at almost superhuman speed. "Rainbow? This is the easiest assignment I've ever seen. It's pass/fail. All you need to do is write the assigned number of words on ANYTHING, anything at all. The only reason you got an F is...I guess you can't count?"
What? But I DID count the words. One, two, three, four..."
A moment later, Twilight interrupted. "A hyphenated word is just one word. So if you spell them right, twenty-four is one word, not two. So are clean-cut, double-cross, co-worker...no, you spelled that coworker, so you counted it right by mistake...front-runner, runner-up, toss-up..."
"So I got everything wrong?"
"Sometimes rules don't seem to make much sense. Like when I first saw this paper, I thought it was pretty good. I'd never thought about these lessons you can learn from soccer and apply to the rest of your life. I think what you wrote was a lot better than just getting the right number of words."
Rainbow grinned. "What can I say? I'm so awesome at sports, it leaks out into the rest of my life and makes me awesome at other things too!"
"This paper makes a surprisingly good case for that. What really impresses me is, you said so much in even fewer words than you were supposed to use. That's like...better than laconic."
"What's laconic?"
"When something is short like 'This is SPARTA!' except it's actually clever."
"Oh. I hated that movie. It was just so...yellow, you know? And that's NOT how proper sports training works. Kicking people down wells just makes it harder to stay properly hydrated."
Twilight nodded. "I've never seen 300, but I'll trust you. But at least this paper is easy to fix. We just add some extra words of any old garbage, and you'll pass your class!"
"But...my paper was good. You said so yourself. Why should I make it WORSE just to follow some dumb old rule?"
Twiliight sighed. "Sometimes that's just how the real world works."