Unbelievable! Elon Musk checked exam papers auctioned for Rs 5.8 lakh

Brian Thomas, one of Bass's pupils, had incorporated a phrase when referring to the circumstances in which a corporation needed an 'exit strategy' as an inside joke.

New Delhi: Tesla CEO Elon Musk assessed college papers as a teaching assistant at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995, and they were auctioned off for $7,753 (about Rs 5,87,099). According to the Daily Mail, Musk graded many papers while obtaining his Economics and Physics degrees, including ones from Professor Myles Bass' Management 231, 'Entrepreneurship: Implementation and Operations' class. 

Brian Thomas, one of Bass's pupils, had incorporated a phrase when referring to the circumstances in which a corporation needed a 'exit strategy' as an inside joke.

But Musk didn't think the idiom was acceptable, so he wrote 'Graphic' over them and docked two points from Thomas' grade, according to the story. Musk was a student and Teacher Assistant at the University of Pennsylvania's prestigious Wharton School of Business before inventing SpaceX and Tesla and earning a fortune of $277 billion, making him the world's richest man.

Meanwhile, Thomas said that he "discovered the papers in the garage with his kid while looking for school yearbooks." He had preserved them because he had pleasant recollections of being in Bass's class, which he had attended until his death in 2010. According to the story, Thomas then passed the papers over to RR Auctions in Boston to be sold.