Ah, I remember those days. One that wasn't an error exactly was an assignment that had a word limit of 2000 words or something. I'd written maybe 3000 words and spent quite some time cutting it down, getting it to just under the limit. Then someone else who also wrote too many words asked the professor if that was okay and they sent out an update to everyone saying it's fine to ignore the word limit.

So you accidentally learned how to edit a text? Sounds like a win to me…