The poll is about whether you’ve cheated or helped someone else cheat on a test, paper, or homework in high school.
Edit: Gah! This poll was supposed to be multiple choice. Is there anyway to change it?
Vocab tests - cheated on them all the time in 9th grade (early 90’s). Made myself a list of the words in the smallest possible font size at home, then at the school library I copied it and reduced the size. End result was 20 or so definitions fit on a piece of paper about 2x the size of a postage stamp. Easily hid in my half-closed left hand while my right hand took the test.
I always made sure to get 1-3 questions wrong so as not to raise suspicion.
I let people cheat from my tests, and did things like edit their writing and tell them the correct answers on homework, regularly. I didn’t care enough about school to ever cheat myself, in an attempt to get a better score.
HS was so long ago I can’t remember specifics. My guess is that I probably skirted perfection once or twice, but didn’t make a habit of cheating myself or helping anyone else do it.
Someone offered me money to take their SATs for them, though. I declined.
Absolutely never.
My high school/early college was all in the UK during the 1970s and at least in my experience, cheating was Simply Not Done; it was dishonorable to the extreme. I moved to the U.S. in 1979, and vaguely recall getting the impression that “cheating” was more accepted here, at least back then. Now with the internet, I think cheating/plagiarizing/Cliff-noting is fairly common.
Not that I’m a 100% honest and virtuous person (I’m not by a long shot) but cheating on a test of any kind is simply an incomprehensible concept to me. Whether generational or due to upbringing or what, I can’t say.
My high school was a bit overly competitive, it was not uncommon for certain teachers to belittle students who turned in work with incorrect answers. And you might be thinking “well, maybe that should have motivated them to do better work” but it really crossed the line. They were horrible, lengthy moments where everyone else in the class would have to listen to one kid being picked on by a teacher in a very personal way (one specific time I remember, the teacher made fun of the student’s parents for having menial jobs, sort of a “I guess I shouldn’t have expected so much from the child of a housekeeper”) and it was that mortifying thing where you’re so embarrassed for the target you’re just about ready to sink into the floor and die. In many cases, if the kid cried, it got worse so you’d be mentally praying for the kid not to cry so it would end faster.
Because of this, I felt like helping others cheat was clearly the way to go. I felt obligated.
I picked “help others cheat on projects” in the poll, but it was projects, homework, whatever. Tests were very difficult to cheat on, so those not so much.
Today, looking back on it, I don’t feel bad about it exactly, although I do wish I had been able to articulate my concerns in a more productive way.
I let people copy my work (both tests and homework) all the time, up until the middle of tenth grade or so, when two things happened. I got caught (and my math teacher let me off the hook because he couldn’t prove I knew the other student was copying, and for some reason that was a bigger guilt trip than getting punished would have been), and we were assigned to read A Tale of Two Cities in English class.
It was one of those “holy crap, that’s me, and this guy’s story doesn’t end well” moments.
I cheated, not because I needed to, but to prove I could. Which means that despite being book smart, I was a big dummy.
I turned in the first paragraph of “To Build A Fire” for a creative writing assignment. Didn’t get caught, but only got a B- for it.
I probably cheated about 3 times (which was not an option in the poll). All in the same history course where literally (almost anyway) everyone was, just by copying from one another. The teacher was either blind or just didn’t care. The only other cheating I ever did was that my father helped write my English comps in college. Beyond that, I think I never cheated.
Always cheated and helped people cheat in every category.
We all did it to get finished with repetitive homework faster, split up 25 problems between 5 people and then share. We did it to take the stupid memorization portions out of tests, some classes seemed to be 95% concept based and 5% worthless memorization. That worthless 5% could require over half your study time, just stupid.
No, never! But I am the sort of Goody Two Shoes who doesn’t even take paper clips or Post-Its home from work.
I took two science classes, taught by the same teacher, where cheating was rampant and was the normal way of doing things. Literally everyone did it (they were very small classes; the first had four students total and the second was an “independent study” (they scheduled 10 classes into 9 periods and the teacher told us to go teach ourselves, basically) with only one other student and I). In the first class, which was in my junior year, we always did our homework collaboratively, and once we realized that the idiot teacher was printing it all off the internet*, we printed the answer keys off and just copied those. In the second class, in my senior year, we scheduled our own tests, and we would find a way to start the test halfway into the period. We would go into the (unsupervised) lab to take them, and one of us would just leave to go run off two more copies. Then we’d turn in our half-“finished” tests to the jackass (with the excuse that we were unable to finish in half a period), and we would work collaboratively on our copies over the course of the day. Then the next day, we’d go to finish the tests, and just sit for a few minutes in the lab and turn in the versions we’d done together (we’d shoot for around 90%, and would each pick a question or two to mess up, or at least solve differently).
*Seriously, the dumb old jackass would print them off, and black out the part that said “2003 form B” with a sharpie (they were old AP tests), then write “3B” next to it so he could find the right key. He called a “secret code.” Really.
I’m not proud of it, but at the same time I’m not really remorseful either. Could we all have behaved better and tried harder? Yeah, probably. Could the school have not stuck us with an incompetent and rude teacher, who in one case simply refused to teach at all? Definitely. (He’s the only person in my life for whom I’ve ever felt genuine ill will. He was not a good person in any way that I was ever able to discern. I only had two other instructors in 16 years of education who were genuinely bad at their jobs, but they compensated for it by at least being personable.)
There was another class where it happened from time to time, but that was pretty sporadic. For my part, all that ever happened was that I knew that people were copying a test or quiz off of me and I didn’t do anything about it. The class was primarily busywork, and students were actually banned from taking it as juniors because the school needed seniors to take the class so they would have an easier time at getting a minimum course load and a reason to actually show up every day. That was a pointless year.
Nothing hard-core. I occasionally peeked at my friends’ answers on tests and positioned my paper in such a way that they could look at mine if they wanted to. I copied friends’ math homework when I didn’t have time to do it and returned the favor for them. We’d also divide readings up and everyone took notes on their section and combined it so nobody had to read the whole thing, but I don’t really consider that cheating.
I did read the SparkNotes for William Faulkner’s “As I Lay Dying” in 11th grade rather than the book because I just hated it too much and couldn’t get through it. The teacher commented that my essay sounded a lot like SparkNotes but didn’t bust me because she couldn’t prove it.
Well, one time I skipped summer reading (I think it was Orwell’s 1984) out of sheer procrastination and laziness, and just before school started again I read the cliffs notes so it wouldn’t be so obvious that I didn’t read it. I got away with it but I’m not proud of myself.
But no, I never cheated on tests and all my papers/homework were 100% original.
My knee-jerk reaction was to bluster “No of course not!” But I took a few moments to really really think about it. I still can’t come up with anything. I used to resent putting a lot of work into learning/writing something only to have someone ask to copy off me because they couldn’t be bothered to do it. I guess I’m a goody gumdrop like Eve.
snerk I’m surprised you scored THAT high.
No, I never did cheat in high school. I don’t think it ever really occurred to me that that was something you could do, and anyway I was one of the ‘smart kids’–which wasn’t hard at that rotten school. Anyone I could have cheated off of would have despised me for not being bright enough to do it myself.
Never! Ever! And I was very protective of my paper to make sure nobody cheated off of me, either. I was frequently the high score in the class on tests in most subjects (and my final course score in biology was 134% due to extra credit) and I would have never done anything that corrupted my grade. Even now taking stupid online quizzes and stuff I’m totally honest. I just feel like it would feel so dirty to cheat.
Once or twice, and busted once.
However, I soon figured out that if I put effort into making crib notes, I learned the stuff anyway and did not need them for the test. This became a preferred method of study for me.
Never. But…
One day in Mrs’ Bitch’s eighth grade Honors Pre-Algebra, we took a quiz, and these two bimbos next to me copied all my answers. The teacher was suspicious, so had us all retake the quiz after class, separated. I, naturally, did just as well the second time around (though I changed an answer I wasn’t sure about, even though I had it right the first time). The bimbos, well, they failed spectacularly. Mrs. Bitch punished me just as much as the girls, because I “let them copy off me.” I had no idea they were doing it. I was so pissed.
The rest of the year was hell. I hated that class. I hated that teacher. That Bitch got the privilege of assigning high school Math classes at the end of the year, and I deserved Algebra I Honors. She put me in standard Algebra I. I was so pissed.
3 days into my freshman year, and my teacher moved me into the honors class. I wanted to rub that into Mrs. Bitch’s face. I would also like to show her the A’s i got in Calc 1 and 2 in college. I’d like to think that the two bimbos that copied off me are working dead end jobs to pay for their meth addictions, and that Mrs. Bitch Shot her husband and landed in jail for 15-25 years.
Yea, I’m Bitter. Don’t cheat off me.