I was just reading a thread about cheating students and someone mentioned something like “you’re cheating off of him? Do you want to fail?”. This made me think about the history class that I took this past semester.
Just to head any jumped-to conclusions off at the pass: I didn’t cheat. I got a 99.55% as my final score in the class. The students who sat around me regularly got exam scores in the 50-70% range. It doesn’t take a math whiz to realize I wasn’t copying their answers.
But I confess to secretly sneaking looks at their papers during quizzes sometimes. I couldn’t help it. The quizzes in question were, to me, incredibly easy. They were multiple choice, and the questions were displayed one at a time on the projector screen at the front of the room, so everyone was answering the same question at the same time. Usually the answer was immediately obvious, I’d write down the correct letter, and then sit for 3 minutes twiddling my thumbs until everyone (80-90 people) had finished and the teacher could advance to the next question. I knew the people around me were getting horrible grades. One girl seemed to regularly miss about half of the questions on any given quiz or test. So I just had to see, sometimes, if they got it right. So every now and then I’d sneak a glance. Then I’d internally roll my eyes and say to myself “I can’t believe you thought that was the answer! Did you pay attention in class AT ALL???”
sigh (I was regularly frustrated by the apathy and generally poor study/school skills of a lot of the people in that class. One guy two rows ahead of me played internet poker on his laptop through every single class.)
I did feel guilty about peeking, though. Does that still make me a bad person? Anyone else out there ever peek at other people’s papers, just out of curiosity, not to copy?
Edited to add: The really sad part is that I had a great professor. She was funny and engaging and made the class really interesting. It’s not like this was some horrible dry lecturer that made you want to shoot yourself in the head just to escape the tedium.
Yes, in almost exactly the same way, for the same reasons. The differences were that my formal education was pre-PC, and my test had usually been collected or turned in before I peeked.
Only one teacher (high school) ever noticed, or cared enough to mention it, and her comment had more to do with the rudeness of audible eyerolls than cheating.
Me, too. One of the many reasons I adored Ms. Meyers – 25 years later, the thought of her and her talent for well-turned phrases still makes me grin. I don’t cheat, but I will steal an appealing phrase (and your pen) at the drop of a hat.
That, and her diamond “Bitch” necklace worn openly in a stuffy suburban high school during the late 70’s/early 80’s.
I can not imagine her reaction to someone playing solitaire during class. I’m sure it would have been entertaining, but not pretty.
(In the interest of full disclosure, I have cheated, once, during a not-for-money dominoes game, by counting 70 suddenly-not-eligible points during the tally. I did this by announcing it loudly, while still losing by over 3000 points. I may be a fool, but I also know I’m a really crappy liar)
This reminds me of a story my first biopsychology professor told me. Intro to Biopsych was a really, really tough course. Lectures were quite dense, and the prof gave extremely difficult tests that were almost impossible to pass without sufficient preparation. A few weeks after the class ended I was chatting with the prof, and he told me the following story, presented as a fact. (I still have no clue whether or not it actually happened; profs at my university were infamous for spreading horror stories that scared students out of dishonest conduct.)
The course had consisted of five exams given throughout the term. Each was worth 25% of your grade, and your lowest grade out of the five was automatically dropped. Now apparently one student had gotten a solid A on his first four exams, and was quite sure that he wouldn’t be able to improve on his performance for the final test. As such, he spent his time preparing for other tests and simply showed up on exam day to be polite. He spent the entire test making up funny answers, composing the odd limmerick, drawing funny pictures and nonsensical diagrams, and the like. Much to his surprise, his prof called him into the office several days later and, together with the TA, showed him his test paper and demanded he justify his answers. He beat aroudn the bush for a couple of minutes before admitting that he didn’t study, and just wanted to show up to be polite. Much to his surprise, the prof instantly lightened up, told him he could go, and wished him well on the rest of his exams.
The reason for this, my professor told me, was that somebody who hadn’t studied was sitting behind the good student, and he had copied his entire exam. Since there was no believable way that two people would’ve come up with the same BS answers, he had to find out who had honestly been fooling around, and who had been cheating.
My students are idiots. The only ones I am fairly sure cheat on the tests are the brain dead fools in the back row who copy answers from a person who has a “D” average in the class. They would probably get a better grade if they simply played eeny meeny miney moe with the answers.
BTW, today I graded my most recent psychology class quiz on the chapter about gender and sexuality. I thought you might like to hear some of the answers:
Question: John is gay. According to the book, what might we assume about his identical twin brother? (The correct answer is that there is a 52% chance he too is gay)
Student’s Answer: He will avoid his brother.
Question: Tell me about Alfred Kinsey.
Student’s Answer: He was the first to discover sex.
And a few weeks ago, one of the questions was:
What was Ivan Pavlov’s nationality?
Student’s Answer: Puerto Rican.
I did not cheat on that quiz. The two idiot girls to the left and right of me did cheat off me, but I did not let them do it, as you accused me, nor would I ever allow such a thing. You had it out for me the whole rest of the year, and I resent you for it, even to this day, 12 years later. You even went so far as to NOT recommend me for Honors Algebra for my freshman year, even though I got an A in your class, and I resent that as well.
I really wanted to rub it in your face that my 9th grade Algebra teacher moved me to the honors class 4 days into the school year after I aced the two “pretests” that my delinquent classmates all scored C’s and D’s on (and of course some F’s). But as I am not the type to cheat, I am also not the type of person to engage in such a rude gesture.
Sincerely, Dan T.
*not trying to brag that I was placed in an ‘honors’ or AP math class every year they were available to me (ok, maybe I was a little) but mearly that this teacher gave me a bad reputation that I did not deserve.
I’m not in school so I don’t take tests that matter any longer, although I do get frequent training at work. One thing all training courses require, even if they’re only a couple of hours, is a critique sheet. I do like to peek at those, just to see if people are taking the lazy route (giving a straight rating down the line) or if they appear to be really evaluating the class. I have come to the conclusion that most people are either lazy or suck-ups, and they tend to give top ratings to everything and everyone, even the instructor who said “basically” 157 times in a 3-hour session.
Yes, I counted. I had to count. It was the last day of a week-long course and I was going insane from the gross overuse of my most hated word…
I tried to cheat once. I was in first grade, and we were doing a “mad minute”, which was a sheet of arithmetic problems that we had a minute to work on. IIRC, this was a set of subtraction problems. I got through ~8 or so and got stuck on one. I peeked at Kurt’s paper–he was sitting next to me–but he hadn’t gotten that far. Blast! But no, it gets worse. The teacher caught me! She pulled my desk away from his so everyone knew that she had seen me peeking. Ah, the shame.
I caused a situation like this, once. I was in Officer Training, and one of our squad was a complete jack-ass who had managed to fly under the staff’s radar for two months.
Well, we had some (unimportant) quiz on some subject or other, and jackass sat right next to me.
I could tell he was trying to copy off of my test.
So I let him… I also made a few strategically placed errors… :eek: (Like I said, the quiz was not important. we just had to pass.)
Lieutenant in charge of our squad noticed that Corporal Jackass has a much better grade than is his wont, and also that he made the very same errors I did. While Corp. JA hadn’t at that point actually got caught doing anything punishable, the staff didn’t really like him too much. And I had already gained a reputation as an intelligent kid and a straight arrow…
Lt. calls me over, asks me “you didn’t copy from JA, didja?” To which I answer something like “Do you think I’m dumb enough to do something like that? I know my stuff! Certainly better than he does!!”
… Corp. JA, to the best of my knowledge, *remained *a Corporal for the rest of his military service
Me, too. One of the many reasons I adored Ms. Meyers – 25 years later, the thought of her and her talent for well-turned phrases still makes me grin. I don’t cheat, but I will steal an appealing phrase (and your pen) at the drop of a hat.
While Corp. JA hadn’t at that point actually got caught doing anything punishable, the staff didn’t really like him too much. And I had already gained a reputation as an intelligent kid and a straight arrow…