Way back, shortly after the ice age, my Biology 30 class (grade 12) Had to give a presentation, on a subject drawn from a hat, they got 2 weeks to prepare. It would be 15% of their final mark. One student in my class got “The Human … unique organism!”
He spent about 8 minutes presenting a very carefully researched (this was waaaay before internet) essay on “the Unique Human Orgasm”
It was actually pretty well done…
(and no, it wasn’t me)
FML
Scene: Chapter test
I watch two girls in the far back corner talk about the periodic table and God know what. This continues for more than a few seconds. I go back there.
“I’m going to have to ask what the discussion was about.”
“We weren’t talking.”
Astonishment.
"I’m going to say this calmly, but there’s almost nothing that pisses me off more than lying. Don’t lie to me. I was watching you.
(Other girl) “We were just discussing the…”
“So you were talking. I see.”
I wrote a detailed letter to the liar’s parents about how I’d like this not to turn into a total lack of trust, but I need their help. Some kids have learned to lie by reflex. They’ve not been busted enough for it in the past, and have learned that it’s their best bet.
snicker It took him 8 minutes, eh?
In my first university-level physics class, the instructor would post the solutions to the test after it was over. One student got the bright idea to turn in a mostly blank test, then upon recieving the test back, copy the posted solutions and submit it to be regraded by complaining that the TA simply didn’t grade the test. The student did this a twice. Of course, the instructor was skeptical when this happened the first time, so he had the student’s second test photocopied before it was handed back. I’m sure the student was expelled after this, and the teacher told us the whole story in class.
i’d hardly call chaucer and shakespeare “modern”
Dude, where he’s from, they have *houses *older than that. 
As long as the bridge he copies runs over a narrower river than the one I’m driving over, I’m okay with this.
“Is this on the test?” No, it’s just some random stuff that I thought we’d cover for shits and giggles.
“Did I miss anything important?” No, there wasn’t anything to discuss or lecture on, so I had us meet just for fun.
My favorite, though, was the student who disappeared for most of the quarter, only to reappear on the last day of class: “Can you tell me what I need to know for the final?” Sure, I’ll just sum up half the quarter for you in five minutes. This instance was a fun one, though, as I literally laughed in her face, and several of her classmates joined in on the laughter as well.
I’ve had plenty of courses cover material that was purely for our interest, and not testable.
The thing you may not know is how many times a professor gets asked “is this on the test?” in a week, often as an interrupton in the middle of teaching something.
I had a student turn in an extra-credit poem that, I decided as I read it, was obviously not written by her. A brief internet search of a few key phrases turned up the poem, with the real author’s name. Word for word, the same. I printed it out and confronted her about it after class the next day. I started by asking her (without having shown her the printed copy of the original) if she had plaigerized the poem, because “this doesn’t really match your vocabulary or writing style.” She assured me that she had created the poem herself. I then produced the printout of the poem, expecting her to finally admit her guilt. But she didn’t. She kept claiming that she had written the poem herself. That she couldn’t explain how her poem–a fairly lengthy poem–just happened to be exactly the same as this other person’s poem, but that her work was her own. Even after I laughed in her face and told her that she needn’t bother trying to persuade me because I knew she had plaigerized, she still claimed innocence. I just don’t understand this mindset.
I almost feel bad relating this, because the student in question wasn’t lying or being exceptionally dumb, just … well, I’ll let the story speak for itself.
College physics class for non-majors. I run some lab sections, and grade their post-lab homeworks. One assignment was on lenses and magnification and all that good stuff, and one particular question asked them to prove that two rays were parallel, using geometry. This student’s answer was … less than clear. What he wrote glossed over the actual proof and merely stated that they were parallel. So I marked it wrong, took off the point, and wrote “your logic eludes me.”
Later he brought it to me, and the resulting exchange happened:
Student: “I mean that it’s a parallelogram, so they have to be parallel.”
Me: “Well you didn’t say that.”
Student: “But it’s implied.”
Me: “Then I will imply giving you more points.”
I have a friend who teaches a college seminar class. Nearly every week he entertains me with reports of the latest activity in the class. Some examples:
You turn in an assignment with paragraphs copied word-for-word from one of the founding figures of the whole field. Do you think the instructor doesn’t know the seminal works in the field?
Two students (in a class of 16) turn in identical papers for this weeks’ assignment. Do you think the instructor won’t notice that 2 of the papers are the same?
Best of all: you turn in a paper with parts plagiarized from a recent book compiled on the subject. The instructor was the one who compiled & edited the book, it’s his name on the cover. Do you really think the instructor won’t remember the contents of a book he edited a couple years ago?
Pushkin’s story makes me wince. I’ve done some pretty silly study abroad student things, but not wondering why you don’t have class for 5 weeks?
A girl in my high school got caught downloading an essay from one of those cheater websites, on one of the school computers! She wasn’t expelled, which says something about her parents’ bank accounts.
[QUOTE=Spatial Rift 47]
Student: “I mean that it’s a parallelogram, so they have to be parallel.”
Me: “Well you didn’t say that.”
**Student: “But it’s implied.”
Me: “Then I will imply giving you more points.”[/**QUOTE]
Bolding mine. Please, please can I have this line??? I have heard “you know what I meant” and the like so many times… that I need a good reply!
A variation on that last bit: Student screws around for most of the semester, blowing off meetings and assignments, then shows up before finals week and says, “I’m not passing this class. Is there anything I can DO?”
The only correct response is: “Yeah. Take the class over again.”
It’s all yours. The other students in the room enjoyed it as well. 
Ah, but, perhaps, you see, the dear girl didn’t think that philosophy and logic was what Belfast was most famous for.
Sorry, Pushkin - I post that more in the sense of confessing that I had a bit of a laugh there, and of confessing that my remark is indeed not all that genuinely funny. So, it’s really a case of me realising that my own little giggle was not at all a good one, and, you know, feeling that I should admit it, somehow.
There shall be a self-flagellating of Celyn. And I am a bit impecunious, so, yes, I might actually be selling tickets.
Thing is, though, even allowing for, you know, things like "oh, she’s an exchange student, and perhaps she is taking some time to find her feet and so on … “, just how far are you, and no doubt other lecturers, expected to bend over backwards to give that one the benefit of the doubt? I’d go for “outright lying”, if only because if she was all that thick, then what the hell is she doing at a university?” Heck, it sounds as though if she had enrolled at a school of dolphins instead, she would still be a bit, ahem, “underachieving”.
Or, quite possibly, come to think of it, a school of goldfish.
Beautiful!
I can completely imagine that exchange, and have a mental picture of it (using school teachers and university lecturers from my own world as models, of course). Ooh, yes, I can see it now.
Holy shit, though. I was also a fairly bad student at times, often doing the “leave it till later” thing, resulting i n a mad all-nighter with lots of coffee to get the thing done, but plagiarism was not what I would ever do, AND, I think, although I could be wrong, it just was not such a likely thing for anyone to do then.
I blame the Internet! Yeah, that’s it. :rolleyes: Bah, cheating little bastards, all of them. Grrrrr.
(Ach, shit, I might just have copied that non-word “Grrrrr” from somewhere. Oops. :eek: I R plagiarist. 
Oh, the horror! I have just remembered something. Umpty years ago, a paper that I had to give in a tutorial . Yes, well, had I done enough work for it? Let’s all guess the answer, which shall be “No”.
Thing is that it went down reasonably well, and the only adverse comment that my tutor made, (and was really a bit insistent about) was that perhaps I had taken rather to much from a book by Bloggs. Thing is, I had not, because I had not been to the library in time to get hold of the books and articles I wanted. BUT, you see, how to explain this? I mean, it quickly occurred to me that to say “no, not at all, sir, I have not shamelessly taken from his work at all, dear me no, I have not, because in fact I have done fuck-all by way of study” might not be the wisest defence.
Oh, tee hee hee. Use these words in a sentence, Celyn. Petard, Own, Hoist.
Ever hear “It Wasn’t Me” by Shaggy & Rik Rok? Some people really think reality is just a state of mind.