I have a *ahem* confession to make... (a sort of poll)

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A recent, er, occurence involving access to a cough secret place reminded me of something from my past…

We were given a group programming assignment at university. It was to produce a child’s learning app for windows which involved hotspots (invisible clickable areas corresponging to pictures of letters of the alphabet) and sounds. It was more involved than that, but that’s all I can remember. So it would have been quite a challenging and difficult assignment.

One day, not far off the deadline I was noseying about in the file system we have access to (I was folders with access rights, not secret ones) when I stumbled upon… The lecturer’s own code for the assignment!

I quickly, erm, how can I put this, ‘stole’ it. (copied it to a floppy) and told my friend and assignment partner at the first oportunity.

After some discussion we decided to re-word it (change variable names, attempt to change the structure without affecting the integrity). I did most of the re-wording as my friend’s coding abilities were vastly inferior to mine.

I was never satisfied with the result (it still resembled the original too much) but we had ran out of time so we had to submit it.
Then came the day of result giving. Handing out the marked assignments the lecturer said “79%, highest mark in the whole computing department” and gave what can best be described as the most barely detectable hint of a knowing look. (I was convinced he knew what we had done, but that he could do nothing about it)
So, the point of the thread, have you had similarly on-the-edge-of-wrong break that you got away with in life?

2

I skipped school to go buy a leavers do dress. (Similar to the American prom.) My friends thought it would be funny to tell my teachers where I was. Not ONE of my techears minded!

“I see you made it in today Gemma! So, did you find a nice dress? And whats this I’ve been hearing about you and a certain young gentlemen…”

So I got away with skipping class.

Hijack - I always wanted to know how the hell my teachers all knew about my love life.!

3

In eighth grade, my friend and I cut gym class and hid in the girls’ bathroom. Of course, we got caught. The principal wasn’t willing to listen to a damn word we said (which would have been all lies, anyway), and instead gave us our punishment (early morning detention the next day) and sent us home.

When my mother began telling me how disappointed she was in me (which was complete crap–disappointed for cutting class? I’d done way more disappointing things in my short lifetime), I did the only thing that might save myself being grounded for the first time ever–I burst into tears and told a big fat lie.

I explained that my friend wasn’t feeling well, knew the school nurse wouldn’t even talk to her (which was her usual mode), the gym teacher wouldn’t excuse her (which was his usual mode), so we went looking for my friend’s older brother (a senior) to sign her out and take her home, ending up in the bathroom when my friend started puking and that’s where we got caught.

I still had to go to detention, but I didn’t get in trouble at home. I rarely lied to my parents, but I always figured, if I was going to lie, it should be a huge lie that was too ridiculous to be made up. It seems to have worked thus far.

4

I’ve posted this before but at the end of my 4th year of college I realized I wasn’t going to have the money to finish up the next year. I wasted the first year and so I still had 3 classes to take to finish up. I decided I would look for a job but the jobs available either required a degree or didn’t pay enough to allow me to pay for my last semester. So I pretended I was graduating. I actually got a job that required me to have a chemistry degree. When they asked for proof of my degree I showed them my transcript and said I would be graduating in a couple weeks. I got the job and they never asked about my degree again. I was so nervous all the time that they would find out but I spent the next year working there and taking night classes. I graduated the following year and hung my diploma on the wall like nothing happened. Nobody ever noticed the graduation date was a year after I started there. :smiley:

5

Hiya Lobbiebabe. I can’t think of a story but I love the new word. Was that intentional? Is it a new SDMB vocabulary word along the lines of cow-orker?

If not, may I use it? Corresponging away the tears of laughter, Gazelle

6

ROFLOL! It definately wasn’t intentional and I didn’t know I’d done it until you spotted it. Thanks, I needed the laugh!

:smiley:

7

To me, “corresponging” sounds like what you would do if someone sent you a really funny letter and you used the material in it as your own.

“I used to send jokes to Howard via email, but I found out he was corresponging to pick up chicks.”

It fits with the OP, too!

8

Lo, these many years ago, as a sophomore in highschool, I found myself nearly dozing off durring a movie in English class, and needed something to keep me awake. I reached behind me to where the file cabinets were and began just looking through them surreptitiously. There, in a small folder, was the final for the class. I quickly swiped it, and coppied it that night, replacing it the next day durring the lunch period.
I told a bunch of my friends that I had it, and soon rumor began to spread. I made the same deal with anyone who wanted it: If I got caught, I would tell the teacher -everyone- whom I gave a copy to.
Oddly, almost everyone in class took a copy. There were a few that didn’t. So much for ‘honors’, eh? I even had the odd experience of being invited to a party with the ‘popular’ kids (who, of course, suddenly didn’t talk to me again after they got what they wanted).
Anyway, day of the final came. We came in, sat down, and the teacher said she was ‘very disapointed’ in the fact that someone ‘whose name she would not mention’ had stolen a copy of the final. That student would, of course, fail. She wanted to talk to them after class.
I knew she had no idea who’d done it. She was the kind of teacher that would have hauled the person in front of the class for some personal humiliation. Still, I saw some other kids sweating bullets…
A new final was handed out, and I got an A on it. I was no fool. I had assumed this might have happened, and I studied my ass off anyway. I walked out of that class calmly, and never looked back.

9

When I was a senior in college, I was working as an intern at the University’s public relations office. My best friend (since seventh grade) was quite the granola-crunching activist at the time and was starting an underground investigative newspaper. (Think: a bunch of hippies trying to be like 60 Minutes on the university administration.)

So my friend approaches me one day and asks about this: There was a Gay and Lesbian Alumni Association which was privately organized and did not have a University charter. My friend had heard that our alma mater refused to grant a charter and thus, legitimize the GALAA, because the powers that be (in the PR office) were concerned about the university’s image in connection with a – gasp – gay and lesbian group. (This was in the early 90’s, not that there was any reason for that position in any other decade.) My friend wanted to know, since I worked in the PR office, had I seen any memoranda, correspondence, or documentation of any kind that would corroborate that story and turn it into a fact?

I informed her that I would look around and if anything was clearly stamped “confidential” I wouldn’t give it to her, but if it was unmarked, I’d copy anything I could find… as long as she didn’t cite me by name as her source. I stood to lose a job I’d had for two years which also counted as 3 credit hours toward my internship – which was a graduation requirement. If I got caught leaking any information to her, I might not only lose my job, but not graduate and possibly be subject to disciplinary action up to and including explusion.

All of which I’m willing to risk for: a) a really, really good friend, and b) to fight The Man in support of an ostracized group.

So I found a memo from my boss to the alumni association VP that basically said something to the effect of, “I don’t care what Yale and Harvard are doing, this school will NOT lend credibility to a bunch of homos.” (It didn’t say that exactly, but that was the message.) It’s not marked confidential, nor is the file folder, nor is the drawer this is in, so I make a copy and run it over to my friend.

A couple weeks later, the paper comes out with a huge above-the-fold front page story about how the university administration is a bunch of closed-minded homophobic bigots who won’t even grant a charter to a group of alumni – unlike about 200 other major universities across the U.S. The PR office imploded.

Of course, I get called into my boss’ office and asked about this. I had to be careful because I knew my boss knew I was close friends with the author of the story and she also knew that we’d been roommates the previous year and were still in pretty close contact.

Basically all I could say was “you can’t prove it!” and pointed out that my friend could have had a source in the office of the letter’s recipient and I was not the only possible source and as soon as she could prove it was me, call me and we’ll talk.

Seeing as how it was two weeks until graduation, she smirked a little and fully let me get away with it, internship intact.

:smiley:

10

Nah. Corresponging is when you use a couple of tampons for semaphore.

11

Once in high school bio I helped some people cheat. We worked out a system of pencil taps, ear scratching, and other signals that seem pretty stupid and obvious now, but we thought were very clever at the time. When we were taking the test, the person who wanted an answer would signal which question they wanted, and I would signal back with what I thought was the answer (I generally scored very high on tests). They would randomly change a couple of answers around so we didn’t all get the exact same questions wrong. It worked pretty well actually.

12

Not me, but a funny thing happened to my daughter and her best friend when they were in Year 9 at high school.

They decided they wanted to go to Oak’s Day, a horse-racing meet that is held on the Thursday after Melbourne Cup Day. Oak’s Day is Ladies Day at the races, and the course is full of gels and ladies all tarted up to the nines.

My kid had my permission to ‘wag’ school for the day, and she and her friend were having a wonderful time…until…they bumped in to one of their teachers who had also decided to play hooky.

Apparently there was an uncomfortable silence at first, until the teacher promised that SHE wouldn’t tell the principal if THEY could manage to forget that they had seen her at the races as well.

It was never spoken of again. :smiley:

13

Umm … I once recorded a football game without the express written consent of the National Football League.

Damn, my life can’t be that boring, can it?

14

Ah, plagiarism confessions. I’ve been waiting years to get this off my chest.

Junior year of high-school. AP English Language & Composition. Assignment: Write a short story. Night before due date, and I’ve got NOTHING. Writer’s block has crushed me. So, what do I do? I find myself constantly returning (after closing out angrily many times) to an internet fan-fiction I had been reading the day before. I don’t even remember what it was a fan-fic of, but it worked very well as a stand-alone story.

Pretty soon, I had copied the text, and began to change character names. I was still worried about the teacher using some special search (as she said she would) or even just Google, to find some text from it, so I began to rewrite it, sentence by sentence. It took all night, I got no sleep. I’m sure I put more effort into that (it was a rather long story) than most of the rest of the class put into actually writing an original story. But it was still plagiarism. Guilt and fear hounded me all day up until I turned it in and for the rest of the day afterward.

The next day I was still haunted by a vague panic that I’d be found out, despite my masterful reworking (my version was better written than the original, if I do say so myself, but that’s beside the point :smiley: ) The teacher, of course, gave a plagiarism lecture and told us that we’d get a zero on the assignment and be spoken to by the principal, with other unspoken punishments, as well. Oh, and did I mention that this English teacher was also the principal’s wife?

Anyway, near the end of the day, as I was sitting in another class. The principal knocks on the door, points at me, and asks "May I see Mr. Bushido for a minute?"

Dear in a fucking headlight. I’m numb. I begin bracing myself for the worst. This is going to get ugly. My parents will be brought into this, for certain. I’m frantically searching for possible explanations.

He leads me out of the room, not saying anything, down the hall, around the corner to…

A 3rd grader, and 8th grader, and the photographer for the local town newspaper. I am handed a piece of paper to write my interests and achievements. I’m the “Geek of the Week.” Every week the paper randomly picks a student from the elementary, middle school, and high school to get their picture and a little blurb in the paper.

If my mother was so happy that I was in the paper; I’m sure I didn’t look too dumbstruck in the picture, since she never mentioned it. I got a good grade on the plagiarised paper, and the incident has never been before spoken of by me.

So, whew. Long story for a rather pitible little confession, but hey, I never got into very much trouble and this is pretty much the only thing in my whole life that I’ve done that has ever eaten at my conscience, so I should be allowed to go off on a therapeutic tangent!

15

I sideswiped a parked car while driving my mother’s car. I drove across town to a 7-11, bought a soda then called my mom and told her someone ran into her car while I was in the 7-11. This happened on a Saturday afternoon and there were people everywhere and she believed me when I said I couldn’t find any witnesses. My mom paid to have the car fixed out of pocket because she didn’t want her insurance to go up. Before she died I confessed to a couple of things I did, crashing her car wasn’t one of them.

16

My housemate and closest friend were convinced that there was no reason that we should have to fulfill the requirements set up by our academic departments to graduate. Instead we just signed up for the classes that struck our fancy. In retrospect it was incredibly stupid. Every semester my advisor would get agitated and list the classes I still needed to take. I would blissfully ignore her.

When my fourth year was up I was short:

Two required internships
The introductory course for my major!
My math requirement
A statistics class

I decided I had nothing to lose, so I just handed her the piece of paper that she needed to sign verifying that I had fulfilled my requirements. She never looked up and just signed it and passed it to me. I figure she must have known.

17

Of course there should be "and I’ between friend and were.

18

The kind of code-grabbing that you just confessed to ran rampant in my C++ class in HS… although I imagine it must have been somewhat easier for them to re-do simple C++ programs than it was for you to alter your assignment.

For the record, I never copied anyone’s code, per se, but I did lend my disk to a friend on an occasion or two…

19

I routinely let the people sitting next to me in biology copy off my work, because many of these people are my friends. One time, the guy on my right (Joe) took my review question paper and was copying it after I finished. Suddenly, the teacher came by and asked “Why do you have emekthian’s paper?”. Me and Joe were quite scared, because we would both get in trouble if caught cheating.
I fortunately had the presence of mind to grab Joe’s paper, and then say “Oh look Joe, I think we got our papers mixed up.” Then I gave him his paper back, and took my own. Detention averted.

20

Freshman year of college I had a roommate who made Bluto of Animal House look civilized and wasn’t nearly as much fun. He’d spend most of his time in the room, in his boxer shorts, with no shirt, and this guy had back hair you could weave. My friends would avoid coming over after a couple traumatizing visits. They’d try to call, but got a busy signal because he spent so much time on IRC (this was before the dorms were wired for ethernet, so to get online you had to dial out on the single phone line). Plus, he was always drinking my soda.

Needless to say, I felt revenge must be served.

The end of the second semester was coming up, and the campus bookstore had just started their “textbook buyback”. This was a great money saver on their part, they paid something like 10 or 20% of the cover price, then sold most of these used books at 1/2 price to students next semester.

So I gathered up as many of Roomie’s books as I could find (most had gathered underneath his bed, behind several months worth of trash), took them to the bookstore and walked out with around 75 dollars. I then took my friends out for dinner.

Oh, did I mention this was the week before finals? :eek:

I honestly don’t feel too bad about it, I heard through the grapevine a year or two later that he had retaken a couple classes twice, failed miserably, dropped out and married a hooker who was pregnant with a baby that may or may not have been his. By this point I expect I’ve got only two or three degrees of separation from Jerry Springer through this guy.