Or, for that matter, did you ever cheat off a friend, boyfriend, or girlfriend?
I’m not going to define friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or cheat. Each poster can do that for himself or herself. I also am going to leave the poll options private for reasons left as an exercise for the class. Having said all that, I am only interested in cases in which cheating was done with the complicity of a fellow student in the class. Hiding the answer key on your person and consulting it during a test does not count; writing an essay for another person to turn in as her worn work does.
I’ll begin by listing the one example in my life I can recall that may qualify. When we were in junior high school, one of my sisters and I were in different sections of the same biology class. Among our assignments one semester was to gather 50 distinct samples of various insects and identify them by genus and species (I think; it was a long time ago). I liked collecting bugs for its own sake, while she couldn’t stand even touching them, so I collected enough for both of us, classified them all, and gave her half.
Poll in a moment, but don’t let that slow you down.
Yeah. They were only cheating themselves <snicker>. They knew I was going to ace tests, so it was common for them to look at my answers. It wasn’t my responsibility to police others, but I didn’t think of it that way then, I just thought school was stupid and couldn’t care less. On the other hand nobody cheated off my homework, because I didn’t do any.
Yeah I did, if I liked them. When we had group assignments I usually did them all because I wanted to pass the class and I always got stuck with the classmates who didn’t care.
I never cheated (well once on a spelling test in 2nd grade because I didn’t hear what the teacher said) because I wanted to pass.
There was one nasty little guttersnipe in my Junior High science class who always cheated off my paper. The teacher knew it but I think he too afraid of her to confront her. So one day I took the test in pencil, let her copy my wrong answers, after she turned her paper in I erased the wrong answers and wrote in the correct ones in ink.
Later that day she ran up behind me in the hallway and hit me. I barely noticed and just kept walking. After that she taunted me from a distance, and never copied off my paper again.
I barely flunked my way through 11 grades because I had a bad attitude, but I usually understood the material well and I am very good at tests. I gloried in giving away answers to just about anyone. I would even write or edit for fun/free.
All work was group work in my circle. Homework was split up to make it go faster. Cheating strategies were developed, lists programed into graphing calculators, notes were reduced and compiled on copy machines.
No way would I help anyone cheat on tests or school work. I’d seriously have to reconsider dating a gf that cheated on school work. It’s a character issue. Like a friend that shop lifts at Walmart. I stopped hanging out with a couple guys in school that thought it was cool to steal.
I did help a gf study for a Algebra test. But, I just went over how to solve the equations. She managed to pass that test with my help. Helping someone study isn’t cheating.
I once did a photography assignment for a classmate. The instructor was so impressed with it that he showed it to the class and asked him how he did it. The classmate didn’t know, so all he could do was turn beet red and stay silent. Afterwards, he said he was so embarrassed that he would rather have gotten an F for not turning anything in.
The class was part of a journalism course, so there were some students who were only interested in writing, and endured, or even hated in some cases, the photojournalism class. That classmate was one of them, and was a good guy, so I didn’t have a second thought about helping him through it.
Hell no, learning is something you do for yourself and a test checks on your learning. How does letting someone cheat help anybody? I really dislike cheaters and liars, I know sometimes they get ahead but they didn’t earn it. Integrity and character are worth more than a false grade.
I didn’t have any friends, let alone a boyfriend in school. Thanks for reminding me how sucky my youth was, jerk*. My brother is a year younger than me so we never had any classes together. The only other relatives about my age were on the other side of the country from me and I have never met them.
I’ve certainly “helped” people with their homework to a degree where I was basically just telling them the answer. I guess that’s cheating. I never did anything requiring walkie-talkies or hand signals or whatnot.
You do realize that cheating on a test isn’t a crime, right? I understand the character thing, but I kind of let it slide when people would cheat at Solitaire, or tell their mom they were just going to the mall.
I felt pretty much the way TriPolar described (but I didn’t think it would be right for me to copy his post). I was only responsible for my own education and I learned the material. I didn’t feel I had any responsibility to other people’s education. If they wanted to copy my answers, I didn’t have a problem with it.
Of course that’s true generally, but there can be extenuating cirumstances, and in this case, they were extenuating enough to satisfy me. It wasn’t like he cheated the whole year. He was stuck on this particular assignment, thanks to his lack of photographic skill and imagination, and asked for a favour just that once. He was there to learn writing and did well in those classes, and didn’t want the photography class to bring his average down too much by having an uncompleted assignment. Sure it was technically dishonest, but in the overall scheme of things, it was quite minor. I’d probably do it again under the same circumstances.
I wouldn’t have snitched anyone out. If I felt eyes on me then I tried harder to cover my test.
It’s probably a bigger deal in college because expectations for academic performance is higher.
Other than possibly breaking off a dating relationship, I wouldn’t go out of my way to judge anyone for cheating. They are ultimately hurting themselves.
No. I was a do-no-study-or-home-work type who did very well in tests but I never had anyone suggest I help them in some way and I didn’t offer any assistance. I have bribed the tester in order to get a vehicle license in a third world country though. A learning experience that I’m not proud of.
Who are your friends, man? None of mine ever even asked. (Neither did I.)
Closest I ever came was the misfortune of getting stuck on a group project with a lazy-ass classmate. It was a significant portion of our final grade, and I cared about doing well, and she… didn’t. I finished my half with plenty of time and watched and waited while she dicked around. I tried to talk her into doing her fair share, but when it became clear that she absolutely wouldn’t (her version of “contributing” was drawing a 100-square-mile square on our map of Minnesota to indicate the location of the Mayo Clinic), I jumped in and did as much of the remaining work as I could. I seriously resented having to carry her ass to protect my own grade. I don’t remember if I asked the teacher if we could have separate grades instead, though I’m pretty sure I did and the answer was still no. So, the project got a B, and I got a low grade because of her, and she got (what was for her) a high grade because of me. Pissed me right off, it did.
Same here. I can remember a few times when a group project was going south because someone wasn’t pulling her weight, and the rest of us ended up trying to fill in the gap so our grades wouldn’t suffer. As much as teachers say we’ll all get our own grades, let’s be honest - if the project has holes in it and doesn’t meet the basic requirements, it’s going to make us all look bad. In those cases, though, the teacher was aware of what was going on because we filled out a page detailing who worked on what part, and we also submitted evaluations of our partners’ work. And sometimes it was bad enough to bring to the teacher’s attention even before the project was due.
Other than that, I can’t remember any instances where I helped someone cheat. I helped tons of people study, and I helped with homework, but I don’t think I crossed the line into cheating. I’ve just always been the sort of person who gets caught if I even think about doing anything wrong. I have a deep aversion to being yelled at and getting into trouble.
