Cheating and paranoia

Manchot

Why? You deserve to fail if you cheat, and your transcript should reflect that.

EDIT: You edited your post, so mine no longer reflects yours accurately. :) Disregard what I said.

Math Is Hard

I also want to say, that I don't blame my teacher - she is awesome! Really - one of the best I've ever had. But she has been forced into this paranoia by 15 years of experience with students. That makes me sad.

Cyrus

I agree, but dont waste my ink on political nonsense. I pledge not to cheat, I guess that means I wont right....................NOT........... see my point. If im going to cheat, I can write whatever the heck I want to, it doesnt amount to squat. Its just being PC to make it SEEM like the school is taking big action.

neurocomp2003

i've tried to help friends cheat on exams =]
it is a big issue but probably for the bigger universities...
i've seen some TAs actually help a student out on an test. kinda cool.

Kalimaa23

Most of my exams are oral, one on one affairs with the professor. Takes care of any cheating instantly. It also makes the evaluation process more personal, and in my opinion, fairer.

Pengwuino

What kinda major is that????

Igor_S

Yep, similar here. :) We have both written and oral parts of exam for almost every course. Sometimes (rarely) there's just oral part, and extremely rarely there is no exam (maybe 3,4 out of 40 or so courses in entire 4 years as undergrad). It is possible to cheat a little on written part, but on oral it's just you in front of blackboard (or sometimes you write on a paper, but not much of a difference) and there's no way to cheat there.

Kalimaa23

Physics.

Ignore this line, it is to make the message long enough

BobG

The problem goes back further than 15 years. In high school, the class valedictorian for the class ahead of me was caught cheating on one of his final exams. I thought the whole thing was handled pretty questionably all the way around. The school didn't want to ruin his reputation, so they made him retake the final. I never heard how he did on the retake but with 3 grading periods and 1 final figured into a semester grade, he only needed a C on the final to get an A. So he was still class valedictorian at graduation. The next year, several teachers were pretty loose about spreading rumors. Each individual teacher may have made sure no one could figure out who they were talking about, but several teachers talk about the same incident, it isn't too hard to figure exactly who they were all talking about. Hard to figure out the thinking of the student - did he make class valedictorian because he cheated all the way through high school, only getting caught once, or did the pressure to excel just get to him? Just failing him for the final wouldn't have been a horrible punishment, either. One B in your entire high school career wouldn't have looked bad, but it would have been enough to cost him class valedictorian (this is what seemed to irk most of the teachers that talked about the incident). The combined behavior of the teachers wasn't that impressive either, since the incident probably shouldn't have wound up being public knowlege.

For me, I was only acused of cheating once - actually, the teacher just very strongly insinuated it - since I hadn't cheated, he had nothing but suspicions. I was very depressed about the whole incident. He would seat everyone aphabetically, except at our table, we had one senior who added the class after the seating chart had been done. It was a first period class and three of us had the same home room, so we would study for the test together during home room. The teacher publically voiced his suspicions about our similar answers on the test in front of the class, which was embarrassing (and a little bit encouraging - we were pretty worried about this test, but we must have done well). The senior not accused of cheating looked more depressed than us, since Physics wasn't exactly his strong suit, anyway. When he handed our test results out, I'm not sure which depressed me more - being accused of cheating or the fact that all three of us got D's.

I guess three goofballs choosing the same wrong way to solve so many problems looks more suspicious than if we'd all chosen the right way. We did finally stop helping each other study. Usually, a group can point out misconceptions by any individual member, but with us, it was the other way around. I swear, together we could manage to lower our IQ's at least 30 points.

Manchot

Yeah, the main reason that I'm scared of getting falsely accused of cheating is that it happened to my mother in seventh grade. Fortunately, because I'm so transparent when taking exams, it has never happened to me.

Math Is Hard

I loved your story, Bob. I guess three wrongs don't make a right!

Poop-Loops

How I make sure people don't think I'm cheating:

Take off jacket (all I have on is a t-shirt. Nothing up my sleeves!), have only what you need on your desk (calc, pencil, test) and finish first or somewhere up top. That way, no cheat sheets or anything like that, and I couldn't have copied since I was one of the first people to finish.

Of course, finishing first isn't good if all your answers are wrong. :(

PL

JasonRox

My university catches people sometimes, but it doesn't seem to happen a lot. I know it does happen a lot though.

what

I don't know but i never got the point of cheating, i mean you can only put a limted amount of information on the cheat sheet, is it really going to help you? Personally, i don't cheat, mainly because it'd be illogical, if i took the time to look something up, space it right and write it down i would remember it. I guess i've always been that way. Although, other people cheating doesn't make me mad, i don't really know why, it just doesn't bother me, unless they're premed and cheating on a bio exam. Although, now that i think about i've never had the reason to cheat on an exam either, so maybe that has something to do with it.