I know I can't hurt them but...

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

"Penis McFartburger"

I have no words right now to express how awesome that is. I may just have to nickname one of my crappy co-irkers that.

[Jester]

What's funnier is when you get a question like "how can i get into havrard???"

"I would suggest buying a ticket to one of their games. That or get a job there. I hear they may have some openings in the custodial arts."

[Jay 2K Winger]

So with all of these stories about cheating, I thought you guys would enjoy an update on this class...

I caught another. They had a book report due last Friday, so I spent my lunch hours at other work grading papers. This one kid had a paragraph about Leonardo da Vinci. So strike one, he obviously hadn't done the work. Strike two, there's a website listed as his work cited. Strike three, the website doesn't exist. I found the entirety of his paragraph on Yahoo Answers.

Oh god, Yahoo Answers. My mother is constantly reading off questions from Yahoo Answers of people that are clearly trying to get other people to do their homework for them. It's awesome when the first reply they get is someone telling them to do their own damn homework, less so when people actually respond with the answers.

What's funnier is when you get a question like "how can i get into havrard???" and you just want to tell them, "Buddy, you aren't getting into Harvard if you can't even spell the school right."

[dalesys]

My daughter confiscated a note being passed in one of her classes last week:

"I wish I was Santa. I'd know where all the NAUGHTY girls live."


Sure. And if that pimple's coming down the chimney, some chick's going to go three little pigs on him, and bring the soup kettle to a rolling boil...

[Kheldarson]

So with all of these stories about cheating, I thought you guys would enjoy an update on this class...

I caught another. They had a book report due last Friday, so I spent my lunch hours at other work grading papers. This one kid had a paragraph about Leonardo da Vinci. So strike one, he obviously hadn't done the work. Strike two, there's a website listed as his work cited. Strike three, the website doesn't exist. I found the entirety of his paragraph on Yahoo Answers.

[Jester]

Oddly enough, there was no aftermath - and he stopped trying to rubberneck my tests.

Actually, that WAS the aftermath....the fucker got the message, apparently!

[Ben_Who]

It sounds to me like he screwed the guy over.

He sat down and worked out a hand-signal scheme for two reasons: to shut the guy up and make him believe he was being helped, and also to make sure that *he* wouldn't be caught "communicating".

Then he went ahead and gave hand-signals that did *not* correspond to the correct answers, thereby ensuring that the cheat would fail the test if he was relying on them.

This is indeed what happened - we worked out these stupid hand signals and then I fed him wrong answers all the way down the board.

The thing is, while he wasn't the brightest wick in the wax, he should have gotten at least SOME of them right. Even the guy who sat in the back and liked to shove crayons up his nose got a 72. I forget whether he got a 13 or a 17, though it did have the legend "See me."

He hadn't wanted to crib some answers - he wanted someone to sit the exam for him. I was as shocked as he was to see his final grade. I have a feeling that if I could have signaled that his name was "Penis McFartburger" he would have written that down instead of his own.

Oddly enough, there was no aftermath - and he stopped trying to rubberneck my tests.

Love, Who?

[Jester]

Sounded like that to me, too. The only potential flaw I saw with that plan is that the cheater would figure it out pretty damn quickly (as in when he got the test score back), and might either look to retaliate or else just go right back to his regular cheating method.

Just a thought.

[Chromatix]

I'm a bit confused. Did you screw the guy over, or actually help him to cheat off of you. If it was the former, bravo! And if it was the latter, what, precisely, did you get out of it?

It sounds to me like he screwed the guy over.

He sat down and worked out a hand-signal scheme for two reasons: to shut the guy up and make him believe he was being helped, and also to make sure that *he* wouldn't be caught "communicating".

Then he went ahead and gave hand-signals that did *not* correspond to the correct answers, thereby ensuring that the cheat would fail the test if he was relying on them.

[Jester]

I told him that as long as he was going to be doing this, let's at least make it a bit more subtle. Over lunch, we meticulously worked out a series of hand signals to prevent rubbernecking.

I felt particularly evil that day...

I'm a bit confused. Did you screw the guy over, or actually help him to cheat off of you. If it was the former, bravo! And if it was the latter, what, precisely, did you get out of it?

The thing about cheating is that if you're the kind of student who would cheat, it won't help you.

A point illustrated by my high school chemistry teacher, "Big Mike." Big Mike was a hilarious teacher who spent half the class teaching us chem and the other half just bullshitting with us. The very first day of class, though, he told us that in his 20 some years of teaching, no one had ever gotten a perfect score on any of his tests. This was a point of pride with him. He graded on a curve, so it was not as if he was out to make people fail....he just liked to challenge the students.

The amusing part of his tests were that we were allowed to use anything written on our book covers. Any of you remember buying/making covers for your books in high school? Yep. We did. And he was not kidding....you were allowed to use anything that was written on those covers for the test. And most of the students changed their covers each chapter, so they would have fresh stuff written on the covers for the tests. One enterprising soul went so far once as to copy the entire chapter on a photocopier and shrink it down to put on his book cover. And for the final we were allowed to bring ALL our book covers from the year to help us. And Big Mike allowed all this.

Why? Because he knew what we young lemmings did not: that it really wouldn't help. You either knew the material or you didn't. I can say from my experience that the book cover "help" really wasn't. Other than the one chapter that was about memorizing formulas, it was a big waste of time, a red herring that he threw us. Because you would spend your time looking for the answer on your book cover when the fact remained that if you didn't know it, you weren't going to have enough time to find it and finish the test if you relied on the book cover.

Big Mike was evil. But he also had a generous (though twisted) side. After each exam, for those who were not happy with their grade, he allowed them a blind do-over. To wit, if they chose to do this, they could fill out the answer sheet again....without the question sheet. It sounds funny, but more than a few people did this, and more than a few actually improved their grade by doing this, by just randomly picking answers.

As it turns out, I came closer than almost anyone in his history (at the time) to getting a perfect grade on a test. I was rather proud of that, being one of only two sophomores in a junior class. Hell, throughout the year, without fail, myself or the other sophomore would get the best grade on the test, with the other one being second. It kind of irritated the juniors, but the fact is, we were in that junior class because we were motivated and smart enough to do it.

So, how tough was Big Mike, really? On the final exam, the other sophomore got only 33 of 75 questions right. I got 50 out of 75. And those were the two best scores in the class.

Big Mike was so tough that 20+ years later, I still tell this story. And I still admire the man. If ever I became a teacher, he would be one of the ones I would want to be like.

Big Mike rocked. And he proved that those who cheat rarely are helped by the cheating.

[Broomjockey]

I don't think I ever actually cheated.

I did once let someone else copy off my homework, they weren't subtle enough about it, or something, homeroom teacher nailed us, and *I* got detention. That's right. Me. Not them. 'cause, I was an enabler, and without me, they wouldn't have done anything wrong.

I'll also admit that I'd been tempted to cheat, when stuck on individual questions, and I'd even look about the room, desperately hoping for inspiration to strike. Lucky for me, though, my eyesight sucks so I couldn't ever actually see anyone else's work

[Kristev]

I tried to cheat a couple of times, in high school. Usually is was just a moment of panic, as in I'd studied all night, but when the test came, I froze and went blank and couldn't recall any of the answers until the day was over.

So I tried to cheat, and failed anyway. So I didn't try any further.

[Ben_Who]

One of the lower-watt bulbs in high school wouldn't cross the street to spit on my shoes over the normal course of things, but was my bestest buddy ever when exam time rolled around, cheating so mercilessly off my work that I was stunned that no one noticed. So I told him that as long as he was going to be doing this, let's at least make it a bit more subtle. Over lunch, we meticulously worked out a series of hand signals to prevent rubbernecking. Oh, and don't forget to send a few "wrong" signals, just so that our answer sheets aren't identical.

He didn't even LOOK at the test paper. There was stuff on there that he should have gotten, but instead entrusted to me. His answer sheet was...interesting, to say the least. I felt particularly evil that day, which as we all know can be a rather pleasant sensation.

The thing about cheating is that if you're the kind of student who would cheat, it won't help you. It might get you through one test, but you can't cheat your way to a degree. I was a crappy student my first year of college, and you'd be amazed at how much information you can fit on a 3x5 card, but you can't do that with every test with every professor in every class. I'd usually chicken out, leaving the 3x5 card safely in my pocket, and the one time I drew it out, none of the material on the card was covered on the exam. Someone who doesn't listen in class isn't going to know what the exam covers. Everything to lose, nothing to gain.

I got better.

Love, Who?

[Jester]

I tried to cheat exactly once in school. Latin class, freshman or sophomore year. (I know it was my first high school, because that's the only place I took Latin, but I can't remember which of the two years I was there it was.) I got caught by the teacher, and never tried such idiocy again.

[Jay 2K Winger]

Re: Cheating on tests.

I cheated twice in all my academic career. The first time, 7th grade vocabulary test in English class. I hadn't studied, I peeked at my study sheet in my desk on maybe four words total, and even with that help, would have flunked the test. A classmate saw me peeking, and told the teacher. I 'fessed up, admitted I'd done wrong, and took the automatic failure, since I knew I'd failed anyway.

Didn't cheat again for years until one of my classes at ITT Tech last year. The teacher had mistakenly left the answer key in about half of the tests he'd handed out. Everyone who got the key used it, myself included. If the teacher knew, he didn't mention it, and everyone who "passed" that test still had the perfect scores on it.

But otherwise, I never cheat on tests. Given every time I've tried to lie to someone, or otherwise use deception, I get caught, I figure why bother?