Cheating or Working the System?

So as I write this my friend, we'll call him Frank, is currently trying to get 2 more points on an exam we took last week so he can get an A in the class. No big deal, right? Well, on page 2 of the exam he got two problems wrong, at 2 points each; so he took it upon himself to re-create that specific page of the exam and write the correct answer for one of them (fill in the blank).

While the pages looked almost identical (I was impressed seeing as he barley knows how to work Word - he had to ask how to make a header), I told him that I don't morally agree with what he is doing. Don't get me wrong, I'm no saint, as I cheat on exams, homeworks, quizzes, and papers. But the way I look at it is that I get in, get out, and if I fuck up then I should have studied (or cheated) better. I think I have a bit of a reputation for it, which is good for networking (with classmates, obviously) but in the end I was never this bad in high school.

Focus: Did you cheat in school? Or let's be honest, how much did you cheat in school? Any good stories that go along the same topic?

Alt Focus: What are some funny/smart ways to cheat?

 

Grade 11-12 chemistry was a joke seeing as some of us managed to get a hold of the teacher's email account.

 

I repped this to LBH, but basically the line for me occurs when a teacher sets what I deem to be "unreasonable expectations for student performance."

Obviously, this is all circumstantial. In high school, that line often occurred when a teacher would request something like a paper be due the day after Thanksgiving. No, you dumb shit, Thanksgiving is for eating excessively and stealing liquor from your parents cabinet when no one is looking. Not for writing papers, studying for tests, or doing mounds of bullshit statistics homework.

Also, after college acceptance letters were returned, all homework, quizzes, tests and especially final exams were deemed fair game. My favorite method for cheating during this time period involved writing the answers on a sheet of paper and palming it in my hand during the exam.

In college, the stakes are higher, and if you get caught, generally you get expelled. Thusly, cheating, for me, occurs only when absolutely necessary and when the teacher is being exceedingly unreasonable. Within the boundaries of my current moral system, all classes that are within my major are off limits. I'm doing all the homework assigned, taking all the tests, and whatever I get, I deserve. However, for electives, and especially for those teachers who know they are teaching an elective (like the fucking pottery class I took), if they ask for something I deem to be "unreasonable," it's on. Usually this takes the form of faking essays on books I didn't read or places I didn't go, "pairing up" with one or more co-conspirators on tests, and the "peer-graded assignments" were discussed beforehand with classmates and we added a friendly "student curve."

 

Our High School chemistry teacher knew we cheated but he didn't care. Our lab reports were typically 8 or 9 questions, and each answer was typically a page or so long. Before they were due we'd go over each answer briefly during class and we were expected to take that answer and explain further why certain things happened. Typically we'd all work together and basically have the same answers anyway so I just set up an email account and had other slackers / efficient workers like myself email in answers to whichever questions they wanted and they could copy/paste answers to other questions other kids had emailed in. It all worked pretty well and even when the bitch of the class tried to rat us out to the teacher he looked at her and said "I don't care." He wasn't stupid, he knew who was using the emails and who was doing it on their own, and while he never gave us anything below a C, we never got higher than a B which we are all fine with.

My freshman year in college my friend took my calculus test for me. I had a C in the class and needed a decent grade to make sure I'd pass if I did poorly on my final. We both went in and I pretended to fill one out and waited for the professor to be in the back of the room and went up to turn it in and just slipped it into my bag and walked out. We pulled it off perfectly until I went to get my test back and it wasn't there. Turns out my buddy misunderstood me on not acing it and got the only 100% out of 200 students. Busted. Got threatened with going to judicial affairs but I just apologized and had to retake the class with the same professor next fall, which due to him constantly watching me I got an A.

I also had a friend who worked in the sociology department as a TA for my professor in my Soci 101 class. She got me all the tests and I let a couple friends have them as well and the night before the test we'd get together and answer all the questions and before class would start I'd write them in pencil on the desk and just put my hand over it. The professor said that every test was different and even had different colored tests to hand out, but they were all the same, I didn't even do our final paper because I had an A and not turning it in would still net me a C.

In my Bio 101 lab we got our teacher to love us so much that she didn't care that me and my friend would ask each other openly during the quiz each day what we got for answers. She tried separating us but we'd just talk across the room. She finally gave up and during the final after we were all done let the entire get together and compare answers.

 

My high school Algebra II teacher used to always put her master copy of our tests, complete with bold red answers, right on top of her desk. So many of us would go up to "ask questions." As she was explaining everything, we'd all be memorizing the answers.

Some of us went up there three or four times during an exam. She never understood how some of the class was getting 98's and 100's and the others, who never had any questions, did so poorly. She actually encouraged the others to come to her with questions to improve their grades.

Thanks, Mrs. Biz

 

My exploits in college trended towards the "working the system" end. By the time my senior year rolled around, there was a large group of the same students in the same classes every quarter, and all of us were burned out. So my buddy and I arranged a "Collaboration Ring" where each group of 2-3 students would take a portion of the homework/take-home test, then send it to my friend and I, where we would in turn compile it and disseminate the completed assignment to the entire group.

The bonus, of course, is that most times, there wouldn't be any actual *work* for my friend and I. All we had to do was play Xbox until the answers started rolling in.

 

In High School, I had the reputation of being a good student. This reputation helps a lot when it comes to exams or homework. Besides being able to turn work in days late without penalty to your marks, getting the benefit of the doubt when it comes to iffy exam answers, or being able to skip entire periods because I was doing a "school project" (aka. going out for an extended lunch).

The best I ever did was in Grade 11. In English, not being my favorite subject, we wrote our mid terms, and I did terrible. I got something along the lines of 64% on the essay I was writing. This is when marks still kind of mattered to me and I was choked about it, but had nothing I could do in regards to the marks at the time.

The chance presented itself about a month later when the teacher passed out the interm report cards which list all the marks you have received since you started the class. I approached the teacher and told him that I think I got a higher mark on the mid term than what it said. He opens up my marks on the computer and looks at it, asks if I have the paper (which I had but said it was lost), then he comes to the brilliant conclusion that "You are a good student, and must have done better. I must have input the marks incorrectly". His mistake equaled a 20% boost to the mark on my shitty ass essay about some shitty ass book.

I much prefer to call it "Working the System"


The cheating would be when our college professor gave us a practice take home exam the day before our real exam, forgets to take the practice exams the next day and gives us a slightly reordered version of the practice exam for the test. This normally is just good luck, but when he passed out the exams, then left for the entire period as he normally does, it goes from luck to awesome really fast. I don't know where it changed from everyone looking and talking to each other to us writing the answers on the board for everyone to see, but the entire class got a 94-96% on the exam.

 

One of my engineering classes in undergrad had a nice big loophole you could exploit.

There were 5 online tests we took throughout the semester, and our professor let us know he would drop our lowest test grade at the end. On top of that, our professor didn't require us to be in class to take our tests.

A little more background on the tests: They were multiple choice, with questions given in a random order and choices mixed around each time it's taken. This way there were no 2 equal tests. What remained the same, however, were the actual questions used, and numbers used in each question. They were just presented in no particular order. Once you finished your test, you were able to see your results immediately, including what you got wrong, as well as the correct answers.

So come each test day, myself and 4 other classmates met up in the library to take the tests. One person would be "it" and take the test first, guessing all of the answers, and ending up with a shitty grade on the test. Then, the other 4 people would use the correct answers from the "it" person's test to get A's on theirs. Repeat this process for the next 4 tests, with a new person being "it" each time. We'd also purposely get a couple questions wrong in order to avoid the suspicion of having all perfect scores.

At the end of the semester, the 5 of us had 4 A's on our tests, and one D or F, which ended up being the test grade the professor dropped. I'm pretty sure we weren't the only group of students to do this, either.

 

High School Spanish used the same work book and tests year after year, my brother was 2 years ahead of me so I kept his books and copied all the answers into mine as the year progressed, I did this for spanish 1 and 2.
Private school helped shape my character, thanks.

 

I can't say that I outright cheated, but I guess I had a few ways of working the system. We had an honor system during college that the school took extremely seriously (UVA honor system for anybody familiar). As a result we had a lot of leeway regarding taking tests, doing assignments, etc. For most classes, you could pretty much just pick up your test in the classroom and go where ever you wanted to take it (outside if it was a nice day, an empty classroom if you didn't want the distractions. Some professors would have you take it home and tell you that you needed to take it within the allotted time without the use of any books or notes. So yeah....

Actually I was pretty good about it, the worst I did was start it, read the first question, realize that I needed to study some more, and come back to it later. Or start it, get distracted, and come back to it later, but still complete it during the alloted timeframe. Just not in a consecutive manner.

During grad school, pretty much no way to cheat that I discovered. Plus I was a much more serious student so I didn't go out of my way to find ways to cheat or work the system. I was getting the type of degree that would require me to pass boards in order to work, so no point in paying for years of school only to learn nothing, fail boards, and be unable to work in your chosen profession. We would work together on some assignments where the professors may not have wanted us to work together, but his was not explicitly stated. And besides, life is all about working collaboratively anyway, so maybe it wasn't so bad in the long run.

 

My AP Calculus class would always meet up for breakfast the morning we had a hand-in due. We'd check answers, so everyone who showed up to these things would get 100% on the assignment.

Also, I used to do a lot of my older brother's English assignments for him. Oddly enough, his teacher never questioned why a 17 year old boy was handing in a book report about The Devil Wears Prada.

 

A guy I knew used this method to get into university, he knew he had no chance of passing the exams legitimately, so he cheated.

First he bought a small blue tooth headset, then he'd put it on his wrist and then bandage his hand. Before, entering the exam he would call his partner, who would be at home in front of a computer. At the start of the exam, he would put his hand to his mouth, as if he's thinking. Then, the other guy would start reading a list of topics, when he got to the right topic, the guy taking the exam would cough, a sign that that's the right topic. The guy would go on to read an essay on the subject, they had a whole system prepared, one cough equals repeat last sentence, two coughs go faster and so on.

The guy did pass the exams, but the whole process of cheating had in my opinion involved too much hard work, for one thing he had wrote essays on each possible title, he had to make a list of all possible titles, etc. In subjects like philosophy, were the exams questions involved essay type questions, this method worked flawlessly, in other subjects, not so much.

 

I had a female Asian teacher for one of my freshman Calculus classes. She liked to make things more difficult than the other professors who taught the same class to other students. For the final, every other professor was letting the students bring a sheet of paper with formulas on it, on both sides. Ours said we could bring in nothing. After all of us complained how this was bullshit, she gave us a sheet she made for us to bring in to the exam. What she gave us was useless.

So I took another piece of paper and filled it in lightly in pencil with everything I could fit. I then taped it backwards on the sheet she gave us. When she had us hold are sheets up to see that it was hers I just held mine up. Then we she sat down I undid the tape on one side and flipped it over.

I usually don't like to cheat but what she did was bullshit.

 

Wow, you guys have some pretty strict morals. The only time I've ever cheated in college was when I had a friend write a paper for me for 50 dollars. We were in the same class so he pretty much had to re-word his. High school though, was fair game. I copied every piece of homework I possibly could have. In calculus, the girl who sat behind me just whispered me the answers. My teacher realized that I can't do numbers and just let it slide. I literally turned in tests with no work, just answers.

 

The girls at my high school had it easy. We would wear short skirts and write the answers just above the hemline. Then when the test started, we'd just pull the skirt up a little. It looked like we were intently studying our papers, but really we were reading whatever cheats we had written down.

The beauty was that, unlike a hand, asking to see our upper thigh would qualify as sexual harassment, so there wasn't a whole lot that the teachers could do. There is no end to the deviousness of teenage girls.

 

I never cheated at all in school, however I had a friend who, if he were to take the time he put into cheating, and actually study, he probably could have saved the effort.

My favorite was the writing on a bag of corn chips. We had a teacher who would let us eat during tests, and he would use a sharpie to write down answers to general topics we had studied. He would pull out a chip, and then look for something that related to it on the test. Then eat the evidence.

I can't imagine how many brain cells he killed.

On another test he typed up the answers in very small type, and then printed them out, and wrapped them around a promotional pen that displays something different every time you click it.

 

In high school my friends and I spent more time thinking up ways to cheat that could have actually been spent on studying. Some of the ways we cheated:

-Using snowmobile communicators to talk to each other during a test.
-Putting answers and formulas into our calculators.
-Using superscript to have an answer key for tests.
-Being teacher assistants and going in and changing test grades.
-Copying cliff notes pages and using them as my notes.
-Having underclassmen do all the work and then emailing it to us.

I wish I could remember more from high school, but most of the teachers hated us. We would just goof around during class and they would yell at us. We would shoot back saying that we had the highest grades in the class and just ignore them.

 

Here's one idea for cheating on tests my friend came up with.

Convert to being a Muslim. Specifically, a Muslim woman. Not any garden variety Muslim woman; one of those niqab-wearing self-oppressing types.

Then, find someone who's smarter than you and have them write your exams. The TA will look at your student ID and not bother to make sure it's actually you under the veil.

As for me, I once had access to the solutions from the textbook questions we were assigned. That sure helped rescue my mark after my first few assignments fell right flat. Also, students in my field have a long tradition of co-operation and helping each other out - old assignments, old notes, old exams, old lab reports, and working together on assignments and take-home quizzes are par for the course. It's wonderful.