Did You Cheat in School?

[Josquius]

Never anything major, such stuff is super super serious in the UK.
Everyone does it once in a while in class though. Meh.

]

Schizophrenic much Squeeze?

I don't understand. How?

[Malthus]

Outside of some vague memories of doing some shit like secretly opening my textbook or looking at other kids' answers in elementary school, I've never cheated.

That said, I did do some business writing research papers for stupid people.  I still say that's not cheating.

How is that not cheating? 

[derspiess]

I also don't know if you would consider this cheating, but for my senior project I wrote a text advenuture game (think Zork, Planetfall, etc.) in Borland Turbo Pascal 6.  Although the story and puzzles were original, I 'borrowed' most of the parser from a friend of mine who had written a text adventure earlier, just for fun.  I did refine his parser a bit but the core design was essentially unchanged.  I failed to mention that I did this to the teacher.... she however failed to ask.

I did a small text adventure set in the Vietnam War in 9th grade, and I did it in BASIC.  I was never happy with it, but the teacher thought it was outstanding.  Then again, I had a few dolts in that computer class.

Also took "AP Turbo Pascal" in 12th grade.  What a joke-- all the tests were open-book and we could use our notes as well.  Most of the time we just sat in the computer lab & played Battle Chess, PGA Golf, M1 Tank Platoon, and Rescue Raiders.  We all got A's, but none of us bothered to take the AP test.

[PDH]

Never cheated, but back in the day there was a whole lot less to learn.  I don't even think the counting went up past 7 or 8 when I was in grade school.

[11B4V]

I also don't know if you would consider this cheating, but for my senior project I wrote a text advenuture game (think Zork, Planetfall, etc.) in Borland Turbo Pascal 6.  Although the story and puzzles were original, I 'borrowed' most of the parser from a friend of mine who had written a text adventure earlier, just for fun.  I did refine his parser a bit but the core design was essentially unchanged.  I failed to mention that I did this to the teacher.... she however failed to ask.

Also took "AP Turbo Pascal" in 12th grade.  What a joke-- all the tests were open-book and we could use our notes as well.  Most of the time we just sat in the computer lab & played Battle Chess, PGA Golf, M1 Tank Platoon, and Rescue Raiders.  We all got A's, but none of us bothered to take the AP test.

I must be old. We'd just ditch something like that and go to the smoking area.

[derspiess]

I also don't know if you would consider this cheating, but for my senior project I wrote a text advenuture game (think Zork, Planetfall, etc.) in Borland Turbo Pascal 6.  Although the story and puzzles were original, I 'borrowed' most of the parser from a friend of mine who had written a text adventure earlier, just for fun.  I did refine his parser a bit but the core design was essentially unchanged.  I failed to mention that I did this to the teacher.... she however failed to ask.

Also took "AP Turbo Pascal" in 12th grade.  What a joke-- all the tests were open-book and we could use our notes as well.  Most of the time we just sat in the computer lab & played Battle Chess, PGA Golf, M1 Tank Platoon, and Rescue Raiders.  We all got A's, but none of us bothered to take the AP test.

I must be old. We'd just ditch something like that and go to the smoking area.

Then we'd have fallen out of the good graces of our computer teacher, who undoubtedly would have made things more difficult in class.

Re: the smoking area, that was across the street from our school (technically off-campus but smokers were allowed to go there) and you only went into the smoking area if you were on the 'other' side of the big socioeconomic divide in our high school.

[Malthus]

Worst cheating I ever did was once when under a lot of time pressure as an undergraduate I submitted what was basically the same essay in two different classes, rather than writing two different essays. I suppose you can't do that sort of thing now, they probably make you submit electronic copies & run some sort of compare program over 'em.

In high school, I used to write out "cheat sheets" for the math-oriented classes, and then not actually bring them - because the act of writing them out actually caused me to, well, learn the stuff.

Not exactly cheating, but funny nonetheless - I hated my calculus teacher in HS grade 10 and the feeling was mutual. He was a nasty little dwarf. We used to sit just outside his class in the summer smoking pot and making sure it wafted into his class - he was so short he couldn't actually see us, and by the time he ran all the way to the outer school door we were long gone. 

Anyway, one day I drifted in reeking of a big hash joint I'd just smoked and without either book or homework. The teacher decided this was time for a little humiliation. He immediately assigned me to do the most difficult question in that day's work on the blackboard, and settled back with a smile to enjoy. I grabbed a book from a buddy and started up.

What he didn't realize, because the teacher's book was laid out differently, was that the particular problem he had chosen was by chance identical (except for different numbers) to the example on the facing page of the text. So it was easy enough for me to do the problem by simply copying the example and substituting the numbers.

The teacher was quite flabbergasted. He knew I hadn't done any work and was high to boot. How the fuck did I manage to write out and do the problem at lighting speed? He simply couldn't believe it. 

[derspiess]

The teacher decided this was time for a little humiliation. He immediately assigned me to do the most difficult question in that day's work on the blackboard, and settled back with a smile to enjoy. I grabbed a book from a buddy and started up.

Some of my best moments in school were when teachers caught me not paying attention and tried to make an example of me in similar fashion.  As if there were no possible way for me to learn or know the lesson content without listening to them

I didn't smoke pot but I think I inadvertently showed signs that I did.