Cheating/plagiarism...
It's odd. I've been either going to school or teaching school basically for over 20 years now. In all that time I don't believe I have ever really cheated or intentionally plagiarised. I never gave it too much thought as I always found it less stressful to just do the best I could on my own and not bother with the bother of cheating. In fact, when I saw my own students cheat in the computer science classes I taught, it really annoyed me (to put it mildly). I hated having to suspect them, and was always wondering why they would do such a thing.
With a fixed car (it was a dead battery), I was able to make up that midterm yesterday. I knew I would be hammered on calculus, so I brought my old calculus book (the last calculus class was in 1998!), and tried to review. When I sat down in the prof's office to take the midterm, I found to my horror that I couldn't remember what the anti-derivative of e^x (or rather e^-x) was. Turns out many problems depended on that formula, and I was stuck.... or in theory I was stuck. I had with me one of those uber-fancy TI calculators... I knew that many of them have integrating functions built in. For the first time I can remember, I was REALLY tempted to try to feed up e^-x and ask it to integrate it. I toyed with the idea (with time I should have spent working on the exam of course) for too long for my comfort. In the end, I did not. First of all, I'm not entirely sure my calculator had that function. Second of all, I certainly don't recall off hand how to find it. Third of all, to try to figure it out would have eaten up time I didn't have to spare. Fourth of all, I was taking the exam with the prof only feet from me... I might have gotten away with it, but it was risky. I ended up just writing out what I could for those problems and writing a comment of I just don't remember how to integrate e^-x (yes, I know how to now) and I can hope I can recover a handful of points. That test was AWFUL, and I even ran out of time. I can't even begin to remember the last time I ran out of time on any test.
What is the point? Well, cheating is a lot more seductive than I ever gave it credit for. I held the line (laziness once again reigned surpreme), but I can somewhat appreciate why I caught so many student lamely trying to copy assignments off of each other . Of course the real point is I'm in the middle of a massive review of calc and the statistics & probability course I'm now for my final tomorrow. I will NOT be caught in such a bad situation tomorrow! That's the real answer... it's just a little less seductive.
With a fixed car (it was a dead battery), I was able to make up that midterm yesterday. I knew I would be hammered on calculus, so I brought my old calculus book (the last calculus class was in 1998!), and tried to review. When I sat down in the prof's office to take the midterm, I found to my horror that I couldn't remember what the anti-derivative of e^x (or rather e^-x) was. Turns out many problems depended on that formula, and I was stuck.... or in theory I was stuck. I had with me one of those uber-fancy TI calculators... I knew that many of them have integrating functions built in. For the first time I can remember, I was REALLY tempted to try to feed up e^-x and ask it to integrate it. I toyed with the idea (with time I should have spent working on the exam of course) for too long for my comfort. In the end, I did not. First of all, I'm not entirely sure my calculator had that function. Second of all, I certainly don't recall off hand how to find it. Third of all, to try to figure it out would have eaten up time I didn't have to spare. Fourth of all, I was taking the exam with the prof only feet from me... I might have gotten away with it, but it was risky. I ended up just writing out what I could for those problems and writing a comment of I just don't remember how to integrate e^-x (yes, I know how to now) and I can hope I can recover a handful of points. That test was AWFUL, and I even ran out of time. I can't even begin to remember the last time I ran out of time on any test.
What is the point? Well, cheating is a lot more seductive than I ever gave it credit for. I held the line (laziness once again reigned surpreme), but I can somewhat appreciate why I caught so many student lamely trying to copy assignments off of each other . Of course the real point is I'm in the middle of a massive review of calc and the statistics & probability course I'm now for my final tomorrow. I will NOT be caught in such a bad situation tomorrow! That's the real answer... it's just a little less seductive.
posted by Jim Casaburi at
12:10 PM
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