you can't call it cheating

The best thing about Tumblr is not having to think of clever titles and entries. I post a video/photo/song/quote and BOOM: post accomplished.

But this isn't Tumblr and since Blogger has improved its editor, I suppose I shouldn't really complain.

Anyway.

I'm fairly certain I have repeatedly stated on this blog how much time I spent in the library of the schools I attended, and how much I loved those libraries (except for the library in Maid Uniform School's then-new building, because that... was wrong). One of my fondest memories in the grade school library was coming across the booklet used for listening exercises and innocently doing the exercises with my equally-nerdy friends.

How were we supposed to know the exercises we used would later on be used in class? It's not cheating because we didn't know.

I never got into the more complicated cheating techniques -- the tissue, the coughing, the kodigo (cheatsheet), the whathaveyou. I'm sure I've glanced at my seat mate's paper from time to time, but when your class number is 10 and you're seated at either the window or the back of the class, that's not really much of an option. And it certainly didn't help that my seat mates were (almost) always straight arrows who would never condescend to letting their seat mate copy off their papers.

It helped, of course, that I shared a lot of teachers in common with my friends from other classes, and wow high school teachers are lazy pants who use the same exam all the time.




I have -- had? -- a very fatalistic view of the world, especially in high school. If I pass, awesome. If not, I'll make it up in the next grading period. In college I don't think I really cared. If a subject was hard I just made it a point to pass it, if it was easy... well, it would pretty much depend on the prof.

Anyway, going back to cheating: I remember hearing stories from past classmates that so-and-so teacher was never aware of the goings-on in the classroom, that during tests you could have an open notebook(!) on the floor and he would never know, or other stories of Cheating Made Easy, but I learned about it much later on, in moments of weakness when my friends and I reminisce about the good old days, and it's not uncommon for me to pout and whine that nobody told me this back then. Nobody tells me shit like these, and it's not because they don't trust me: they just didn't think I'd care. I could've have higher grades, and/or didn't have to study! Of course I cared. That fatalism/ambivalence can totally bite you in the ass.

Oh! And the crazy stories of proctors comparing answers in the middle of the test. Or those that allowed you to eat during the exams. When I heard those stories, I would wonder, why the frak am I getting the boring proctors? The worst I got was the one who'd leave the room for no reason, but after that stupid Elective Tattle Tale scandal, nobody was going to risk conversing, were they?

Also: I hate (most of) my (alphabetically-arranged) seat mates (except for you, Bru, you were awesome).

And to those who tried to cheat off my paper and grumbled when they failed because I didn't let them: it wouldn't have helped -- I didn't study, either. If I let you peek, I must've studied. If I didn't, I didn't want to bring you down with me (This was my form of the honesty system. I believed in karma, and felt we were better off guessing at our own answers).


Bonus: the animator of the above video and his Confessions of a Disney Employee