Righteous Anger
Alright is everybody ready for a lot of swearing? Okay good.
Today I had a mid-term in my Automata class. The professor is Dr. Hayes, a nice old lady that is by far the most (well really only) paranoid professor when it comes to cheating. We can't wear hoods up or hats with brims forward so she can see our faces, we have to sit so that everybody has empty desks to their left and right, things like that. This, folks, is foreshadowing.
So I'd been working on the test for maybe an hour, finished most of the problems but number six had an especially tricky ending so I was doing a bit of the stare at it until you magically come up with it thing, and I heard some whispering. That in itself wasn't surprising; people ask questions of the teacher all the time during a mid-term. But when my voyuerism got the better of me and I looked to see who was asking, nobody was up there. Then I heard a little more and realized it was coming from my right. I looked over that way to see which idiot was talking to themselves and maybe shoot a glare, and realized that nobody was talking to themselves. It was two Indian students talking to each other! The eternal optimist in me waited to see what they were saying, hoping it was in English. I immediately caught "0, 1, 2, 3..." which just happened to be the top row of a prove on countability from the test.
My immediate response was to say out loud, "Oh come on," while staring right at them. Both heads whipped around, eyes wide open. A very fleeting thought of "Should I make a scene? Yea I'm gonna make a scene," went through my head and I slammed my pen down and stormed up to the front of the room. Some poor shy kid had just started asking Hayes a question; he almost had a heart attack when he saw me charging at him. She just brushed him aside and looked at me. So I said to her, Dr. Hayes, a tenured professor at Marist College, "I put up with this shit during the quizzes but this is a fucking test and I'm sick of it." As you may have guessed, she was not quite sure how to respond to that. So I just point at them, and more or less yell, "Those two, the last two in this column, they're cheating. They're talking about the test. That's bullshit." Without any further explanation, I went back to my desk and continued working on number six, fuming.
She talked to them, and from what I caught I think they tried to pass it off as talking to themselves, but it was quite clear by the way the both of them were leaning into each other that that's complete horseshit. I fully intend to follow up on this, because she's pretty forgiving with things and I don't want her to try and sweep it under the rug.
And then get this. Ten minutes later, directly to my left, TWO MORE FUCKING KIDS talking about the test. I shot a glare that one of them caught, but decided I didn't want to look like the little boy who cried wolf because nobody would believe that they were stupid enough to cheat right after I caught the other two doing it.
I mean, what the fuck? I had heard a couple of rumors about graduate students cheating before but until my previously documented experience with it in the quizzes I didn't necessarily believe it and was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and now this. I mean, two separate groups in the same test, even after one of them got caught!? That's just unbelievable. And who knows how much of it went on in the parts of the room I couldn't hear.
In all of my college career, I have only known of one instance of excessive unapproved collaboration, and it was on a bullshit assignment that was well beyond the other Java II classes so I saw it as them leveling the playing field, but I have never actually witnessed or even heard of any of the graduate students cheating during a test or quiz. I'm told that the thought process is that everyone should do well so there's nothing wrong with it; I say fuck that, this class has a god damned curve and if part of the class is ensuring they all get better grades then it's making me look bad for being honest. It's like freakin steroids in baseball.
Okay, time to go take a chill pill and get some rest. Insert standard rant disclaimer here.
Today I had a mid-term in my Automata class. The professor is Dr. Hayes, a nice old lady that is by far the most (well really only) paranoid professor when it comes to cheating. We can't wear hoods up or hats with brims forward so she can see our faces, we have to sit so that everybody has empty desks to their left and right, things like that. This, folks, is foreshadowing.
So I'd been working on the test for maybe an hour, finished most of the problems but number six had an especially tricky ending so I was doing a bit of the stare at it until you magically come up with it thing, and I heard some whispering. That in itself wasn't surprising; people ask questions of the teacher all the time during a mid-term. But when my voyuerism got the better of me and I looked to see who was asking, nobody was up there. Then I heard a little more and realized it was coming from my right. I looked over that way to see which idiot was talking to themselves and maybe shoot a glare, and realized that nobody was talking to themselves. It was two Indian students talking to each other! The eternal optimist in me waited to see what they were saying, hoping it was in English. I immediately caught "0, 1, 2, 3..." which just happened to be the top row of a prove on countability from the test.
My immediate response was to say out loud, "Oh come on," while staring right at them. Both heads whipped around, eyes wide open. A very fleeting thought of "Should I make a scene? Yea I'm gonna make a scene," went through my head and I slammed my pen down and stormed up to the front of the room. Some poor shy kid had just started asking Hayes a question; he almost had a heart attack when he saw me charging at him. She just brushed him aside and looked at me. So I said to her, Dr. Hayes, a tenured professor at Marist College, "I put up with this shit during the quizzes but this is a fucking test and I'm sick of it." As you may have guessed, she was not quite sure how to respond to that. So I just point at them, and more or less yell, "Those two, the last two in this column, they're cheating. They're talking about the test. That's bullshit." Without any further explanation, I went back to my desk and continued working on number six, fuming.
She talked to them, and from what I caught I think they tried to pass it off as talking to themselves, but it was quite clear by the way the both of them were leaning into each other that that's complete horseshit. I fully intend to follow up on this, because she's pretty forgiving with things and I don't want her to try and sweep it under the rug.
And then get this. Ten minutes later, directly to my left, TWO MORE FUCKING KIDS talking about the test. I shot a glare that one of them caught, but decided I didn't want to look like the little boy who cried wolf because nobody would believe that they were stupid enough to cheat right after I caught the other two doing it.
I mean, what the fuck? I had heard a couple of rumors about graduate students cheating before but until my previously documented experience with it in the quizzes I didn't necessarily believe it and was willing to give the benefit of the doubt and now this. I mean, two separate groups in the same test, even after one of them got caught!? That's just unbelievable. And who knows how much of it went on in the parts of the room I couldn't hear.
In all of my college career, I have only known of one instance of excessive unapproved collaboration, and it was on a bullshit assignment that was well beyond the other Java II classes so I saw it as them leveling the playing field, but I have never actually witnessed or even heard of any of the graduate students cheating during a test or quiz. I'm told that the thought process is that everyone should do well so there's nothing wrong with it; I say fuck that, this class has a god damned curve and if part of the class is ensuring they all get better grades then it's making me look bad for being honest. It's like freakin steroids in baseball.
Okay, time to go take a chill pill and get some rest. Insert standard rant disclaimer here.
posted by SomeJerk at 12:06 AM
2 Comments:
I don't remember what #6 was, but there was a few tricky ones. I definately heard more than whispering right before you got up to tell the professor. I would have done it in a more subtle way than that, but that's why there are people like Jay in the world haha.
I love that you yell at people in the middle of class. They totally deserve it. People trying to justify cheating are completely full of shit. Collaboration on assigments is different, but talking during an exam has absolutely no valid reasoning behind it.
-Josh
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