School's out for the summer!

Yes, it's true, last week I finished my summer class; now, three whole weeks of vacation!

The only truly distasteful part of the final exam was the unfortunate fact that two people cheated on it.

I am disappointed in my classmates, and more than a little angry about it. Talk about the most basic issue of fairness!

To make it worse, cheating on this exam probably required more work than just taking it for real; what's the upside in cheating if you have to do *more* work than you otherwise would?!

The exam was a blue book essay exam; the professor gave a series of questions out to the class in advance, saying that some of them would be on the final, and others wouldn't. Of course, these two guys just wrote their blue books in advance with the material handed out in advance, then switched their blue books out from blank ones to completed ones when the exam began.

Not terribly difficult to do, unfortunately, especially because the professor left for ONE HOUR in the middle of the testing period to go back to his house and get the teacher evaluation forms, which he had forgotten. This made one cheater so brazen that he turned in his test in just 15 minutes. I thought it was odd at the time, and even thought to myself, "How could that guy finish so fast? He was never even in class*..." before hurrying back to my own work.

*This is actually true; he probably only made it to 75% of the lectures, and we only met once a week. When he was there, he zoned through the entire thing.

What's so ridiculous is that it must've taken these guys hours upon hours to research and write up the answers to the exam questions in advance. They probably rechecked their facts a couple of times, and did altogether too much work for a final like this.

I, on the other hand, spent all of 1 hour on a Saturday reviewing my notes with a couple of people, and walked in to the exam cold. Somehow I managed to do just fine on it; if the point of cheating is to avoid the work of learning the information, then they really lost out, because they easily spent twice the amount of time that I did on it.

Over drinks afterwards, some classmates and I got pretty riled up over the whole thing, and decided to report this back to the professor. Not because we're tattletales, or teachers pets, but because I don't want someone like that in my next class in this program, and I certainly don't want them getting the same degree as me.

I mean, let's face it: the coursework for my program just really isn't *that* hard...it's stimulating, sometimes challenging, but it's not overwhelmingly difficult. There's not even any math in the degree course (as if that could be the worst thing)!

So, one of my friends reported back to the teacher, who had his own suspicions on these two "perfect" tests, and was grateful to know for sure. He said he would, "give them low grades to reflect this."

Ex-squeeze me?!?

A low grade? (Which, he told us in the first week, was a B-!!!)

Boy, for all the talk of academic integrity, honor code, and the importance of citing sources that every teacher gives you at the beginning of their class (which is further underscored by the academic integrity oath that you have to SIGN when you enroll), I am just sick that these cheaters are still going to PASS THE CLASS!

I mean, they threaten to kick you out for cheating. I am serious! In my first semester, one professor said, "we had to make two people leave the program last semester for violation of academic integrity."

I guess an expulsion-worthy violation must be more like cheating on an exam by taking a completed exam, crossing out the existing name, and WRITING YOURS IN, or something equally dubious and idiotic.