Who are the Picassos of this art? Here are some tricks they utilize that would put even Picasso himself to shame....
EDUCATION
Cheating in an exam is an art and not all students are Picassos of it. It gives the few an unfair advantage and leaves the invigilators trying to catch the miscreants.
Who are the Picassos of this art? Here are some tricks they utilize that would put even Picasso himself to shame.
Waiting for disturbance or becoming the disturbance
Disturbance is a common factor in all examination halls and a major ally of cheaters in the said examination rooms. Cheaters wait for other students to create chaos during an exam, or for the invigilator to be the disturbance – bonus points if the invigilator just does not care and is scrolling on their phone – so they can finally cheat in peace.
What if no one comes to their rescue? They wear that cape of shame and wreak havoc in the class themselves. Basically, they disturb the invigilator and the good students multiple times so that when they actually cheat and are a source of noise, no one bats an eyelid, thinking with disdain that ‘oh that clumsy student has dropped their pen again for the hundredth time today’, and voila, the cheaters carry on with the thing they’re most skilled at.
Targeting objective sections only
The unskilled cheaters are those who opt for cheating for longer answers – that is the subjective part of the exam – but the true skilled and expert cheaters are those who cheat only for objectives during an exam. They know the risks and they only take this risk for shorter questions and answers. Because they know that if they try to cheat for longer answers, they’re very much likely to get caught, and losing a few marks is better than getting the whole exam cancelled and facing the sweet, sweet shame that comes with it.
Doing some wrongs in between the rights
I deeply apologize but those who cheat are not always excellent students and if those not-so-excellent students somehow manage to write oh-so-excellent answers in their answer booklets, then the checker, who is usually their teacher, is guaranteed to be suspicious. So what those not-excellent students do is that they cheat and they write wrong answers in between the right ones. This is sure to misdirect the checker into thinking ‘they are still not studious, but they tried’.
The eraser trick
The eraser trick is used by the skilled helper students who indulge in this hobby for their cheater friends or class fellows.
All they do is write one-word answers on the erasers and throw it back or forward, whichever way the student for whom cheating is the only way to pass the exam is sitting.
The only drawback students have reported of this trick is that it can only be used for shorter, undetailed answers and they still have to use their brain to give proper answers. The misery and hardships they face is unimaginable.
Changing answers for friends
Those who help the cheaters are good students with actual functioning brains, so whenever someone begs them for an answer to a question, they keep the context the same but they spin the words around, because what they have written in their copies is mostly in their own words, not the words of their teachers.
This keeps both the cheater and the person who is complicit in this crime out of the wrath and reach of their teacher. But the consequences are dire and so the cheaters usually do not travel on this road as it is bumpy and scary and gets scarier if the invigilator catches them whispering.
All in all, cheating is an unethical and risky thing to do, but what can the poor students do when desperate times call for desperate measures? Nothing, they just cheat. No, scratch that. The exam was not really that hard; you should have studied!
Note: The student behind me has been badgering me for the past hour and a half to tell him God-knows-what and I have been ignoring him. You should too.
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Wise words
* “Cheating in school is a form of self-deception. We go to school to learn. We cheat ourselves when we coast on the efforts and scholarship of someone else.” – James E. Faust
* “When students cheat on exams, it’s because our school system values grades more than students value learning.” – Neil deGrasse Tyson
* “The more people rationalize cheating, the more it becomes a culture of dishonesty. And that can become a vicious, downward cycle. Because suddenly, if everyone else is cheating, you feel a need to cheat, too.” – Stephen Covey
* “I would prefer even to fail with honour than win by cheating.” – Sophocles
* “All good is hard. All evil is easy. Dying, losing, cheating, and mediocrity is easy. Stay away from easy.” – Scott Alexander
