Sunday, March 20, 2005

This is probably not all that surprising to some, but Sydney uni students have been caught cheating. Felix downplays it by saying it's the typical reaction of a confused student who doesn't add a footnote/reference, but I don't think this is the case on average. Most of the time, I think copying is quite intentional, at least in the first two years. I remember lunch-breaks where there was a whole table of students sharing around an assignment due on the day. Funnier still is a time when a complete stranger asked a friend for his assignment so that she could refer to it when writing out the solution. There'll be no moralizing from me here; I really don't see myself as above any of these people.

Admittedly, when I first saw the headline, for some inexplicable reason I was worried that I was going to be questioned, in fear that one of those hazy nights of collaboration unknowingly went too far. In part, I am also reminded of the strange incident where someone who shares my name (imagine that!) was caught copying an assignment which I also did. My friend, unaware of this namesake, anxiously asked me whether I had done anything wrong, and I replied "Err I don't think so!". It turned out that my namesake had quite freely copied someone else's assignment, and was harshly questioned by the lecturer. Yet to this day I am wary whenever the subject comes up!

4 comments:

Jenny said...

There'll be no moralizing from me here; I really don't see myself as above any of these people

you see yourself cheating? :( I don't think you'd be below others if you did but I think your actions would be below actions which didn't involve cheating.

since I thought I'd be going to unsw until the beginning of 2004, I don't particularly feel very close to usyd, but even so I'm kinda disappointed that people would scrabble for marks, and like _that_

*grumps off into the distance*

Anonymous said...

No Jenny, he meant that he lets a lot of people copy off HIM (like me).

I can't say I've never cheated. Good to hear that people got caught cheating on Saurabh Singh studies.

Gareth

Jenny said...

oh o.o

oh piffle.

AKM said...

"you see yourself cheating? :("

I sure hope not! All I meant was just that I didn't feel like I could judge these people. I disapprove of copying, of course, which is why I don't do it, but I didn't want to start lecturing about how immoral I think it is. In part because I am not sure how collaboration is looked upon from a moral standpoint. By-and-large when I collaborate I try to understand the method someone else suggests before writing it down for the assignment. But I don't know whether it's "just" that I be awarded for merely appropriating someone else's bright idea. So, I don't think I should be placing judgement on others in these matters :)

As for you, Mr. Gazza, the only time you copied off me was in Linear Algebra, and the only reason you had to copy was because you missed a couple of lectures, and so you didn't know that we had to use some tricks.