h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

My college paper is doing a special section on exams, and among other things, I have been assigned to write a section on strange stories of people who cheat, and I was wondering if anyone on h2g2 has heard and hilarious/interesting/bizarre stories about people trying to cheat in exams.

By the way, the article will not be encouraging people to cheat, it will be more an expo of the lengths some people go to to avoid studying.

Hmmm, not *exactly* a cheating story, but there was a guy a few years who was, I think, about 28 and went back to the school he went to as a teen. None of the teachers noticed that they had taught him before! Can't remember how he got rumbled.

Some people who go to a girls school a friend of mine works at wrote answers on their thighs thinking the teachers would never ask them to lift their skirts. Someone do-gooder leaked it and boy were they surprised when they were

At my school, there was a group of girls who wrote cheat sheets and attached them to elastic bands which they then sewed into their knickers. They never got caught. Mind you, I went for the 20 year reunion and I am now SO glad I didn't

For the effort, energy and stress of cheating, you might as well study!

In one Geography exam a girl was sitting in front of me and kept wiping her nose on a tissue.. she had written prompters. It didn't work for her.. she ended up with ink all over her face.

But being longsighted, I did very well. Thank you very much!

I cheated at school in every subject. I used a little-known technique called "remembering stuff I'd heard in class rooms". it worked pretty well, and I never got rumbled!

RF

1) Does guessing count as cheating? I once completely failed to read a forty-two (coincidence?) page section of a book written by some philosopher I'd never heard of, only to get a perfect score on the ensuing pop-quiz.

2) Although it wasn't on an exam, I once had an assignment where I had to interview someone who was born in another country. After realizing that the interview was due the next day (when I had yet to decide who to interview) I made up one Justin Baker from Toronto, Canada, wrote down his "answers", finished the rest of the assignment, and got an "A".

I also used the tried-and-true method of simply remembering things from class, partially because I could, but mostly because I can't stand writing things down. Far too much work...

A girl in my class was pulled out of a chemistry exam because she'd written a table of valencies on her thigh. Oops. Having said that, she did go on to get a PhD, although not in chemistry.

In the same exam, my table of valencies cheat sheet was rolled up on a piece of paper inside my biro... and written on a piece of paper blu-tacked to the inside of the battery compartment of my calculator... and written on the inside of a plaster wrapped round my thumb, which was actually really cut, although not that badly.

The odd thing was, however, that because of the amount of time I'd spent writing out these cheat sheets in tiny, tiny writing, very, very carefully, they were imprinted on my memory, so I didn't need them. I got 94% in that exam...

SoRB

I got caught cheating in a french speaking exam once. The teacher clocked the word "bonjour" written on my hand in an inverted mirror image, like the word ambulance gets written on the front of ambulances.

You didn't even know the word for hello? The first word you learn?

sprout

Come to think of it, some students from out our school took their exam for maths with their board in our hall. It was non calculator but they bought a calculator in and werent questions. It was only after when someone dobbed the person in that they got caught.

it seems to me that, in many cases here, it was peoples 'friends' that were cheating... i'm not saying anything...

i used to write multiple essay plans in much abbreviated form (a single word/letter for each paragraph) on my arms and wore unusually long sleeves - a small problem in the old hall or oven where all exams were taken.

i was never caught but, as someone else already said, the process of writing it all on my arms helped me more than looking at them ever did. although after exam season my arms were pretty sore from having to scrub all the ink off...

The good old 'write some prompts on the inside of a sweatie wrapper and then put the sweatie back in the packet and remember which sweatie goes with each topic' never fails unless you give a sweatie to your moderators!!!

You could of course cheat yourself and get all the stories etc off the internet i.e.

http://teachopolis.org/justice/cheating/cheating_how_to.htm

Well, the deadline was yesterday so that site is no use to me, but the stories thus posted have been useful. Still, this is a cool discussion, so let's keep it up.

You could cheat by attempting to get a bunch of strangers on the internet to write your assignment for you by starting a thread in Askh2g2...

I think somebody tried to do that before and Hoo dealth with them firmly but very funnily.

Apparently inventing a fantasy language and script worked for Richard Garriot (who went on to create the computer Ultima games):

'[T]he language he was creating was nearly complete--in fact, he had tested it in classrooms throughout the year, writing cheat-sheets for himself in his runic script all over notebooks and desktops and using them under the uncomprehending eyes of his teachers during tests.' ('Dungeons and Dreamers', p. 25)