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I cheated a ton in college, though I nor my classmates never thought of it as cheating, more of as taking a competitive advantage. An athlete playing a sport w
by _fat_santa 4y ago
I cheated a ton in college, though I nor my classmates never thought of it as cheating, more of as taking a competitive advantage.
An athlete playing a sport will always take a competitive advantage if they can get away with it, whether spitting on a baseball or crying out that another player fouled you so your team can get a penalty kick, you’re just taking every advantage available to you. We did essentially the same thing, just in a classroom.
Maybe when I first came to college I “wanted to learn”, but when we all started “cheating” that mentality was long gone and replaced with “I need a CS degree and I’m going to do whatever it takes to get it”.
And I’d say this “cheating” probably taught us more about the real world than those classes. It was an exercise in accomplishing a task by thinking outside the box and getting it done by whatever means necessary.
And some of the best professors I had understood this. They had one professor who gave us an exam and allowed us to use whatever tools or resources we wanted, his line was always "if you don't know it, nothing will save you".
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- listenallyall 4y agoLol cheating on academic exams or assignments is hardly "thinking outside the box," no more than kicking a guy in the nuts during a fight is outside-the-box thinking. Everybody has thought about it, everybody knows how to do it, everybody is capable of doing it, the only question is whether you have the integrity not to do it.
- haswell 4y ago> It was an exercise in accomplishing a task by thinking outside the box and getting it done by whatever means necessary This seems like a very problematic mentality to cultivate, and seems like an explanatory factor when looking at the abysmal state of ethical thinking in tech. It seems like a repackaging of “the ends justify the means”. It also highlights how twisted the notion of academic progress has become, and is a behavior that misses the forest for the trees: thinking that a superior score is in itself worth more than the cultivation of intellectual honesty and a miscalculation about how much these scores actually matter the moment one transitions to the job market. When one employs these tactics in the workplace, they become a strong signal regarding one’s integrity and ethical center.
- Nasrudith 4y agoHonesty is something everybody claims to care about yet in practice they are usually outright biased against it. They don't want to hear inconvenient truths and demand flattering lies. Hell, they are batshit insane enough to think that people who feign their desired emotions are more honest.
- comfypotato 4y agoThis is the absolute worst mentality for one of your colleagues to have. You’re not wrong that it’s reality and keeping your job has little to do with your ability to produce, but holy shit it’s miserable working with someone who thinks like this. The people who I can count on to actually pull their weight didn’t have to cheat in college because they were interested in the material and smart enough to casually do the work. Maybe I’m projecting hatred for past coworkers you don’t actually reflect, but fuck this bullshit.
- now__what 4y ago> one professor who gave us an exam and allowed us to use whatever tools or resources we wanted, his line was always "if you don't know it, nothing will save you". "Open book/resource" exams are common in some subjects and have nothing to do with "cheating." So I'm curious what you would consider "cheating."