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I strongly suspect this story is nonsense. 1. It seems unlikely that all the students were conspiring except one. Why leave one student - and exactly one - out

I strongly suspect this story is nonsense. 1. It seems unlikely that all the students were conspiring except one. Why leave one student - and exactly one - out? Was s/he incredibly unpopular? Did s/he have minimal contact with the others? I suppose it's possible, but it's also quite strange. 2. It seems unlikely the students didn't understand that if the schedule was random there was a non-zero chance of non-cheating Student 1 doing the admin. 3. It's more likely the schedule was posted ahead of time. Given that, it seems unlikely that anyone would be surprised or flustered when the schedule went as scheduled and the alleged plan failed. 4. It seems very unlikely that the keys would literally be chosen out of a hat. IME of these kinds of exams there's no need for randomness. Students tend to be asked for the less familiar keys because they're less likely to know them well. If someone gets C major and someone else gets Gb major for random reasons it's really not much of a fair test. 5. It seems quite unlikely that a student would be asked to hang around and do admin for an entire day - especially when the admin is essentially trivial anyway. 6. It seems unlikely that anyone who could play the short and long pieces well would be completely put off by being asked to play a scale they hadn't practiced. 7. It seems unlikely that a student would literally say "Oh we didn't practice because we wanted to spend our time partying and dating." That sounds like something someone would say about students, not something students would say about themselves. (This isn't about whether it's true, but whether someone that age would use those words.) To be clear: this isn't about defending cheating. I just find don't this story very plausible. Also, the irony that this article about cheating may be somewhat elaborated isn't lost on me.

bentcorner 4y ago
Additionally, by the time you're an undergraduate you should be able to play any scale and arpeggio smoothly without hesitation. I'm an idiot and played for about 8 years and really, scales and arpeggios are not that difficult. For someone who aspires for a teaching degree these should be cake and you should not be getting flustered by these at all. Programming equivalent would be something like needing to write a syntactically correct for loop in a random language pulled out of a hat. A basic exercise with some challenge but simple to do if you have put any practice in it.
- rukuu001 4y ago
  Standard warmup - scales and arpeggios round the circle major n minor. 15 mins.
  - dmoy 4y ago
    Yea this was standard warmup for me two years into high school (not piano, but still it's common warmup). I never even went in to music on undergrad. Everyone I knew who went into music for undergrad could play arpeggio in their sleep in any key, and most of them could do it on the piano too even when that wasn't their instrument. Maybe what happened is that was a class of all non pianists who were dragging their feet learning piano? Idk
- 867-5309 4y ago
  that would be like pulling a random instrument out of a hat!
  - bentcorner 4y ago
    Haha, fair enough. How about - typing out a "hello world" program using a keyboard layout pulled out of a hat :)
  - thdespou 4y ago
    What about solve this random leetcode problem for me...
- fraud 4y ago
  You’d be surprised. Currently taking a minor in music and there are several students taking these classes with me who don’t know how major and minor chords are constructed/are learning for the first time now. I’ve personally noticed it a lot with the classically trained people in my jazz ensemble. Granted I don’t expect them to understand non diatonic harmony/modal stuff right away, but you’d think that they would at least know the basics. Most high school “musicians” are simply doing it for college applications or due to parental pressure. Played in a band in HS and had a few “all state” musicians play with us. They were completely useless. Explaining to them that we were playing a song in a different key/ having them transpose something was a nightmare. Even the jazz band kids could really only play in 2 keys without completely losing form. There’s a lot of posturing in music especially academically from my experience.
mrehler 4y ago
> 4. It seems very unlikely that the keys would literally be chosen out of a hat. IME of these kinds of exams there's no need for randomness. Students tend to be asked for the less familiar keys because they're less likely to know them well. If someone gets C major and someone else gets Gb major for random reasons it's really not much of a fair test. Music teacher – the scale portion of our state's band All-State auditions are one by choice, two by random draw (for a total of 3).
- smelendez 4y ago
  It makes sense in a way. If you preannounce the scales, people will (theoretically) only practice those. If you have the same for everyone and don’t preannounce, the scales will leak during the day and the later students will have extra practice/memorization time.
stefanpie 4y ago
To point 1, many classes I’ve been in (undergrad and grad) have study groups form at the beginning of the semester where I decide I’m just gonna go though the class solo. In that case, it’s fully conceivable for a subset (or almost all of the student in smaller class) to work together and study in a productive way or conspire together in an unproductive way.
zamnos 4y ago
Wait, the number one reason you think is story is apocryphal is you've never been ostracized from a group before? Wow, have we had different life experiences. I was frequently ostracized exactly like that in my youth. This drove me to spend inordinate amount of time with computers, and lead to a career in the industry, and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who had that experience. For someone to say "I suppose it's possible" is just so alien, are you sure you didn't write that whole thing just to brag about how you've got friends to the social outcasts? Because that's horrible, if you did, so I sincerely hope not, because it brought up a lot of painful moments of my youth that I'd forgotten.

bentcorner 4y ago

Additionally, by the time you're an undergraduate you should be able to play any scale and arpeggio smoothly without hesitation. I'm an idiot and played for about 8 years and really, scales and arpeggios are not that difficult. For someone who aspires for a teaching degree these should be cake and you should not be getting flustered by these at all. Programming equivalent would be something like needing to write a syntactically correct for loop in a random language pulled out of a hat. A basic exercise with some challenge but simple to do if you have put any practice in it.

rukuu001 4y ago
Standard warmup - scales and arpeggios round the circle major n minor. 15 mins.
- dmoy 4y ago
  Yea this was standard warmup for me two years into high school (not piano, but still it's common warmup). I never even went in to music on undergrad. Everyone I knew who went into music for undergrad could play arpeggio in their sleep in any key, and most of them could do it on the piano too even when that wasn't their instrument. Maybe what happened is that was a class of all non pianists who were dragging their feet learning piano? Idk
867-5309 4y ago
that would be like pulling a random instrument out of a hat!
- bentcorner 4y ago
  Haha, fair enough. How about - typing out a "hello world" program using a keyboard layout pulled out of a hat :)
- thdespou 4y ago
  What about solve this random leetcode problem for me...
fraud 4y ago
You’d be surprised. Currently taking a minor in music and there are several students taking these classes with me who don’t know how major and minor chords are constructed/are learning for the first time now. I’ve personally noticed it a lot with the classically trained people in my jazz ensemble. Granted I don’t expect them to understand non diatonic harmony/modal stuff right away, but you’d think that they would at least know the basics. Most high school “musicians” are simply doing it for college applications or due to parental pressure. Played in a band in HS and had a few “all state” musicians play with us. They were completely useless. Explaining to them that we were playing a song in a different key/ having them transpose something was a nightmare. Even the jazz band kids could really only play in 2 keys without completely losing form. There’s a lot of posturing in music especially academically from my experience.

mrehler 4y ago

> 4. It seems very unlikely that the keys would literally be chosen out of a hat. IME of these kinds of exams there's no need for randomness. Students tend to be asked for the less familiar keys because they're less likely to know them well. If someone gets C major and someone else gets Gb major for random reasons it's really not much of a fair test. Music teacher – the scale portion of our state's band All-State auditions are one by choice, two by random draw (for a total of 3).

smelendez 4y ago
It makes sense in a way. If you preannounce the scales, people will (theoretically) only practice those. If you have the same for everyone and don’t preannounce, the scales will leak during the day and the later students will have extra practice/memorization time.

stefanpie 4y ago

To point 1, many classes I’ve been in (undergrad and grad) have study groups form at the beginning of the semester where I decide I’m just gonna go though the class solo. In that case, it’s fully conceivable for a subset (or almost all of the student in smaller class) to work together and study in a productive way or conspire together in an unproductive way.

zamnos 4y ago

Wait, the number one reason you think is story is apocryphal is you've never been ostracized from a group before? Wow, have we had different life experiences. I was frequently ostracized exactly like that in my youth. This drove me to spend inordinate amount of time with computers, and lead to a career in the industry, and I'm sure I'm not the only one here who had that experience. For someone to say "I suppose it's possible" is just so alien, are you sure you didn't write that whole thing just to brag about how you've got friends to the social outcasts? Because that's horrible, if you did, so I sincerely hope not, because it brought up a lot of painful moments of my youth that I'd forgotten.