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I am an Eagle Scout and was awarded it in 1995. As part of that process, I had to write up a detailed document outlining my project including how it was conceiv

I am an Eagle Scout and was awarded it in 1995. As part of that process, I had to write up a detailed document outlining my project including how it was conceived, the work, and the outcome. It was rejected on my initial submission because the reviewers felt I it wasn’t written by a sophomore in HS. My parents rewrote the entire thing in what they described as “baby talk” and it was then accepted. The irony is not lost on me to this day. This is nothing new; it’s been happening forever and will continue to happen, we just have a new reason to drive a race to the bottom. I hate the world we live in.

tegmark 3y ago
wow, computers writing essays that cannot be distinguished from human written essays and the ramifications of this have been going on for… ever. i dont know how to say it nicely… youre just blatantly wrong.
- sneed_chucker 3y ago
  Right. I don't know what to call it, but I'm annoyed by the near pathological need for some people to respond to every piece of news with "same as it ever was".
  - RichardCA 3y ago
    It's called "a posture of shallow cynicism" that adds nothing to the discussion.
CoastalCoder 3y ago
Sounds like that troop had bigger issues. If they don't trust an Eagle candidate's attestation of authorship, they probably shouldn't have let (or been the ones to let) the candidate progress that far.
- taylodl 3y ago
  It's not handled at the troop level. The Eagle review is at district and council level. It's common for candidates to receive "assistance" to help along the process and the review boards are on the lookout for that.
  - CoastalCoder 3y ago
    Sorry, I should have used the correct org terms. But, as the parent of an Eagle scout, I think my point still stands. Either they can, or can't, trust the Eagle to be honest. IMHO, that trust should be a necessary condition for awarding Eagle. And if the council isn't capable of making that call, then they're perhaps unqualified for deciding whether or not to award Eagle rank. (I realize my position is a bit simplistic. I paired it down for brevity.)
    - taylodl 3y ago
      Trust but verify. The Scout Law is a set of ideals to which a scout aspires. It's not assumed the Scout has achieved them.
      - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
        The main reason I am not an Eagle Scout is because I took two classes at a winter camp for merit badges, did everything from signup and turned in every bit of work, and then at the end of the class they told me they had no record of me being in it. I did all the work for every other part of that award, but I flat out refused to redo those badges again. I've never jumped through hoops to make up for the failures of lazy leadership, and I never will.
        floren 3y ago
        Well, you're an Eagle Scout in everything but name, and honestly that might be better -- you get the personal satisfaction, but you don't do the thing all of us find extremely tedious about Eagle Scouts, which is constantly mentioning (in your 40s) how you're an Eagle Scout.
ugh123 3y ago
I think whats new now is profs and teachers can just turn to a program to "reject at scale" rather than even reading it themselves.
jancsika 3y ago
> This is nothing new; it’s been happening forever and will continue to happen, we just have a new reason to drive a race to the bottom. The joke about the pinewood derby was that you could always tell the one kid who actually built his own car (which was the whole point, after all). Because every other car had been carefully engineered, carved, machined, sanded, painted, lacquered, and weighted by a dad. Sounds like you had the honor of being in the only scout troupe that at least tried to keep this kind of thing from happening. And your singular false positive seems to have somehow projected itself onto the world.
- Brian_K_White 3y ago
  If the point of pinewood derby is not to at least provide an opportunity (not necessity) for kids and parents to work on a project together, I don't know what is.
- euroderf 3y ago
  Hah, mine was a rough-looking klunker that got eliminated pretty early. But I wasn't there for competition, I was there for participation.
oceanghost 3y ago
I had a similar experience in the 5th grade. We had a creative writing assignment (write x many pages), and I wrote a short story about "space spiders" that spun giant webs between planets and moons to catch something. I can't recall. The only thing more mundane and unimaginative than that two pages was my teacher, who accused me of plagiarizing it.
- em-bee 3y ago
  and i bet the teacher could not tell you which story you were supposed to have this plagiarized from. in a way it's a compliment that your teacher thought the story was so good, that they didn't believe it was your own. i have had this happen in sports. i was not very sportive and tended to pick easier activities when there was a choice. there was this school sports day where the whole school was doing activities outside, and one of those activities was running for half an hour, one hour or two hours. usually i'd pick the half hour to be done with it, but this one day, my brother, a few friends and me decided to run in a group and do the two hours. doing things in a group can be a lot easier as everyone encouraged each other. we also didn't race but it was a relaxed slow jog. at the end we would get a pass indicating that we had completed the activity. when i showed that to my teacher, he didn't believe me. there was no consequence of that, but if necessary i would have had three witnesses. in hindsight the disappointment was that the teacher did not understand or recognize my capacity. i don't think he knew that i had been biking for hundreds or even thousands of km during school holidays.
neilv 3y ago
> I am an Eagle Scout [...] I hate the world we live in. Isn't there a merit badge or something in Optimistic Can-Do American Spirit? :) > My parents rewrote the entire thing in what they described as “baby talk” and it was then accepted. The irony is not lost on me to this day. If you could do it over, would you let yourself be pressured into ironically submitting something that your parents wrote? Also, do you think whomever rejected your initial writeup did so because they didn't think you did it yourself? Or more like they thought you did it, but they wanted a more stereotypical youth style, maybe because they thought it was more the intent of the exercise? Or maybe for optics reasons, so that it looked like the image people have of a Scout, when upper officials and donors read it?
Delk 3y ago
Not really related, but... In my country's equivalent to the UK sixth form or later US high school years (ages ~16 to ~18), I once forgot an English as a foreign language essay assignment until late in the evening before the deadline. Being a somewhat lazy and absent-minded teenager, by then I had also completely forgotten what exactly the assignment was or what I was supposed to be writing about. So I wrote some kind of a bleeding heart piece about the prevalence of violence and war in the world or whatnot. I was quite pleased with it. Of course it was probably naive teenager stuff, exactly the kind you'd think is pretty smart when you're in high school, but I felt good about it at the time. I also felt the English was pretty good, which of course was the point of the assignment. And I pulled it off in some kind of a flow state I conjured up at the last moment. The teacher didn't think I had written it. She asked me if I had got the text from some IT firm or something. (This was around the dotcom boom, and I probably seemed like an obvious nerd. Those local dotcom firms had the image of being at the forefront of internationalization and anglicization. I still don't know why she'd think IT firms would make a point of writing high school English essays for nerds.) It was my mistake, of course, and I understand her suspicion because I turned in something that didn't conform to the specific assignment at all. It's different than submitting work that is actually what was asked for and being rejected for doing it too well. But I did honestly feel a bit bitter about it nevertheless. And possibly a little proud.

tegmark 3y ago

wow, computers writing essays that cannot be distinguished from human written essays and the ramifications of this have been going on for… ever. i dont know how to say it nicely… youre just blatantly wrong.

sneed_chucker 3y ago
Right. I don't know what to call it, but I'm annoyed by the near pathological need for some people to respond to every piece of news with "same as it ever was".
- RichardCA 3y ago
  It's called "a posture of shallow cynicism" that adds nothing to the discussion.

CoastalCoder 3y ago

Sounds like that troop had bigger issues. If they don't trust an Eagle candidate's attestation of authorship, they probably shouldn't have let (or been the ones to let) the candidate progress that far.

taylodl 3y ago
It's not handled at the troop level. The Eagle review is at district and council level. It's common for candidates to receive "assistance" to help along the process and the review boards are on the lookout for that.
- CoastalCoder 3y ago
  Sorry, I should have used the correct org terms. But, as the parent of an Eagle scout, I think my point still stands. Either they can, or can't, trust the Eagle to be honest. IMHO, that trust should be a necessary condition for awarding Eagle. And if the council isn't capable of making that call, then they're perhaps unqualified for deciding whether or not to award Eagle rank. (I realize my position is a bit simplistic. I paired it down for brevity.)
  - taylodl 3y ago
    Trust but verify. The Scout Law is a set of ideals to which a scout aspires. It's not assumed the Scout has achieved them.
    - MisterBastahrd 3y ago
      The main reason I am not an Eagle Scout is because I took two classes at a winter camp for merit badges, did everything from signup and turned in every bit of work, and then at the end of the class they told me they had no record of me being in it. I did all the work for every other part of that award, but I flat out refused to redo those badges again. I've never jumped through hoops to make up for the failures of lazy leadership, and I never will.
      - floren 3y ago
        Well, you're an Eagle Scout in everything but name, and honestly that might be better -- you get the personal satisfaction, but you don't do the thing all of us find extremely tedious about Eagle Scouts, which is constantly mentioning (in your 40s) how you're an Eagle Scout.

ugh123 3y ago

I think whats new now is profs and teachers can just turn to a program to "reject at scale" rather than even reading it themselves.

jancsika 3y ago

> This is nothing new; it’s been happening forever and will continue to happen, we just have a new reason to drive a race to the bottom. The joke about the pinewood derby was that you could always tell the one kid who actually built his own car (which was the whole point, after all). Because every other car had been carefully engineered, carved, machined, sanded, painted, lacquered, and weighted by a dad. Sounds like you had the honor of being in the only scout troupe that at least tried to keep this kind of thing from happening. And your singular false positive seems to have somehow projected itself onto the world.

Brian_K_White 3y ago
If the point of pinewood derby is not to at least provide an opportunity (not necessity) for kids and parents to work on a project together, I don't know what is.
euroderf 3y ago
Hah, mine was a rough-looking klunker that got eliminated pretty early. But I wasn't there for competition, I was there for participation.

oceanghost 3y ago

I had a similar experience in the 5th grade. We had a creative writing assignment (write x many pages), and I wrote a short story about "space spiders" that spun giant webs between planets and moons to catch something. I can't recall. The only thing more mundane and unimaginative than that two pages was my teacher, who accused me of plagiarizing it.

em-bee 3y ago
and i bet the teacher could not tell you which story you were supposed to have this plagiarized from. in a way it's a compliment that your teacher thought the story was so good, that they didn't believe it was your own. i have had this happen in sports. i was not very sportive and tended to pick easier activities when there was a choice. there was this school sports day where the whole school was doing activities outside, and one of those activities was running for half an hour, one hour or two hours. usually i'd pick the half hour to be done with it, but this one day, my brother, a few friends and me decided to run in a group and do the two hours. doing things in a group can be a lot easier as everyone encouraged each other. we also didn't race but it was a relaxed slow jog. at the end we would get a pass indicating that we had completed the activity. when i showed that to my teacher, he didn't believe me. there was no consequence of that, but if necessary i would have had three witnesses. in hindsight the disappointment was that the teacher did not understand or recognize my capacity. i don't think he knew that i had been biking for hundreds or even thousands of km during school holidays.

neilv 3y ago

> I am an Eagle Scout [...] I hate the world we live in. Isn't there a merit badge or something in Optimistic Can-Do American Spirit? :) > My parents rewrote the entire thing in what they described as “baby talk” and it was then accepted. The irony is not lost on me to this day. If you could do it over, would you let yourself be pressured into ironically submitting something that your parents wrote? Also, do you think whomever rejected your initial writeup did so because they didn't think you did it yourself? Or more like they thought you did it, but they wanted a more stereotypical youth style, maybe because they thought it was more the intent of the exercise? Or maybe for optics reasons, so that it looked like the image people have of a Scout, when upper officials and donors read it?

Delk 3y ago

Not really related, but... In my country's equivalent to the UK sixth form or later US high school years (ages ~16 to ~18), I once forgot an English as a foreign language essay assignment until late in the evening before the deadline. Being a somewhat lazy and absent-minded teenager, by then I had also completely forgotten what exactly the assignment was or what I was supposed to be writing about. So I wrote some kind of a bleeding heart piece about the prevalence of violence and war in the world or whatnot. I was quite pleased with it. Of course it was probably naive teenager stuff, exactly the kind you'd think is pretty smart when you're in high school, but I felt good about it at the time. I also felt the English was pretty good, which of course was the point of the assignment. And I pulled it off in some kind of a flow state I conjured up at the last moment. The teacher didn't think I had written it. She asked me if I had got the text from some IT firm or something. (This was around the dotcom boom, and I probably seemed like an obvious nerd. Those local dotcom firms had the image of being at the forefront of internationalization and anglicization. I still don't know why she'd think IT firms would make a point of writing high school English essays for nerds.) It was my mistake, of course, and I understand her suspicion because I turned in something that didn't conform to the specific assignment at all. It's different than submitting work that is actually what was asked for and being rejected for doing it too well. But I did honestly feel a bit bitter about it nevertheless. And possibly a little proud.