Academic Cheating and Social Relationships

spoon_1
Mon, 24 Apr 2006 16:12:28 +0000

I want to point out a few things:

competition is generally discouraged at Caltech, and there really isn’t any pressure to do better than other people or something like that, so there is less reason for cheating

if you don’t finish an exam on time, you can always draw a line on the exam, continue working below that line (now without any time limit pressure), and indicate on the exam that the work below the line was done after time was up. In most classes profs will give at least partial, if not full, credit for that work

some exams don’t even have a time limit (in my opinion the point of exams anyhow is to test what you know or what you can figure out and not how well you can perform under time pressure)

even if you do something stupid like look at the first problem, not know how to do it, and fall asleep, you can also indicate that on the exam; they will understand and at worst you won’t receive credit for that problem

if you can’t find time to study for or take an exam because you are sick or having other problems, you can often get an extension

as a last resort, if you do poorly on a midterm exam, you can always drop the class or (if it’s not a required class) take it pass/fail, since Drop Day is two-thirds of the way into the term, and you are guaranteed to get your midterm results back before then

remember that students want to uphold the Honor System because in exchange they get freedoms like the ability to take exams in any place or time of their choosing (people sometimes do exams on roofs, in the tunnels, while playing Starcraft, while eating, etc.), and more importantly, they get people to trust the honesty of their work