MEGA - Studying, Exams, Stress, and coping with them

^
Probably the only person on the board who I didn't want reading that.

Dammit.
 
^^^ *tackle hugs* you know i think the world of you
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In one exam me and a good friend had he wore a "cheat hat". He got a black baseball cap with white stiching underneath and wrote an absolute shitload of notes straight onto the white stitching in black pen.

When he needed to look at it he'd take off his hat and stretch or yawn or something and have a look. Making the cheat hat was the only 'study' he did for the whole unit and he passed.

He still has the hat and it has gone down in history as a sort of urban myth in certain circles at my uni. When he goes out to the uni bars people still ask him about it and it was 3 years ago.

As far as my code of honour goes, I never cheat and couldn't care less if others do as long as it doesn't affect my grade (i.e. through bell-curving).

I think cheating at uni is pretty bloody stupid. In the case of Kyk, for 5% he is risking at best failing the whole unit, at worse being expelled, plus having academic misconduct on your record for life. It's not worth it IMO.
 
fizzygirl said:
What shahab6 is referring to is a common problem in a lot of schools, at least in the states. In my school it's done, at least in part, by the frats and sororities and other large non-academic organizations. Basically, someone keeps a copy of the test when they're done with it, and they put it on file for everyone else to look at. Because of this we've stopped giving exams back, you have to come to the office to look at grades. We also change exams every semester. A lot of instructors (myself included) also make possession of the exam a violation of the honor code -- which means you can kick the student out of your class or fail them if you find out they took the exam out of class.

If academics can't be bothered setting a new test every session, they're lazy.

My uni offers all the previous tests for download online! What better a way to understand the subject that by doing practice questions. Even though the exam changes from year to year, often quite significantly, if you can do previous problems you're in better stead to attempt the ones that count for your marks.

How else can you expect students to study for an exam other than studying questions? By expecting them to make some huge leap from abstract theory to practical application on the day, with little to no prior experience?
 
^ Good point, I didn't realise thats what was going on. Fizzygirl, you mean to say that in a lot of places in the US they sit the same exam and/or tests every year? WTF?! In preparation for my end of year exams I have supervisions with the lecturers to specifically go over the previous few years of exam papers! Thats how you get a feel for the kind of questions expected to come up (*mumbles something about the bastard who wrote last years Complex Methods questions*).

What on earth do people in the US practive their revised work with?!
 
VelocideX & AlphaNumeric....I would say MOST teachers switch to a new exam, but I'm sure not all of them do. They either have so much faith in their students, or something that they just don't see it as a problem.

It depends on the area, though, just how helpful that ends up being. If you're looking at it from a math standpoint, then yes, there isn't too much problem in making a new question to understand the same concept. However, in some other fields, you're asking about basic definitions, or creators of theories, and there's only so many ways you can turn those questions around. In my area we have a test bank for the text (all 12 sections of intro use the same text) and we all pull our tests from that. We *can* create our own questions, but there really are only so many ways to ask students what 'perception' is, or to have them pick out the example of 'short-term memory' from the examples listed. I think it becomes different when you move to upper level classes where a lot of the information is more applied than factual.
 
At UC Davis you get access to past exams most of the time. Teachers don't give out the same exam twice and soemtimes the test can change a LOT so you don't just study the past tests but everything else as well.

There is also a "no hat" policy for the poster who used that idea.

Despite all of that, there is still a ton of cheating at UCD which I found rediculous, but oh well. Atleast I earned my paper.
 
It's possible to bribe university lecturers. It's not like they are puppets working for Edexcel or OCR.

Trust me on this one ;)
 
^^
you'd have to have serious balls to walk up to a lecturer with a brown paper bag full of cash and ask for an A!

either that or be 100% positive that the lecturer wanted to fuck you.
 
^ My dad's a lecturer and would fail anyone who did that instantly.
 
I reckon if someone tried to pull that on my campus not only would they fail, they'd be kicked out of the uni and turned over to the police!
 
ebola! said:
fuck your teacher.

haha, i saw my teacher at a strip club the other night and one of his students was a dancer there giving him a lap dance... thought that was pretty funny.
 
I don't cheat. I've always considered cheating to be for stupid people. I'm not stupid so I just learn and remember what I need to know.

However I am lazy and have been known to write a really good and versatile research paper or essay and turn it in for multiple different courses. It's not plagurism or anything and I don't consider it cheating, but I don't consider it entirely honest either.
 
i remember bringining in some notes to a high school exam, and i still got the answers wrong! -

We're doing a business simulation in our TAFE class, and i told my group that we can cheat by checking what the other groups have inputed on the computer so we can adjust ours to beat them.. but they were too scared... so i did it myself... infront of the whole class.....
 
I have cheated multiple times on papers. In fact not one of my essays ideas were my own throughout highschool. I was a lazy bastard and it ended up hurting me in the end because I was learning what I needed to. But come on those "plagarism" programs are bullshit, all of my teachers have used them and none of them have ever caught me. All you have to do is copy ideas but not cut and paste. Anyways, what are you looking to cheat on? Math, almost everyone 99% of the folks in my highschool put formulas and other things no their calculator, for anything else use a computer printer to print TINY TINY TINY letters on sheets of paper and bring those in, you can tape them to your arm and wear long sleaves or on you legs or just put them on your test when you get in. Especially in large classes with a teacher that doesn't walk around, just sit in the back.

Oh, and I hate people who turn in people on general testing. I could understand for say the SAT or some other sort of test that judges you in comparrison to others but on most tests the only person it really hurts is the cheater.
 
I'm so surprised to see that nobody cheats on exams.:)Me and all of my friends are BIG cheaters.The most used technic is to switch the photo on your student book, if you have such I am not sure what's the practice in your countries but in mine every student have a student book with a photo fixed with a glue on it.So you can switch the photo and send somebody else which will pass the exam to take it for you(u should make a stamp for the photo too but this is pretty easy).You will pay for this of course, here the normal rate for 1 exam is about 25~50Euro.This is very usable if the teachers don't know your face&name :).Another thing which is used in universities here is to pay cash to the teacher for the exam and then you are 100% sure that you will pass.It cost about 50~200Euro depending on the exam and the teacher.The third technic which was used by my rootmate yeasterday is to take your cellphone with handsfree and somebody to dictate you the answers.My roommate has his final exam in uni I don't know how u call it but it has an 6 (we are on 2 to 6 system) which is an A in USA I think.There are some other technics but I'm too lazy :) right now.
 
babariba said:
So you can switch the photo and send somebody else which will pass the exam to take it for you
We don't have to show ID, its just walk in, sit down and do it, but given the whole year sits the exam at the same time, it'd be hard to send a friend in, and noone (and I mean noone) in the years above would sit your exams for you.
babariba said:
Another thing which is used in universities here is to pay cash to the teacher for the exam and then you are 100% sure that you will pass.
Any lecturer who does that should be fired, no ifs, no buts. Utterly pointless them giving the course if they have morals like that when it comes to the exams. As I said, someone tried that on my dad, they'd suddenly find themselves repeating the year, or just chucked out.
babariba said:
The third technic which was used by my rootmate yeasterday is to take your cellphone with handsfree and somebody to dictate you the answers.
Unless you are sitting very simple exams, which do not require a lot of writing and thinking on your own part, that'd be very hard to do. Again, I imagine I'd find it impossible to find someone in my uni who would do that for anyone, even their best friends.

You are only making it worse for yourself if you cheat in exams, since come the next year you'll be worse off and need to rely more and more on cheating, creating a downward spiral. Once you get out of uni/college and into a job people will rapidly realise you have no idea, and you won't get far with that.

Personally, if no cheating means I came out with a 2-1 rather than a 1st, I'd take the 2-1. Why? Because I'd know. With my 2-1 I'd be able to say "Thats my 2-1, I earned it. Sure it isn't top, but its my ability". Coming out with a 1st by cheating would be stupid as I explained in the paragraph above, and because I'd never know how good I was.

If the exam is pointless, and you never plan to continue with that topic, take it like a man and fail (even if you're female, take it like a man!). If the exam is important, then work for it! If you can't be bothered to put in enough work by the time you get to university, you have no right being there IMO.
 
I think, actually, that grades should be abolished. :)
That would make cheating rather silly, wouldn't it?

ebola
 
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