Have you ever thought about how all teachers can be divided into those who allow cheating and those who do not?
Once, I genuinely believed that a teacher couldn't see the nervous hands wandering under the desk, couldn't hear the rustling of prepared cheat sheets and the cracking of pages torn from textbooks, nor notice that your perfectly written answer didn't match the cowardly, stammering tale you were reciting out loud.
Now, everything is simple in my mind.
I believe that a student using cheat sheets looks like this in the eyes of teachers.
If you're lucky enough to face the first type of teacher, you will most likely leave the exam with a good grade and a cool story about cheat sheets to share with your grandchildren later.
17 Types of Cheat Sheets
Cheat sheets should long be recognized as a distinct form of creativity and acknowledged as a separate type of school-university art. We can go further and highlight the profession of ‘cheat sheet coach.’
Research across the internet and a survey of respondents from Dodo showed that there is an immense variety of cheat sheets in the world, so I have selected 17 of the most interesting, nostalgic, and heartfelt ones for you.
1. Handwritten Micro Cheat Sheets (Classic Cheat Sheets and Accordions)
They are small thesis notes written in neat handwriting on tiny pieces of paper.
Thanks to magicians I made many cheat sheets in the form of tiny booklets that fit in the palm of my hand. I always held the cheat sheets in my right hand along with my pen during exams. I borrowed this idea from magicians: they use a magic wand to hold something else in the same hand, and the audience doesn’t notice. In my case, it worked too. One time, the teacher suspected something was wrong and said, 'Alright, show me your cheat sheet.' I showed him my 'empty' hands—my left was indeed empty, and in my right, I had a pen. The teacher didn’t realize that there was a cheat sheet hidden in that same fist.
Not caught – not a thief During the exam, the cheat sheets were in my sleeve. When I had already submitted the exam and was handing my credit book to the teacher, they all flew out of my sleeve in a stack onto her desk. Her response was, 'Not caught – not a thief.' She gave me my grade, and I left.
Betraying Wind I studied well until about the middle of my first year in college, passing tests and so on. But then something went wrong... Meanwhile, the next exam in advanced mathematics was approaching, which I prepared for the night before, drinking coffee excessively, and I couldn't sleep at all. I went to the exam in the morning and just failed it.
However, for the retake, I prepared well by sewing pockets into the inside of a rather short skirt and stuffing them with cheat sheets, including some made of cardboard that were kindly given to me by classmates who had already come out of the exam.
It was sweltering outside, and the windows in the classroom were open. I asked to sit by the window so I wouldn't be too hot. The teacher completely ignored me, perhaps because my appearance did not suggest I had cheat sheets. I calmly copied everything, but some of the sheets fell out of the hidden pockets of my skirt onto my legs. I couldn't put them back in place. I decided that the only way to get rid of the evidence was to throw the cheat sheets out of the open window, which I did. As soon as I let out a breath, a gust of wind picked up, and my evidence started flying back towards me through the same open window. The guy sitting behind me was laughing hard. The teacher, somehow, didn't notice what was happening or pretended not to. Meanwhile, I continued taking the exam.
2. Handwritten cheat sheets
The same thesis notes, just written in regular handwriting on A4 paper.
Paper safety net Once, I came to the exam wearing fur boots (they are knee-high furry boots). The trick was that these boots could fit A4 cheat sheets for all 55 questions. However, I moved with a characteristic rustle. But there was a downside: when I sat down at the desk, the treacherous boots slipped down, exposing my paper safety net! The teacher turned out to be very understanding and sympathetic, though maybe he was just blind? In short, I got my five, despite my rudimentary preparation for copying.
3. Bombs
Prepared answers to the exam questions, handwritten and retrieved at the right time from the most concealed places.
Not all bombs explode twice Once, I made 'invisible bombs' – standard notebook sheets on which I printed solutions in light gray font using a printer. The sheets just lay on the desk. Just in case, I had a pristine sheet on top. Whenever I needed to peek, I discreetly shuffled the sheets around and took a look. This scheme worked for me, but my friend, to whom I passed my treasures, got caught and was expelled.
4. Printed micro cheat sheets
Ready-made answers to exam questions, printed at a very small scale.
At the limit of human eyesight When I was studying at university, personal computers and printers were no longer rare. Thanks to these wonders of modernity, I could format cheat sheets in .doc with the font at the third size… Happiness, delight, all the material fit on a couple of A4 sheets. Unfortunately, the calculations fell short: it turned out that human eyes are not as impressive as .doc and cannot read font size three.
5. Allowed cheat sheets
The format of such cheat sheets is determined by the teacher:
- some allow bringing cheat sheets that contain no words, and everything is encoded as symbols;
- some allow writing hints on the exam questions.
Everything went as agreed When we were taking the exam, the teacher said we could write anything on the questions as hints. But he didn’t consider that we could fit the complete answers to all questions, with all proofs, on one A4 sheet. There was nothing to argue about; everything was as agreed, so it worked.
My first cheat sheet was helped to be written by my teacher, who was also my mom. My mom taught me how to write my first cheat sheet because she didn’t share my eagerness to memorize everything and would twirl her finger at her temple. By the way, my mom was a teacher at my own school.
In 8th grade, my mom brought me some innovative pen from which you could pull out a slip of paper, and it would automatically retract. Again, my mom bought me invisible pens for the same purpose.
6. Textbooks and answer keys
It all depends on your level of audacity; not everyone can cheat during the exam using a book.
Don't trust the inner pockets of jackets. I used to cheat off the answer sheets at school, which I kept in my jacket. And when I went to submit my work, the book fell right to the floor with a loud thud. There was an awkward pause, and, of course, I ended up with a failing grade.
7. On the edges of pens and pencils
We haven't had people with such stories in our history, but there's a tale online about a student who came to an exam with 55 identical pens (matching the number of exam questions). Each cap had the question number marked on it, and the answers were scratched on the edges of the pen.
8. On rulers
This format of cheat sheets is suitable for subjects where a good hint would be the correct formula. They can be neatly arranged on rulers and erasers.
9. Chocolate bars, juices
Here, it’s all about your imagination: you can go the extra mile and print a cheat sheet instead of the ingredients of the chocolate bar, or you can just show up with a juice decoy.
The Secret Life of Juice This is how I make my cheat sheets: I buy children's juices the size of my old phone, prepare the cheat sheet in some editor. Then I drink the juice, make a door in the juice box, fill the cavity with cotton, and insert the phone inside. In the exam, I pretend to drink the juice while carefully opening the door and flipping through the cheat sheets.
10. Cheat sheets on human limbs: palms
Unfortunately, the surface area of a human palm is a rather limited resource, and you can't fit much information on it. Moreover, people tend to sweat as soon as they get nervous, which means that important knowledge can smudge. So this type of cheat sheet has more cons than pros, and it’s pretty risky.
11. Cheat sheets on human limbs: knees
Now, women's knees are a different story! You can immediately see the advantage over the previous point: a larger surface area, practically no risk of smudging, and not every teacher will ask you to lift your skirt before allowing you to take the exam.
Prepare your knees in summer I always wrote on my knees, wearing a button-up dress which I would unbutton under the desk. All my Spanish was passed this way. It was a bit difficult during winter exams.
12. Cheat sheets in flip phones
You can easily navigate without taking your hand out of your pocket.
NOKIA E52 When I started university, I had a wonderful button smartphone, the NOKIA E52. The tactile feel of the buttons allowed me to find the right ticket in a .doc file with my hand in my pocket. With the arrival of touch phones, life became more complicated – to find anything on them, I had to look at the screen and press the right buttons.
13. Cheat sheets on touch phones
Before the professors caught on I brought my smartphone to the exam. The teachers were older and didn’t know that you could download textbooks and any answers onto a smartphone. Right in front of them, I copied all the answers and was happy. That's how I passed psychology and pedagogy.
14. Hands-free headphones and micro-headphones
The technique is simple: you put the earbud in your ear, pull a ticket, and find a comfortable spot. You call a friend who thoughtfully dictates the answer to you. There are rumors that technology has advanced to the point where it’s even possible to ace oral exams this way.
Buying such a headset for a one-time event may seem too expensive, so you can take advantage of rental services. Available in all major cities, rental prices start at 300 rubles per day.
and .
Set aside 1000 rubles for the doctor The micro-earphone consists of two magnets that are inserted directly into the ear canal and rest on the eardrum, and a wire loop that you wear around your neck like a necklace. The wire connects to your phone (via Bluetooth or through the audio jack). The phone sends a signal through the wire, and the current flowing through the circuit creates a magnetic field. The magnets vibrate in the magnetic field, turning the eardrum into a sound source. The process of installing and removing the magnets is quite unpleasant. I tried this scheme once, the sound was poor, but I managed to handle the exam without the earphone.
And one girl from my class managed to get one of the magnets only at the surgeon's office in the hospital.
15. Cheat sheets in players and e-books
Cheat sheets in players and e-books thrived ten years ago when teachers were still unaware that you could record txt formats on these little devices. However, the rise and fall of cheat sheets in smartwatches was rapid, like the flight of the Chelyabinsk meteor.
16. Smart-recheat watches
I suggest taking a closer look at this type of cheat sheet. These with a special display that shows text only when viewed through specific polarized glasses. The glasses are included. The screen appears black to outsiders, who think it is turned off.
17. Cheat sheets on the edge of my humanitarian fiction
I'll just leave these three cases here.
Case #1. At the beginning of the test, an executable file was downloaded from a direct URL saved in Dropbox...In university networks, there were assessments in the form of tests that needed to be taken in the computer lab. The questions and answers were known in advance. Meanwhile, the answers were absolute nonsense with a bunch of meaningless numbers that were awful to memorize. My friend and I had a program that had all the questions inputted.
Here's how it looked: at the beginning of the test, an executable file was downloaded from a direct URL saved in Dropbox and launched. The program itself was not displayed in the taskbar or tray and was usually completely invisible. By pressing the space bar, it would appear as a translucent window or disappear again. And it tracked all additions to the clipboard, trying to find suitable answers among the questions it contained.
That is, you had to read the tests, highlighting part of the question, copy the highlighted part. While the proctor was away, you needed to press the space bar and see a window where the correct answer to that question was already displayed. Then press the space bar again to hide the program's window. This worked great and helped pass those stupid tests.
Case #2. It was very convenient to just sit and copyOne time, the guys from the group created cheat sheets in a program that looked like a console file manager similar to FAR Manager and 'uploaded it to the network' used by the computer lab where we took the exam. It was very convenient to just sit and copy!
Case #3. If you’re an IT specialist.This story isn’t entirely about cheat sheets, but about how easy it is to complete assignments throughout the semester if you’re an IT specialist.
One professor, when coming to class, would always sit at one computer and insert a hard drive containing a file with marked completed assignments.
So, we set up an FTP server on that computer, and calmly delivered assignments from our places. Everyone got a 5, except for the guy who was determined to do everything himself. And to download all the assignments with answers from the teacher's flash drive on information security - priceless.
The end
After all that has been said, I have just two questions: "Are there any cheat sheets that the teachers are still unaware of?" and "Do modern students have a hard life?"
P.S. I feel it is important to note that I in no way promote cheat sheets and copying as acceptable behavior. I fully understand that fundamental knowledge is the basis of professionalism.
P.P.S. Watch the French film "The Idiots at the Exams." It was released in 1980, and students and teachers haven't changed since then.
Source: habr.com
