Many years ago, my grandfather taught carpentry at a tech college, and part of his job involved proctoring written exams.

During one of these exams, a couple of students were tapping their pens. On the face of it, this wasn’t so unusual; plenty of people in exams tap pens, drum fingers, etc., as an aid to memory — or at least, they certainly did when I took my exams. These taps, however, seemed rather more… rhythmic.

A few taps later, Grandfather — who was in the naval cadets as a boy — realized that these two students were using their pens to tap out the answers to various questions in Morse code. 

Without saying a word, Grandfather picked up a pen of his own, glaring pointedly at the guilty students, and tapped out the phrase, “I K-N-O-W M-O-R-S-E C-O-D-E T-O-O.”

Funnily enough, the tapping stopped immediately after that!

In one of my classes in high school, there was a guy who sat a row over and a desk behind me. Whenever we had a test — almost always twenty multiple-choice questions — he would whisper loudly at me to show him my paper, since I was getting As.

I decided I’d had enough after three tests and was going to end it in a simple way. As usual, on the next test, [Cheater] asked to see my paper. I held it in such a way that the teacher wouldn’t see. In our school, we had three half-hour lunch periods.

In this class, third hour, we had the first lunch period after class was over. For this particular test, the teacher said that as soon as we finished the test we could go on down to lunch.

As soon as [Cheater] copied all of my answers, he handed in his test and took off for lunch. After he was gone from class, I went back and redid my test answers. You see, I had answered question number one on line two, question number two on line three, and so on. That’s the paper he saw. All I had to do was move each answer up one line.

We got our graded tests back the next day.

Cheater: “How’d you get an A and I got an F? Didn’t we have the same answers?”

Me: “Yes, we had the same answers. The first time.”

He never asked to see my tests again.

He flunked the class. I got an A.

I am a math teacher in a meeting with a counselor, two parents (only one speaks), and a student who is badly failing my class after one month.

The student has no chance of passing after getting a D in Pre-Algebra and cheating online through Algebra 1 and Geometry, which he has openly admitted (to me, not his family). He lacks every pre-requisite skill.

Parent: “This is the only class that’s going to keep him from going to college. He’s never struggled like this. He did great the last two years; it’s just your class that’s killing him.” *To the counselor* “Is there another teacher we can switch him to?”

Counselor: “Well, yes, but—”

Parent: “Then do it. Get him out and with a teacher who actually does their job.”

This parent hasn’t given me a chance to explain the attendance issues, missing classwork assignments, the student’s refusal to take advantage of the five different tutoring options available at our school, and the fact that, although I offer retakes for every test, this student has done nothing to change the situation.

The counselor agrees to the switch, only timidly asking my opinion; I do not think the other Algebra 2 teacher would be a good match, but the parent talks over me.

The student enrolls in the other teacher’s class for a month before I am summoned to another meeting, this time including the principal.

Parent: “[Other Teacher] is worse, and we want [Student] back with [My Name].”

Principal: “Unfortunately, her class filled up and has no available space. We can reevaluate after the semester ends.”

Parent: “But [Other Teacher] just expects them to watch videos and understand! He won’t help [Student] at all!”

Counselor: “That is what [My Name] was trying to explain last time, if you recall, but you wanted the transfer and we made the accommodation.”

Parent: “Yeah, but I thought she just didn’t want to admit a man was better.”

With that, I excused myself and let the principal deal with it, who later sent a donut my way as consolation.

I’m sitting with my boyfriend of six years, and we’re about to watch a movie.

Boyfriend: “Hey, I need to talk to you.”

Me: “Is it about how you’ve been cheating on me with my best friend?”

My boyfriend is shocked.

Boyfriend: “How did you know that?!”

Now I was shocked. I was just making a joke, but this was better. I told my boyfriend that we were done and he needed to leave.

He left, and I confronted my best friend. She admitted to it, and I haven’t spoken to either of them since.

My uncle is a professor at a university. He was pretty sure there were quite a high number of cheaters but could never quite catch them. He then came up with this plan.

For the exam, he would give the same questions but with different data. Therefore, the process would be the same but the answers different. He said that by comparing the seating plan with the knowledge of the intelligent students, he could see the answers walking around the tests.

Instead of taking their punishment, apparently, a lot of the students who had been cheating would come up to him afterward to ask:

Student: “Why didn’t I get the point for this question? [Classmate] put the same answer and got the point!”

Uncle: “Did you actually read the question and not just their answer?”