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- Dec 13, 2008
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So here's the scenario: my biochem. teacher allows students to bring a 1-page 1-sided "cheat sheet" to the midterms. We may put ANYTHING we want on them, including photocopied old tests (which she supplies) if we like. Well, I spent a while a made a really killer "cheat sheet". It was so good that one student, who had a pretty dense "cheat sheet" but not as good as mine, asked if he could have a copy. I didn't really think anything of it, and let him go make a copy of it. The teacher never said we couldn't share our cheat sheets or work on cheat sheets together. While he was away making a copy for himself and another student, I had second thoughts. When the two other students got back, one of them also had second thoughts and decided to use his own cheat sheet that he prepared. However, the other student used my cheat sheet. He insisted that he sees nothing wrong with it (to which I agreed), and that he had done it before. The cheat sheets could, after all, have "anything" on them and were free reign.
Yet still I feel anxious about it (the kind that makes me wish I hadn't done it). I feel that I have nothing to feel guilty about, because it wasn't "wrong" to let someone copy my unoriginal work (I had just made copies of the old tests as little tiny pictures), and even so, I technically had no real way of know how he would ultimately use that cheat sheet (after all, he did have his own).
I am really at a loss for why I feel so anxious. Even during the test I couldn't focus, I could only think about what would happen if, for some reason, this was construed as academic dishonesty. I have an acceptance to medical school in hand, am looking into buying a house in the area with my fiancee in the near future, so to have this come back on me would really suck.
So I guess my questions are:
1) Is there any way this could be constued as academic dishonesty? (by the way, no "credit" is given for the cheat sheets, but they are collected)
2) If this were an academic dishonesty, will this preclude me from going to medical school?
If you can't tell, I'm actually hoping most of you will tell me I'm crazy for worrying about this. Removing the emotion and "what ifs", I can't see any reason why it would be dishonest for the whole class to share the same cheat sheet...
Yet still I feel anxious about it (the kind that makes me wish I hadn't done it). I feel that I have nothing to feel guilty about, because it wasn't "wrong" to let someone copy my unoriginal work (I had just made copies of the old tests as little tiny pictures), and even so, I technically had no real way of know how he would ultimately use that cheat sheet (after all, he did have his own).
I am really at a loss for why I feel so anxious. Even during the test I couldn't focus, I could only think about what would happen if, for some reason, this was construed as academic dishonesty. I have an acceptance to medical school in hand, am looking into buying a house in the area with my fiancee in the near future, so to have this come back on me would really suck.
So I guess my questions are:
1) Is there any way this could be constued as academic dishonesty? (by the way, no "credit" is given for the cheat sheets, but they are collected)
2) If this were an academic dishonesty, will this preclude me from going to medical school?
If you can't tell, I'm actually hoping most of you will tell me I'm crazy for worrying about this. Removing the emotion and "what ifs", I can't see any reason why it would be dishonest for the whole class to share the same cheat sheet...