Ahh, the Internet. Making it easier for students to cheat since the 1990s but also making it easier for us to share bad cheating stories that only other teachers will understand. Enter this recent Reddit thread in which teachers share all the times “kids think they are so slick with cheating” but are very, very wrong.
Redditor @smallfrycrybaby kicked things off by sharing an anecdote about asking a student what “admonish” means. When the student couldn’t answer, @smallfrycrybaby used the word in a sentence, and you can probably see where this is headed. The student also didn’t recognize the sentence, but it was lifted directly from a paper the student had submitted, which had obviously been lifted from somewhere else.
Plenty of other Redditors jumped in with their own cheating stories, and well … all we have to say is that you’re going to need to work a little bit harder, kids, if you want to get your cheating attempts past us.
The time when Wikipedia citations were still left in, still clickable, and still blue
I mean, friends. Wikipedia is a questionable source in the first place. We can do better.
The time when the font changed halfway through the paper
We see you, Times New Roman switching to Arial.
The time when Google Translate failed
It’s a good idea to cheat in the actual language you are studying.
The time when the writer called out “Figure 2,” but there wasn’t a “Figure 1” … or any figures at all
Pro tip: It’s a good idea to READ your plagiarized papers to make sure they make sense.
The time when the paper stopped mid-sentence
Yikes. Just yikes.
The time when it’s just a coincidence that it’s the exact same wording as Wikipedia
And then when a parent tries to make that same argument? SMDH.
And finally, the time they literally forgot to take out the ads
I mean, Hardee’s is tasty and everything, but it doesn’t belong in your paper.
Oh man. Thank god for high school teachers. What bad cheating stories have you encountered in the classroom? Please share in the comments.
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