Exams and ethics

After reading this post by Shailesh, I reflected a bit on my past immoral actions of copying and yes, did find a few.

I was in primary school, and mostly that was my first exam in life. We were given question papers and answer books too (what a joy, school providing us nice papers to write on, instead of usual notebooks). They told we are supposed to write answers on the paper provided and submit it back to the teacher. I happily wrote answers to all questions and turned back to chat with the guy sitting behind me. He too, had finished. We chatted a bit here and there, may be we talked about the questions in the papers and what we wrote, and suddenly teacher shouted at us, and blamed we copied. I was hearing that first time, without knowing what copying is. She was talking to us as if we were deadly sinners. We tried to plead and other teachers testified our character. Somehow we were let free without any punishment. There I knew what 'copying' is.

Years passed and I learned good and bad and how people cog and copy in exams, though I never tried it. Once during a drawing exam, we were solving the geometric constructions. I was starting my last construction which was simpler than the other once. Other student saw my sheet and observed that I had successfully fit circles in corners of a polygon (a skillful construction), which she was not able to. I vaguely remember that, that was a compulsory question. She asked me if I can draw that for her. Somehow I agreed, and asked her in turn to complete my last construction which was much more simple. We completed our papers and went happily. I haven't seen her after the results were out till now.

This was one of the annual exams. Some papers were over and one day before starting paper the guy sitting behind me came and said, if I can show him answers to certain questions during the paper? He was a student from night school. He told me, he couldn't study for that paper at all, and will pass if I can show him the answers to certain questions, which were easy to see from behind and copy. Thus he can secure passing marks. For no other paper he had asked me such a thing, neither he threatened me to do so. I can see in his eyes some sort of shame. I agreed. He copied without letting anyone else doubt. He didn't ask for any such favour for rest of the papers either. During results, he came smiling to me and said he has passed and has secured passing marks in that particular subject.

Now, I was in an esteemed institute, where some professors allowed to refer to books during exams. One instructor, told us that we can't even discuss the assignments with other students and should solve them on our own. In one of the assignments, there was a difficult problem. I had thought of some method to solve it using some X concept. During dinner, over the table I told my method, to a friend who asked me for help. The complete solution was not ready yet. And we solved it independent of each other using same X. Few more guys got the idea from this second guy. The person correcting these assignments found our solutions too complicated and refered them to the instructor. The instructor saw the esoteric (from his perspective) solutions and doubted if we had copied each others ideas. He suspected that second guy is the originator and rest of us have copied him. The instructor called me and asked 'from whom did you copy your answer?'. Seeing the 'hole' in the question I replied, 'I haven't copied from anyone.' He persistently asked same thing and I maintained my answer. He enquired others too, and one of the last guys told name of second guy. Those two were punished and got lesser grades than they were worthy off.

First incident surely was something unintentional, and I never felt guilty about it. I never regretted the third incident either, or whenever I started feeling guilty about it, I remembered the smiling face of the guy and could overcome the guilt. For second my feelings are confused. If I would not have helped the girl, she would not have failed, so it was certainly unnecessary to copy for her. I just helped her get some more marks which she was not worthy off. For last incident, I am only content that I replied the instructor bare truth according to the wording he used, but felt very sorry for others who were punished.