The Cheating Chronicles - Volume 01
Once upon a time I used to post these blogs called The B**kie Chronicles. It was a blog series for losers like me that always get their dicks smashed in when sports gambling. What originally started as an outlet for me to vent bad losses quickly turned into a community of hard luck losers and ultimately, a sub-community of just straight up losers.
You guys will always hold a spot near and dear to my heart.
But then the news hit that 36% of my content is now owned by a very legal, heavily regulated, publicly-traded gaming company. And with that news came the subsequent common sense realization that my jib needed to cut different. As someone who once spent years consulting financial institutions on how to interpret and apply federal consumer-facing regulatory guidance, this was a no brainer to me. I had to let The Chronicles go.
It's not easy saying goodbye to 200+ stoolie submitted stories over a calendar year. Not trying to sound like a pussy, I just want to be clear that I sat on this decision for some time. But what's done is done and I need to move on, but not really because I love sharing stoolie stories. Sue me for building a high tolerance for great content.
As such, I'm happy to announce the creation of The Cheating Chronicles.
By our very nature, we like it when other people fuck up. That was the whole point of The B**kie Chronicles: you smile at someone else's shame.
But we also inherently gravitate towards people who beat a system. There's a reason Snake It Til You Make It is basically etched in my brain. There's a reason I'll take extremely high risks to offset poor long-term decision making. As your textbook simple-minded human being, all I want to do is enough to get by.
Chances are not many of you are any different.
I blame your childhood - Mom
Whatever the reason, you often times found yourself staring at a test without a clue. You went weeks without going to class. The number of plagiarized papers to authentic work is actually more drastic than Barry Bonds strikeout-to-walk ratio during his historic MVP run.
1 strikeout for every 3.2 walks
You probably shouldn't hold a degree from a publicly funded university but you do. Or maybe you snaked your way into honors history in high school and through the grace of the scantron gods, no one knew any better. In fact the weighted GPA boost cut you some slack with your parents heading into winter break, only to be lost when they found a stolen baby Jesus Christmas decoration in the garage. You tell your folks you have no idea where it came from. Elsewhere and 7 houses down, the Quinns are frantically wondering who stole baby Jesus from his manger.
Things are starting to get a little weird here so let me reel it back in.
The point of this blog is to relive some really dumb shit we've done with an emphasis on cheating. That could be something stupid in high school like when Tony Brown charged the entire freshman algebra class $10 a head for the answer key to our final. Could be the time you outsourced all your homework to some company in India then turned it into a multi-campus business generating tens of thousands of dollars in annual income. Or it could be about the time you cheated on the LSAT and got threatened with a prison sentence. Or maybe you got away with it and now you're a federal appellate court justice with a lifetime appointment.
Whatever the case is, you've cheated and you got a story.
If that's so, send it to me and I'll round the best ones up on the blog. It won't be any different than how we did the TBC. All you have to do is email your story to carl@barstoolsports.com and I'll take care of the rest.
This week we open up with some classics: PSAT cheating, fake hospital visits, undercover professors, a dude craving Gibsons Italia and then probably one of my favorite scam stories of all time even though this is literally the first time I've ever done this.
Let's get to the submissions…
PSAT
My last name is Du____ and my high school valedictorian’s last name was Ea _____ so we always sat next to each other during state tests. I got a perfect score on my PSAT and started getting letters from Duke and other Ivey league schools and my parents were so proud. Little did they know I was flunking Algebra 2 and used sparknotes for every reading assignment.
Didn’t stop me from getting a degree fro Texas Tech though!
Mild to start and that's how I like it. We'll gradually get into weird shit, but for now I want to take a moment to remember when college brochures would come in the mail. You're bound to get the standard community college stuff. Definitely going to get your state schools like ISU and Eastern and Western. Definitely going to get a promotional flyer from Iowa about out of state scholarships. You're due your consistent mix.
But getting an Ivy League mailer when you spell it "Ivey League" years later is some fucking bullshit if I've ever seen it. Your folks had to be DELIGHTED too. I can't even imagine their surprise of raising 16 years of complete and total mediocrity only to get a letter from the admissions office at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Credit to you though. You didn't let your gifted test scores get in the way of a good time. Degrees certainly have significance but I'll take those 5 years at Texas Tech every day of the weekend except Sunday because that's when I recover from all the Heyhowyadoins I had over the weekend.
GroupChat
We had this group chat App called GroupMe and a couple people had the idea of adding everyone in the class to help study. This turned into all 3 sections of the class being in the group chat for a total of around 300. All that happened was the first class would give everyone else the answers to the test’s. Turns out the teacher made a fake GroupMe account and joined the group chat. He didn’t want to get fucked over by ISU so he just posted Meme’s about us cheating on Twitter. Easiest A I got in college.
Hardo college professors are the worst. No one is listening to your lecture because it sucks, bro. Nothing against you or the institution of Academia. Just calling a spade a spade that general education requirements bring the absolute WORST out of young adults. You want max effort, give me some choice. You want me to rob this institution of its academic integrity, then put me in Atmospheric Sciences 120 for 3 hours a week under the premise that it's uniquely rounding out my business curriculum.
Fuck you.
I cheat.
Fake Hospital Visit
One time I missed an exam that was really important - as in I would’ve flunked the class if I missed it important. I missed it because I wasn’t prepared, I forgot to study. So what did I decide to do? Fake a hospital visit to get a test preview beforehand. I had a buddy that had been to the hospital the week before for alcohol poisoning so I asked him to email me the discharge papers. I used the school computers in the business library (which for some reason had photoshop) to photoshop my name, and the date of the exam in.
Emailed my professor and he gave me an extension on taking the final. Ended up getting a preview of the questions from the test from a friend in the class. Did it one more time the next year because I didn’t feel like studying for the exam on time.
My only rule here is that you harm yourself before a family member. Like don't tell me that a living relative died because that's just extremely bad juju. You don't want to know how many grandmas never recovered from Little Johnny's lies.
That's why you gotta put your neck on the line with doctor notes and hospital stays. Make it your kidney that's failing and you'll have a lot more long-term success.
I got a C- because I'm distracted by my grandpa's hip replacement therapy
The funny thing here is that it actually takes a skillset to skip this shit. Like you need to have *some* kind of rudimentary understanding of photoshop in order to doctor your doctor's note. And you're utilizing this skillset to avoid the public examination of *another* skillset, presumably one you've spent thousands of dollars of tuition and countless opportunity costs perfecting. But instead of actually possessing that skill, you rely on a black market skill that you've subconsciously developed for the primary reason of AVOIDING the original skill.
Reminds me of the guy that spends 10-15 hours on the miniature cheatsheet.
I fucking love those guys.
"Tough Finance Class"
It was my last final of college at DePaul for a tough finance class. I went in completely unprepared and was ready to bomb the exam and finish the course with a C. This day was also my birthday. We took the exam in a random computer lab and I got there early and picked a good spot to sit in case I had a chance to cheat. Smartest kid in the class sat to my right so naturally I got a boner. It was difficult to look over at his screen without moving my head, fucking hurt my eyes after a while. Despite being a genius, he was slow as fuck with this exam and I wanted to get the fuck out. Maybe 10 questions into the exam I noticed that the kid in front of me was zooming through the exam so I started following him. I wasn’t able to make out the words on his screen but I could tell which question he was on and which answer he chose by the length of the text. I wasn’t sure if this kid was smart though, so eventually I’d peak back over at the genius to my right to see what he put as his answer, and scrolled back to the question to see if their answers matched, and they did. Guy in front of me was the first to finish, I was second. Got the fuck out of their early on my bday and had my cousins take me to Gibsons Italia. The way I finished my college career was a perfect representation of its entirety. I don’t think I read 1 one question on the exam and got like a 90.
The next level of cheaters are the picky ones. Not the guys that are just trying to get out of any/all work. But the guys that want to skip out on everything without even the remotest of inconveniences. "Just get me out of this hell and into happy hour" is a phrase that dominated my finance class days. Weighted Cost of Capital and EBITDA projections and Black Scholes and all those finance assholes can kick rocks. Why would you learn this bullshit when someone who will end up working for you will just know it even better? Makes no sense.
That's why if you're going to cheat, make it a finance or accounting class. Reason being - if you end up in one of those fields, you're going to be cutting corners your whole career. No reason delaying the inevitable.
Paynerds.com
I got caught cheating and helping other people cheat on their homework assignments and Almost got kicked out of college my Junior year. I went to Southern Illinois University and we had dollar nights Tuesday and Thursday nights. I got stuck with taking a Calc 2 class Monday, Wednesday and Fridays at 8 am so going to dollar night before was not going to be an option. I struggled in the class but struggled even more with the idea of not being able to go out for dollar nights. The only thing standing in my way was I needed to get my homework done for my Wednesdays and Fridays for Calc 2.
I ended up outsourcing my Calc homework to India and had PHD students completing it for $3 an assignment. I would go out on dollar nights and wake up the next morning to my homework completed in my email. The PHD students would even take my tests for me online.
My friends found out about me hiring PHD students in India to do my homework so they asked me to hook them up. I started charging my friends $7 an assignment. Word spread like wild fire across campus that for $7 you could have your homework done for you and in your email the next morning. I had so much demand that I made a website called paynerds.com
Within 2 months, I had multiple PHD students completing homework for over 300 students at SIU. Then there was a problem, kids that were in the same classes hired the same PhD student on my website and the PHD student gave the same answers to the homework assignments for all students. Professors called a bunch of students in for cheating and copying each others homework, and they all ratted on me saying, I created this website called paynerds.com. I got called in by some higher ups and they gave me the ultimatum, either shut the website down or you are expelled.
I shut the website down.
This is why we Chronicle things. You just simply wouldn't believe this story otherwise. There's too many wonderful pieces in play: Calculus 2 (such a college class), dollar Tuesday and Thursday being the big nights, online testing and brazen entrepreneurship in the face of academic challenges. I wouldn't be able to make this stuff up if I tried. Literally the only thing impeding this scam is the basic fact that India simply cannot match supply with SIU's demand. There aren't enough Indian PhD students to your Corporate Communications quiz. The market is completely outsourced.
I'm surprised, yes. But I'm also wondering if paynerds.com has a more promising future than you with your degree from SIU. Like assuming it's not entirely illegal to run that operation, I feel like 300 customers in 2 months is more than enough capacity to grow a business. Now compare that to being an inside sales rep and making cold calls your first 2-3 years out of school. Imagine your cubicle and conference calls and Out Of Office Auto Replies while Corporate America slowly robs your soul of happiness.
Is that a better life than being an international homework mogul?
Probably not. But truthfully we'll never know and that's okay. The important thing is you strung together a couple months of getting after it every Tuesday/Thursday. And when you think about college, that's all that really matters. The rest of the stuff you figure out as life goes on.
Got a story about cheating or generally committing fraud? Email me carl@barstoolsports.com. All submissions are anonymous.