The Cheating Chronicles - Volume 02

Welcome back for our 2nd edition of the Cheating Chronicles, a blatant replacement for The SportsBook Chronicles and my attempt at sharing ridiculous stories from stoolies. This time instead of gambling losses, though, we're getting into academic losses. Slightly different, but equally crushing depending on the circumstances as you'll see below. 

For the newcomers, here's last week's edition including an explanation on why I replaced TBC with TCC:

If you like what you see and have a similarly stupid story, send it to me for the blog. All you have to do is email your story to carl@barstoolsports.com and I'll take care of the rest.

This week we follow up with some good advice about how to cheat, a couple students who ruined their lives, lace panties, more advice and probably one of the longest standing cheating plays I've ever witnessed. 

Let's get to the submissions…

"I Gave Myself An 87"

I was a senior in high school and just got admitted to the national honor society on my second attempt, everyone got in the second time but that’s neither here nor there (this will circle back I promise). 

I was taking an AP English class and the teacher had left the URL address for the answers on the bottom of the page, this is 6 years ago so we had iPhones, and obviously I found all the answers. 

So being the good friend I am shared it with the class and whoever wanted it because we had a substitute teacher who I think was born in the 40’s. Being a professional cheater I gave myself an 87 so I didn’t raise any red flags. Come in to school the next day and the teacher is there crying in our class and the principal is sitting next to her, turns out some narc in the class had snitched on us and the other idiots that cheated all gave themselves 100’s even though they were morons and usually got C’s. Well I got pegged as the mastermind and was given a 0 on the exam and kicked out of the national honor society 2 days after I had been admitted, in what I think remains a record shortest tenure in school history. 

Long story short don’t be a narc. 

This one hits home for the exact reason I get to in the title. The feeling of having the power to get everything right, but opting for a lower grade is a little something I call MORALITY. And common sense. But more importantly, it's the only barrier between you and being a complete piece of shit. You're a bigger, smarter man. After all that's why you have the answers in the first place, right? Because you're a better person than your peers. So naturally it's a nice gesture to take a B+ when you could bodybag the rest of the student body. The only thing that fucks with this strategy is if half your buddies are posting 100's like you see here. Complete and total jagoffs. Those are basically the same guys that caused the financial collapse through widespread approval of subprime mortgage applications. Bunch of greedy assholes. 

PS - national honors society is a fucking SCAM. Right up there with "Who's Who In America" and the Publishers Clearing House. 

Actually A Pretty Heavy Story

So it’s the biggest party week of the year at school. Thursday night, I go out for a good ole fashioned blackout. I’m talking stubbornly walking the exact opposite of the right way home instead of taking an uber and having your friends come find you blackout drunk. I get to my room and my roommate groans. We both have a quiz in a class we have together the next morning. He apparently promised to wake my drunk ass up the next morning. He did not. We wake up as the quiz is starting and panic. It’s an online quiz but we need an access code. A couple of brave students from our discussion (a few discussion classes compiled this giant Friday lecture class) had showed up. I ask if any of them would be willing to share the access code to help out some of us who had a few too many the night before. One nice and spectacular lady obliges. I get a C on the quiz, oh well. I wish that were the end of the story. Someone from our class saw our messages and snitched to the teacher (my roommate and I suspect a kid we made fun of in class for being a jabroni). The teacher emails us and says she’s failing us for not just the quiz, but the entire course… with two weeks left in the semester. The girl who shared the access code failed the class and lost her scholarship, another kid we didn’t know used the code had to retake the class, and my roommate had to drop out of college. So, in summary my blackout changed a few lives. The end.

This was supposed to be entertaining and we already have kids losing scholarships and dropping out. Paths of lives changed forever. And for what? Some stupid fucking quiz. 

Quizzes suck. 

You want me to pay attention? Be engaging. Connect the material to students meaningfully. Don't be a flaming jag off. Host cool lectures. Literally you have endless options to enhance student participation and engagement. Quizzes is at the bottom of the list. 

You'll take 10 quizzes every Friday morning and those will be worth 1% of your grade for 10% total. Then another 25% on whether the professor likes you with the final 65% divided between two exams. Yet in the pantheon of stress, those quizzes will take the absolute fucking cake. All 10 of them haunting you the second you wake up on Thursday. 

I have that goddamn quiz tomorrow - you, every Thursday morning

Hey Academia. Get creative for me one time you old crusty pussies. 

She Was Wearing Lace Panties

In high school, I was failing Honors Chem/Phys miserably. So I did what any smart kid (shoutout Loyola) would do and cheated off the kid next to me who wound up being valedictorian and going to Stanford and is probably a billionaire by now. Copied his test answer for answer and got 100%. Obviously my first mistake was not intentionally getting a few wrong so it wouldn’t raise any red flags, but I’m not the brightest and that’s how I wound up needing to cheat in the first place. Anyway, my teacher was obviously suspicious as the kid who barely had a C now got 100%. So the next test comes around and I know that I can’t cheat, but I look up midway through the test and see the hottest girl in class has a lace thong that is sticking out about two rows in front of me. As I’m staring at this, the teacher thinks he’s caught me cheating and brings me to the front of the class. Once he looks at my answers, he realizes they’re all wrong and I’m not cheating, I think it ends there. Next test, he has me drag my desk up to the front of the room and put it right up against the wall under the whiteboard. And every test for the rest of the year I had to drag my desk across class to push it up against the wall all because I wanted to check out some whale tail (and I was definitely cheating).

A lot of times the honors classes are way easier because the teachers are significantly better. People forget that when judging high school kids. 

Another thing people forget as they get older is just how much potential high school teachers hold with respect to ruining your shit. Making life suck. Using you as an example. Blah blah blah. High school teachers have so much power to make your life miserable everyday and honestly I kinda miss that pressure. The world's a much better place when offering that kind of accountability. 

But what people probably forget most about high school is just how horny you are every day. Guys, girls. Nerds and sweet dudes. Band to drama to math club to swimming and tennis. Everyone is just so fucking horny. One glance at a lace thong can send you into a mental tailspin. Maybe there's a substitute teacher you like. Or your buddy's mom. Whatever the case, you got the bug and that's okay provided your science teacher doesn't want to publicly embarrass you twice a month until you graduate. In that case, fuck that guy. 

Practical 

Buddy of mine had the same Science class as me but 2 periods before. He gave me the answers to the test, I purposely got multiple answers wrong because the teacher would assumed I was cheating because I wasn’t very smart. So I cheated to get a C+ instead of an F.

I said it before, I'll say it again. The real go-getters in life are the folks smart enough to not give themselves the 100%. Never will you find more core-common sense in a youth. I actually wouldn't hate it if this is how NASA screened astronauts. Give everyone the answers then hire the ones that know how to engineer the most convincing grade. Believe it or not that's the essence of corporate america. How much can you make it look like it was your idea. Your work product. Your brain. Those who master the "communication process" will be handsomely rewarded while the rest of you wonder how some "stupid" people make so much money. 

The Little Speech That Could

In grade six we were required to write and give a speech. I’d land on the topic “Why snow tires should be mandatory during the winter months” and end up winning 3rd place in the competition they had set up at the school (1st and 2nd were likely political selections).

A year later in a new school we’d have to again submit and present another speech, I would change the date and perform word for word the same speech. Easy.

Next year now in grade eight and thanks to a move I found myself in another new school and once again was tasked with writing and presenting a speech. Thanks to the move and credit requirements I’d end up in a French class and an English class, both requiring speeches. As I had so elegantly done last year I would break out my grade six speech and simply change the date, for French no problem mes ami a simple copy and paste in Google Translate would suffice.

At this point, any sensible student would likely write a new speech, but I felt like I had a hot hand. I was overjoyed by the opportunity to dupe my classmates year over year with the same speech time and time again.

In high school, I’d use the speech two more times. At this point the facts required some updating (still from the original source just a new year) but the writing would not change.
Every time, I thought someone would catch on, several people had heard the speech before but I was never called out on it.

That should be the end… but I needed to test my speech at a higher level.

Upon graduating high school I’d enrol at a local university, and in my second year of uni I once again was faced with a speech which would account for 30% of my grade in the course.

As I delivered the final passages of my finely tuned speech and explained how all season tires would begin to harden below 45, I smirked at the few peers in the class which had heard the speech before. After class myself and some friends would chat in the hall. A friend from my high school finally delivered the words I knew were coming. Hey didn’t you give that same speech in high school? But what I didn’t expect was an old friend who was actually in my grade six class simultaneously realizing he had heard the speech many many years ago.

And then and there I would tell them the story of the great speech, performed a half dozen times in both English and French over the span of 8 years, without a soul realizing until now.

Oh and I’d end up getting an A-

All gas, no brakes - Sam

This is why you post stoolie stories. I couldn't make this shit up if I tried. A 6th grade boy sits down to write a speech and 8 years later you have one of the greatest ROI's on any academic endeavor. And FYI for you Liberal Arts pussies, ROI stands for Return On Investment. It's a cornerstone in measuring success and let there be no doubt, repurposing your snow tire speech 6 times in 2 languages is exactly that. It's academic success. 

These are the kind of people you want to work with as you get older. Efficient and effective people that don't want to change things too much for the sake of change. Slow and steady wins the race, just like driving on snow tires in the winter months. 

Got a story about cheating or generally committing fraud? Email me carl@barstoolsports.com. All submissions are anonymous.