Professor Outsmarts His Cheating Students Who Thought They Had Him Fooled, Sets Up Hilarious Revenge
It’s no secret that most students tend to underestimate the professors they are handing their papers to. You see, with years of experience, a well-trained natural lie detector and AI tools for plagiarism, it’s virtually impossible to deceive them. Unless you want to play with the tail of a lion.
In that case, you may end like the group of students from this story on r/ProRevenge, with a failed test, ruined vacation, wasted money, “bored to death and have nothing to show for it.” The story comes from a cancer researcher and guest professor at a university’s school of medicine who goes by the handle u/CmSrN. For part of his module’s grading, the students were asked to submit two reports.
“As I was grading the reports I noticed a small group of students who found reports from previous years online and literally copy+paste those reports, changing only their name,” the professor wrote, calling it “a facepalm moment.” As you can suspect, they did not pass.
But when the time had come to book an appointment to review their grades, the author had prepared a trap for them to teach them a real lesson about where lies and cheating take you. Hint: not far.
A guest professor at a university’s school of medicine shared a story of how he caught his students cheating and lying right to his face so he taught them a lesson to remember
Image credits: Jeswin Thomas (Not the actual photo)
Image credits: Michael Burrows (Not the actual photo)
It’s no secret that plagiarism is still a great issue found in many universities globally. Although it’s unethical and can have serious consequences for students’ future career, and it also undermines the standards of the institution and of the degrees it issues, many students still do it.
Out of a survey of nearly 64,000 students in American universities, 38% of students admit to “paraphrasing/copying a few sentences from a written source without footnoting it.” Merriam-Webster defines plagiarism as the following: “to steal and pass off (the ideas or words of another) as one’s own; to use (another’s production) without crediting the source; to commit literary theft; to present as new and original an idea or product derived from an existing source.”
Meanwhile, University of Oxford refers to plagiarism as a breach of academic integrity. “It is a principle of intellectual honesty that all members of the academic community should acknowledge their debt to the originators of the ideas, words, and data which form the basis for their own work,” the university explains on its official website. “Passing off another’s work as your own is not only poor scholarship, but also means that you have failed to complete the learning process.”
Many people supported the professor and his unorthodox method of teaching the students a lesson about cheating
While other people were not that impressed with the professor’s revenge and questioned whether it was the right way
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Share on FacebookY'all forgetting that these students are in MED SCHOOL. You know what happens when people successfully cheat their way through med school? They become doctors who kill patients through incompetence or indifference.
And not just med school - they were specializing in ONCOLOGY. This is how cancers go undetected until it's too late.
Load More Replies..."If it was boring the first time, it won't get better the second time." Also: I know some folks are saying that "it's too much if it impacted their families." Whole lotta nope! They are the ones who instilled that entitlement! I've had to sit down with those parents (after they get written permission) and explain how their adult children cheated, didn't do their work, and now were expecting to be graded differently because of the impact it would have. Nope! Your little darling is going to lose their scholarships because of their lazy and entitled attitudes. If it is that important, then they should have done it well in the first place!! I point blank tell my students: if you feel the need to cheat, talk to me so we can make a plan to get you caught up. No sympathy for those who cheat and think they can get away with it.
That sentence rubbed me the wrong way as well... the arrogance, the GALL to suggest that the family responsible for burdening the world with such a despicably selfish imbecile, would or should somehow be exempt from the consequences of their actions? NO. F**K, NO. NEVER.
Load More Replies...All students know the timetable usually a year in advance in EU. Like from September until June. You also know the exam periods and when the grades come out. There's policies in place for discussing grades also marked in university calendar. It's students responsibility to know these dates and to consider these when booking holidays. I have skipped few family holidays due to college, but it was important to pass on first round and not repeat rather than holiday. Or even better study, present and if you fail at least you weren't a cheat! Usually when you get caught cheating you are BANNED from enrolling into universities it can be years before you may reapply. I have no sympathy for students, and lecturer has a right to pump grades if overall class results go down due to cheaters. You get points for trying and showing motivation to learn. I am onto my third degree and plagiarism is zero tolerance, you're out! Booking and going on holidays is a choice, so is passing modules. Priorities.
How dumb are students nowadays? I got my exam 19 years ago and even than our profs informed us about their Google skills to check for plagiarism. Fast forward 19 years, the Google algorithm is even better and they think they'll get away with it? Haha!
Teachers are often considered authority figures but they put in a lot of time grading, they're workers. I think that's why people didn't like seeing him do this. They don't want to see it from his side.
I was thinking there also may be some jealousy that they didn't think of doing the same.
Load More Replies...The zero mark on the grade would NOT be the appropriate punishment. The zero would be what the work was worth i.e. you did not write something new so you don't get the points allocated to having written something new. To be appropriately punished for the cheating part they need to ALSO be thrown out of school (as most have this written into the policies very sternly) or 'something else'. this teacher chose a 'something else' that allowed them to maybe learn a lesson and still stay in school. The fact he enjoyed it is irrelevant, but very human!
His boss didn't kick them out because they are afraid to have a legal battle. It wasn't his choice
Load More Replies...I hope these cheaters learned by this. Professor took extra time to show them they can be caught again. The boss isn't doing society any favors by keeping those cheaters. If they know they can't be kicked out, they may keep cheating with a professor who isn't as savvy at catching them. They should have been kicked out and show zero tolerance. Frustrating for the professors.
Plagiarism is wrong, and should be punished, but why add insult to injury? Because they lied about their cheating? Jeez, just give them zeroes and tell them why and be done with it. Wasting his own time to humiliate them is just stupid and obnoxious.
I agree. As a college professor, I can't imagine wasting my time (he says he spent hours with each student) like this. I just give cheaters each a 0. And if they ask why, I tell them that it was clear they had cheated but if they want to protest, we can take it to the displinary council and each of us can give our side of the story. That makes them go away.
Load More Replies...I’m actually amazed that the uni didn’t want to do anything about it formally- when I was at med school, if there was even the smallest chance you cheated they made a huge deal out of it because it showed you may not have the honesty and integrity to be a doctor. There was even one guy who peed outside when he was super drunk and got caught and charged for ‘indecent exposure’ (I mean how many guys have peed on a tree at stupid o clock in the morning?) and he was asked by the uni to go away for a year and think about his maturity then had to come back into the year group below.
I don't get why this university wants to avoid legal action? Must be a private institution dependent on income from tuition, which is lost if they're expelled. Usually, a case like this would immediately be sent to legal to make a decision, and not even graded. Would have made a bigger impact on the cheaters, imo
I was completely lost how anyone could side against the teacher here, and never even considered siding with the students to be a possibility... until I looked up the reddit thread, and honestly I wish I hadn't. WHAT a sanctimonious bunch of karens! Entitled to "get" a grade, because they PAID for it?! I really hate that people are just allowed to have this attitude towards education now. When someone comes to me with a computer problem and even HINTS at an attitude like "can't you just do it?" I have to physically stop myself, take a second to close my eyes & breathe, then explain to them that I am not a wall-mounted dispenser they can just use. They invariably do not understand, so I explain that my expertise is a privilege for those willing to learn how to use their devices properly, not a vending machine for those too lazy to even google their problem. For those people there is Apple. Rich entitled prick is a choice, not a birthright.
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE LOAD OF BS; please attempt to make the ridiculous plausible in the future.
When i was a freshman, we had a programming course. We would start with simple program and add functions over time. The main goal was to implement new things we learned into our code. Some guys quickly learned that they can sell their code to lazier students, changing only function names. It was back in early 90s so there were no plagiarism checking websites. But we had an experienced professor. He never called anyone "cheater" (even though he would have noticed that the code he is looking at is the same he already saw multiple times). He just asked to make some little change to what the program does. If one wrote their code themselves, they could make these changes in a matter of minutes. I wasn't very good at programming. But i wrote every line of the code myself. And therefore i had no trouble changing it according to professor's requirements. Lazy ones wouldn't even spend some time to familiarize themselves with the code they paid for.
Not a single one of those who talk about the OP "not being professional" is a professor, including the ones who claimed that they were. People who plagiarize re the bane of existence of academia, and they are also the sort of people who destroy the lives of the the people from whom they plagiarize. This is especially true at universities in which the administration is too spineless to deal with plagiarism, and the students know this. Those students were all entitled little shits, not some poor innocent kids who made an honest mistake.
shot i WISH i had this kinda teacher. This dud has my respect i love him lol
While the teacher is entirely too excited about his revenge to be a good teacher, those students might (and I stress *might*) take it to heart that they haven't yet been officially caught cheating and do better next time. All around though, this sounds like a TA's revenge fantasy.
Well ... I did not cheat to get my Diploma. I mean, I loved most of my Diplom-topics anyway, it was as much internal combustion engine as possible, so cheating would be unnecessary anyway, and also wouldn't feel right. A few years before, minister K.T. zu Guttenberg had to resign for cheating in his Doctorate Thesis, so we already had cheating detection systems up and running anyway, no point to made there. School, OTOH, is an entire different thing IMO, as it hardly is about education anyway, but about the wrong kind of equality - not treat everyone equally, but make everyone equal by punishing being different. Cheating there, in order not to remain there a year? Sure. Wasn't even necessary, it was more to prove to myself how much I disregard the entire system, that I would more or less do whatever I see fit in order to graduate, with no regard to the actual grade - didn't bear any to me, but enabled to go learn interesting stuff.
This professor sure had a lot of time on their hands and a major penchant for revenge.
NO ONE BELIEVES ANY OF THIS, DO THEY? Students came back from break to discuss their grade? Professor (?) spent HOURS talking to students? BS and BS.
This is petty, and the professor has a fragile ego. That could adversely affect the quality of his teaching. But if, as it turned out, the university would have been silent about this, it would have been a grave injustice to the students who worked hard and the cheaters' future patients.
He trains soon to be medics that have to take professional care of their patients. They can be glad they didn't get banned from university or a lifetime ban for becoming medics. I don't want to be treated by a doc that only got a doc cause he cheated, could be the difference between life and death.
Load More Replies...Y'all forgetting that these students are in MED SCHOOL. You know what happens when people successfully cheat their way through med school? They become doctors who kill patients through incompetence or indifference.
And not just med school - they were specializing in ONCOLOGY. This is how cancers go undetected until it's too late.
Load More Replies..."If it was boring the first time, it won't get better the second time." Also: I know some folks are saying that "it's too much if it impacted their families." Whole lotta nope! They are the ones who instilled that entitlement! I've had to sit down with those parents (after they get written permission) and explain how their adult children cheated, didn't do their work, and now were expecting to be graded differently because of the impact it would have. Nope! Your little darling is going to lose their scholarships because of their lazy and entitled attitudes. If it is that important, then they should have done it well in the first place!! I point blank tell my students: if you feel the need to cheat, talk to me so we can make a plan to get you caught up. No sympathy for those who cheat and think they can get away with it.
That sentence rubbed me the wrong way as well... the arrogance, the GALL to suggest that the family responsible for burdening the world with such a despicably selfish imbecile, would or should somehow be exempt from the consequences of their actions? NO. F**K, NO. NEVER.
Load More Replies...All students know the timetable usually a year in advance in EU. Like from September until June. You also know the exam periods and when the grades come out. There's policies in place for discussing grades also marked in university calendar. It's students responsibility to know these dates and to consider these when booking holidays. I have skipped few family holidays due to college, but it was important to pass on first round and not repeat rather than holiday. Or even better study, present and if you fail at least you weren't a cheat! Usually when you get caught cheating you are BANNED from enrolling into universities it can be years before you may reapply. I have no sympathy for students, and lecturer has a right to pump grades if overall class results go down due to cheaters. You get points for trying and showing motivation to learn. I am onto my third degree and plagiarism is zero tolerance, you're out! Booking and going on holidays is a choice, so is passing modules. Priorities.
How dumb are students nowadays? I got my exam 19 years ago and even than our profs informed us about their Google skills to check for plagiarism. Fast forward 19 years, the Google algorithm is even better and they think they'll get away with it? Haha!
Teachers are often considered authority figures but they put in a lot of time grading, they're workers. I think that's why people didn't like seeing him do this. They don't want to see it from his side.
I was thinking there also may be some jealousy that they didn't think of doing the same.
Load More Replies...The zero mark on the grade would NOT be the appropriate punishment. The zero would be what the work was worth i.e. you did not write something new so you don't get the points allocated to having written something new. To be appropriately punished for the cheating part they need to ALSO be thrown out of school (as most have this written into the policies very sternly) or 'something else'. this teacher chose a 'something else' that allowed them to maybe learn a lesson and still stay in school. The fact he enjoyed it is irrelevant, but very human!
His boss didn't kick them out because they are afraid to have a legal battle. It wasn't his choice
Load More Replies...I hope these cheaters learned by this. Professor took extra time to show them they can be caught again. The boss isn't doing society any favors by keeping those cheaters. If they know they can't be kicked out, they may keep cheating with a professor who isn't as savvy at catching them. They should have been kicked out and show zero tolerance. Frustrating for the professors.
Plagiarism is wrong, and should be punished, but why add insult to injury? Because they lied about their cheating? Jeez, just give them zeroes and tell them why and be done with it. Wasting his own time to humiliate them is just stupid and obnoxious.
I agree. As a college professor, I can't imagine wasting my time (he says he spent hours with each student) like this. I just give cheaters each a 0. And if they ask why, I tell them that it was clear they had cheated but if they want to protest, we can take it to the displinary council and each of us can give our side of the story. That makes them go away.
Load More Replies...I’m actually amazed that the uni didn’t want to do anything about it formally- when I was at med school, if there was even the smallest chance you cheated they made a huge deal out of it because it showed you may not have the honesty and integrity to be a doctor. There was even one guy who peed outside when he was super drunk and got caught and charged for ‘indecent exposure’ (I mean how many guys have peed on a tree at stupid o clock in the morning?) and he was asked by the uni to go away for a year and think about his maturity then had to come back into the year group below.
I don't get why this university wants to avoid legal action? Must be a private institution dependent on income from tuition, which is lost if they're expelled. Usually, a case like this would immediately be sent to legal to make a decision, and not even graded. Would have made a bigger impact on the cheaters, imo
I was completely lost how anyone could side against the teacher here, and never even considered siding with the students to be a possibility... until I looked up the reddit thread, and honestly I wish I hadn't. WHAT a sanctimonious bunch of karens! Entitled to "get" a grade, because they PAID for it?! I really hate that people are just allowed to have this attitude towards education now. When someone comes to me with a computer problem and even HINTS at an attitude like "can't you just do it?" I have to physically stop myself, take a second to close my eyes & breathe, then explain to them that I am not a wall-mounted dispenser they can just use. They invariably do not understand, so I explain that my expertise is a privilege for those willing to learn how to use their devices properly, not a vending machine for those too lazy to even google their problem. For those people there is Apple. Rich entitled prick is a choice, not a birthright.
WHAT AN ABSOLUTE LOAD OF BS; please attempt to make the ridiculous plausible in the future.
When i was a freshman, we had a programming course. We would start with simple program and add functions over time. The main goal was to implement new things we learned into our code. Some guys quickly learned that they can sell their code to lazier students, changing only function names. It was back in early 90s so there were no plagiarism checking websites. But we had an experienced professor. He never called anyone "cheater" (even though he would have noticed that the code he is looking at is the same he already saw multiple times). He just asked to make some little change to what the program does. If one wrote their code themselves, they could make these changes in a matter of minutes. I wasn't very good at programming. But i wrote every line of the code myself. And therefore i had no trouble changing it according to professor's requirements. Lazy ones wouldn't even spend some time to familiarize themselves with the code they paid for.
Not a single one of those who talk about the OP "not being professional" is a professor, including the ones who claimed that they were. People who plagiarize re the bane of existence of academia, and they are also the sort of people who destroy the lives of the the people from whom they plagiarize. This is especially true at universities in which the administration is too spineless to deal with plagiarism, and the students know this. Those students were all entitled little shits, not some poor innocent kids who made an honest mistake.
shot i WISH i had this kinda teacher. This dud has my respect i love him lol
While the teacher is entirely too excited about his revenge to be a good teacher, those students might (and I stress *might*) take it to heart that they haven't yet been officially caught cheating and do better next time. All around though, this sounds like a TA's revenge fantasy.
Well ... I did not cheat to get my Diploma. I mean, I loved most of my Diplom-topics anyway, it was as much internal combustion engine as possible, so cheating would be unnecessary anyway, and also wouldn't feel right. A few years before, minister K.T. zu Guttenberg had to resign for cheating in his Doctorate Thesis, so we already had cheating detection systems up and running anyway, no point to made there. School, OTOH, is an entire different thing IMO, as it hardly is about education anyway, but about the wrong kind of equality - not treat everyone equally, but make everyone equal by punishing being different. Cheating there, in order not to remain there a year? Sure. Wasn't even necessary, it was more to prove to myself how much I disregard the entire system, that I would more or less do whatever I see fit in order to graduate, with no regard to the actual grade - didn't bear any to me, but enabled to go learn interesting stuff.
This professor sure had a lot of time on their hands and a major penchant for revenge.
NO ONE BELIEVES ANY OF THIS, DO THEY? Students came back from break to discuss their grade? Professor (?) spent HOURS talking to students? BS and BS.
This is petty, and the professor has a fragile ego. That could adversely affect the quality of his teaching. But if, as it turned out, the university would have been silent about this, it would have been a grave injustice to the students who worked hard and the cheaters' future patients.
He trains soon to be medics that have to take professional care of their patients. They can be glad they didn't get banned from university or a lifetime ban for becoming medics. I don't want to be treated by a doc that only got a doc cause he cheated, could be the difference between life and death.
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