Cheating?

Ri na hEireann

Is the current state of the mocks as apparent on this board a reflection of peoples moral values or is it really just a little bit of harmless help?

Personally I don't care whether you cheat or not. Everyone cheats at some point of their lifes but is the openess of the cheating here, your average student please the parents thing, or is it more a moral decline in whats right and wrong?

Most people claim its because they're so "screwed" in a certain subject and that its not about pleasing anyone else but then that completely defeats the purpose of cheating in the first place?

I've yet to decide whether this cheating is beneficial or not by the way. In fairness the topics you know are coming up in the mocks will be well covered by those who do cheat so maybe its not such a bad thing?

Doriath

its not cheating its using study aides

Overheal

Cheating (ie. using study aides) teaches you nothing. If you can get on in life cheating all the way then fire away to you. But from what I can see there are very few shortcuts to be taken in the real world. You get into a career and your boss asks you to do x y and z. You wont have the answer handed to you; you will be expected to generate it yourself. Or, you will get fired.

Cut corners and eventually it comes back to haunt you. You will sit in that exam hall and kick yourself at least once for not having put the proper effort into it; those questions you should be able to answer but can't because you were relying on your cheat sheets to have the solution for you. Say you're in your English exam and while you really know Yeats you decide not to study it because you are convinced it wont come up in favor of another poet. What happens if he does? Your fuxxored because you will end up misquoting half the material that you didnt study well enough.

You already have proper study aides - theyre called teachers and when they say study 5 poets its because that gives you the Greatest Chance of Success. Teachers have a lot more experience with these exams than you or I.

teckoda

Cheating in the Pre's is complete pointless. The Pre's are there to give us a rough idea of where we stand. And whats the point of it if we do well with cheating? We don't know where we stand.

I don't intend on cheating as i'm hoping that the Pre's will give me a bit of a fright in terms of the real leaving cert so i can my ass in gear and find some motivation.

Jack Vegas

The point that you are all missing is that what's happening here isn't strictly "cheating". The students are telling one another what topics to study. If each student finds out what is on each of the two mock papers in circulation, and learns the content of each, they have learned a great deal of information which will almost certainly help their progress towards the final Leaving Certificate. It's not as if students are comparing techniques to sneak cheat-notes into exams or anything.

Timans

I have seen the occasional part of exams, never a full paper though. The way I see it, it's better to learn a diluted amount of the course very well, than a lot of the course half arsed. Of course, I'm not going to know what's coming up on the real thing, which is why I don't go searching for full papers, or for every subject.

Jack Vegas

Timans wrote: »

IThe way I see it, it's better to learn a diluted amount of the course very well, than a lot of the course half arsed.

This guy knows the score.

Overheal

If you were paying attention the whole 2 years you wouldnt need to be relying on your diluted theory.

thats right. I used a pun.

Mark200

Exactly ^

Cheating in the mocks is harmless, but not pointless. Some people find themselves just days away from the mocks, and nothing studied. They'll know that they've cheated when they get their results, but for many if they don't know what's on the test then they won't bother studying at all because it's too late. But if they do know what's coming up, they'll study those topics well. Therefore, being more beneficial than not knowing what's coming up because those topics that they studied well will largely stick with them until the LC.

Overheal

In which case though its still better to take the advice of your teacher. Like I said about the Math Paper 2 and it applies to most all of the science subjects; just start with your optional question for study, then work your way backward.

But LISTEN TO YOUR TEACHERS. They do a helluvalot of research on your behalf to begin with. They are constantly looking for patterns in the exam papers so they can get back to you and say "Yes, there will be a female poet on the paper." "Supply and Demand is not likely to come up this year." or etc.

And you don't know for certain who has set your mock, so you might be completely prepared for one mock and receive another. instead, prepare yourself for the subject; not the exam. If you sit down and break it down, every subject has its own emergency techniques for the procrastinators out there. For instance: spending a day memorizing/writing out all of the Physics definitions and the math equations will give you a broad-spectrum recap on the course. You'll come out of the exam worse off if you try and minimize the number of topics/sections you study.

They'll know they cheated but by the time the real deal is on the way they will look at that undeserved mark and think "oh I got 85% in the mocks... I'll be ok." Then your fuxxored.

nerdysal

I absolutely hate cheating. Sure I used to do it in 1st and 2nd yr but I learnt the error of my ways. I never cheat ever... It's of no benefit and I find when I do really badly in a test I remember all the stuff that I didn't know so much better.

Killaqueen!!!

^ You're a nerd

Nah, everyone knows cheating is wrong...blah blah blah. But as you said we've all done it. I haven't done major cheating in a long time and I don't plan to. To cheat in the mocks is downright stupid but if you can cheat in the LC and get away with it, fair play to ya is all I can say. Hope it works out for you.

People say "You can always repeat" and that's true but apart from that fact, the LC is one of the most important exams you'll take in your life and dictates what kind of career you'll get into/good job/good money etc. so me myself, I think it's pretty important. And I'll be sh1tting it when I'm in 6th year. With all the stress of it, I understand why people would want to cheat. But for the mocks? Whats the point..