Why be good when you can be better?
I had an exam today.
I cheated on it.
Almost. Well, not really. But I could have.
We take our exams online, and they start at 9:00, but you can start whenever, as long as you have it turned in by 1:00. As a consequence, people usually study a bit before downloading the exam. As usual, I had about 10 different Word documents, a few Internet Explorer windows, a Mozilla window, and couple open before I started the exam. I closed them all (or so I thought)*, save for the essay we were supposed to upload and the Explorer folders. I uploaded that, and downloaded the short answer section, opened it up, closed out the essay, and started the perusing the short answer, making notes here and there, not realizing that I still had last year's exam (and answers) still up on my computer. I opened another window to do the multiple choice section, went back to the short answer, made another copy of the short answer so I could see all the questions at once without my answers getting in the way... anyways, whole mess of windows, and about halfway through the exam, switching back and forth among windows, I realized I still had 2007's exam open and right there on my computer. I even had to stare at it awhile, because some of the questions were identical to my exam, and it took me a moment to realize they weren't my answers. At any rate, I saw nothing of importance, but I got startled and closed it all up.
An innocent mistake really; I'll blame it on the sleep deprivation. It's not even that interesting a story, but it got me thinking... at any point during that exam, I could have easily cheated, and not gotten caught. I could've just pulled up an old exam, or opened a new tab on my browser to look up an answer. It wouldn't have been difficult; besides, no one would ever admit to paying that much attention to someone else's computer screen during in the middle of taking an exam. It would have been that easy--and I wonder, for how many people has it already been that easy?
I make no pretense to any sort of moral superiority over anyone else, although I guess by virtue of writing this, I'm doing just that. However, I think it's not so much a sense of moral superiority that keeps me from cheating, but the knowledge that, no matter how small a crime, it would plague me for days, weeks, or even years. The act itself would be easy, yes, but the self-inflicted consequences would be unbearable. But why is that? Why would it bother me so much? That's a tougher question, I think. Of course there are arguments about karma and fear of retribution and the human being's overdeveloped sense of fair play, but can those really explain why someone who has nothing to lose from a clearly "unethical" act decides not to do it?
When I went to the AAMC conference, one of the schools presented a poster on how they had totally redone their honor system, and that got me to talking about UVA's Honor System with a bunch of people who had never heard of it before. It's interesting; I hated the idea of instituting an Honor Code at TJ when I was a student there, and in some respects, I still do. Still, I worked for the Honor System at UVA for 4 years, I was good at it, and it was an amazing experience. Yet, to a certain extent, I recognize the undercurrent of self-important ridiculousness in the notion that we, as an institution, could fabricate individual integrity out of nothing more than some communal sense of right and wrong, and the threat of a single, terrible sanction.
Anyways, since the conference, I've been thinking a lot about questions of personal integrity, strength of character, and the absolutes and relatives of rights and wrongs. About good and bad, and good and evil. About the meaning of success and a life well-lived. About what motivates... or better yet, what inspires. How do they all fit together? What's the difference between the admirable and the abhorrent, and why, despite their individual power, is it so easy to subvert one with the other (in either direction)? Is personal integrity really "personal", or is it only meaningful in the context of relationships? Can good and evil exist in isolation?
Curiosity is tiring. I'm taking a nap, and I really do need it. Whether I cheated on it or not, that exam would have been an abusive partner anyway. Oh well, at least it was a brief affair (although it certainly didn't seem like it at the time).
*Actually, this is something that honestly annoys me about Office 2003. All the Word documents aren't put into one neat little Word window. If you open them separately, there are separate Word windows, so if you close them out, you can't actually see if there are other documents open unless you check your taskbar (mine is on auto-hide) or if it's the window right underneath the one you just closed. It makes things seem so disorganized. I like Acrobat's set-up better. All the PDF's open up in one parent window. Neat. Compact. Not that I'm obsessive-compulsive or anything.
I cheated on it.
Almost. Well, not really. But I could have.
We take our exams online, and they start at 9:00, but you can start whenever, as long as you have it turned in by 1:00. As a consequence, people usually study a bit before downloading the exam. As usual, I had about 10 different Word documents, a few Internet Explorer windows, a Mozilla window, and couple open before I started the exam. I closed them all (or so I thought)*, save for the essay we were supposed to upload and the Explorer folders. I uploaded that, and downloaded the short answer section, opened it up, closed out the essay, and started the perusing the short answer, making notes here and there, not realizing that I still had last year's exam (and answers) still up on my computer. I opened another window to do the multiple choice section, went back to the short answer, made another copy of the short answer so I could see all the questions at once without my answers getting in the way... anyways, whole mess of windows, and about halfway through the exam, switching back and forth among windows, I realized I still had 2007's exam open and right there on my computer. I even had to stare at it awhile, because some of the questions were identical to my exam, and it took me a moment to realize they weren't my answers. At any rate, I saw nothing of importance, but I got startled and closed it all up.
An innocent mistake really; I'll blame it on the sleep deprivation. It's not even that interesting a story, but it got me thinking... at any point during that exam, I could have easily cheated, and not gotten caught. I could've just pulled up an old exam, or opened a new tab on my browser to look up an answer. It wouldn't have been difficult; besides, no one would ever admit to paying that much attention to someone else's computer screen during in the middle of taking an exam. It would have been that easy--and I wonder, for how many people has it already been that easy?
I make no pretense to any sort of moral superiority over anyone else, although I guess by virtue of writing this, I'm doing just that. However, I think it's not so much a sense of moral superiority that keeps me from cheating, but the knowledge that, no matter how small a crime, it would plague me for days, weeks, or even years. The act itself would be easy, yes, but the self-inflicted consequences would be unbearable. But why is that? Why would it bother me so much? That's a tougher question, I think. Of course there are arguments about karma and fear of retribution and the human being's overdeveloped sense of fair play, but can those really explain why someone who has nothing to lose from a clearly "unethical" act decides not to do it?
When I went to the AAMC conference, one of the schools presented a poster on how they had totally redone their honor system, and that got me to talking about UVA's Honor System with a bunch of people who had never heard of it before. It's interesting; I hated the idea of instituting an Honor Code at TJ when I was a student there, and in some respects, I still do. Still, I worked for the Honor System at UVA for 4 years, I was good at it, and it was an amazing experience. Yet, to a certain extent, I recognize the undercurrent of self-important ridiculousness in the notion that we, as an institution, could fabricate individual integrity out of nothing more than some communal sense of right and wrong, and the threat of a single, terrible sanction.
Anyways, since the conference, I've been thinking a lot about questions of personal integrity, strength of character, and the absolutes and relatives of rights and wrongs. About good and bad, and good and evil. About the meaning of success and a life well-lived. About what motivates... or better yet, what inspires. How do they all fit together? What's the difference between the admirable and the abhorrent, and why, despite their individual power, is it so easy to subvert one with the other (in either direction)? Is personal integrity really "personal", or is it only meaningful in the context of relationships? Can good and evil exist in isolation?
Curiosity is tiring. I'm taking a nap, and I really do need it. Whether I cheated on it or not, that exam would have been an abusive partner anyway. Oh well, at least it was a brief affair (although it certainly didn't seem like it at the time).
*Actually, this is something that honestly annoys me about Office 2003. All the Word documents aren't put into one neat little Word window. If you open them separately, there are separate Word windows, so if you close them out, you can't actually see if there are other documents open unless you check your taskbar (mine is on auto-hide) or if it's the window right underneath the one you just closed. It makes things seem so disorganized. I like Acrobat's set-up better. All the PDF's open up in one parent window. Neat. Compact. Not that I'm obsessive-compulsive or anything.