The One Time I Cheated

The story of the students who were disciplined for setting up a Facebook discussion group on the subject of an apologetics course which they didn't like reminded me of the only time I cheated as a student.

While I was at Loyola University in New Orleans, the head of the history department or the president of the university, someone in authority, ordered that all final exams in the department include a section on the Reformation. In my American history class, we were handed a rather fat stack of mimeographed sheets on the Reformation (or Protestant Revolt, as it was often called) to study. We were outraged. Our professor did not like the idea at all, but I suppose he had no choice.

A few days before the exam, a key to the true-false test answers for the Reformation part of the exam found its way into the hands of the students, and we all took advantage of it. I answered a few questions wrong, so my paper would not look suspicious. When I finished my exam, most of which consisted of essay questions on American history, plus the mandatory true-false Reformation test, I asked the professor what percentage of the grade the Reformation test would count for. He said 1%.

The powers ordered the profs to include the Reformation test, but they rebelled by counting it as only a tiny percentage of the grade. Once I heard that, I was ashamed of cheating. The teacher was brilliant and fair, and I should have trusted him to make things right.

I'm not counting the time in the second grade, when I missed several days of school due to illness, and I had quite a few pages of math problems in my workbook to make up. I was falling asleep over the math, and my mother told me to go to bed, and I could finish in the morning. When I woke up, the problems were already done, by my mother writing with her left hand.

I hope that no one in authority at Loyola reads this post and renders my diploma null and void, but really, at this point, what would it matter?