Wrap Up ... School's Over

Tuesday January 8
Laugh of the day ... Maggie, who works in the office is telling me what I have to turn in for final grades. They want the Test score at 70% and final exam for 30%. I say “ops .. I misunderstood. I though tis was 30% test, 70% final exam!” I am in trouble now ... then Chen, her boss says, no Ron is correct, and we all have a big laugh.

Wednesday January 9
Last day of exams. Not what I expected.

First exam in the morning went well. There were a couple of students looking around too much, but nothing serious. In the afternoon, I had two back to back. All three exams were with the same students.

My invigilator was late for the second exam, so I was alone. I started by giving a speech on cheating. I told them not to cheat. The penalty can haunt them for the rest of their lives. It is not worth it for a few minutes of joy when you get the grades in the mail. Then you realize you did not earn the grade, and did not learn anything. You cheated yourself.

About 30 minutes in, I notice a student copying form a small piece of paper. I go over, and it has a drawing from the test written on it. I take it from her, and I am a little annoyed. She is a good student. As I am walking away, I notice a piece of paper sticking out from under another student’s paper. I go over, and sure enough, he has a sheet with notes on it. I take it from him. I am walking back to the front, and a piece of paper lands on the floor near my feet. It has answers on it too.

I am furious by now. Three cheaters caught in a five minute stretch. I am looking for my gun, and the nearest post office so I can go postal (joke). Just then the other invigilator comes in. I showed her the three sheet of paper. She was very angry too.

I have caught many cheaters before. One here, one there, two in an exam helping each other, or writing an assignment together, but never more than one incident on a test or exam. This was three different incidences on one exam. They were not even sitting close to each other. They were all cheating on their own.

I am not going to ramble on, but I almost came to tears an hour later at the third exam. I had to stand in front of the same students, and screw a smile on my face. No matter how much I tried, I looked at every student ... students who had become my friends, taken me to their homes to stay, bought me gifts, and taken me to new and wonderful places, and thought they were all cheaters. I could not even look at the three I had caught. I wanted to leave, and go have a beer, but I could not. The anger, hurt, feeling of betrayal. The trust and respect, worked on and cultivated over five months, all destroyed in five minutes. One cheater would not have bothered me, I can handle one. But three? And one is / was a good student.

For a while, I even suspected the three that are closest to me ... Rone, Jennifer and Linda. I do not know which was worse, suspecting them of cheating, or the guilt that I also felt because I was now suspecting them of cheating. It was an awful feeling. That is how I will remember my last day teaching here in China.

Thursday January 10
Jimei Gate continues.

I have learned what the penalty is for cheating. The girl tells me she can not go to graduate school, can not join the party, can not get a government job. She has just ruined years of work to establish herself. She claims she is innocent, and she may be right. But if she did not actually cheat, she could never, in a thousand years prove it. Those that know the story of how I met Lin know I would never accuse someone of cheating unless there was overwhelming evidence, and there is.

She was caught red-handed, copying a diagram from a small piece of paper. She wrote me a note during the next exam claiming she was innocent on a similar piece of paper taken from her bag. That was the final proof to me, that she did cheat. The piece of paper she handed me was from a small pad of paper, and was the same size and colour as the one she was caught with. BUT, the one with the diagram on had been folded in four to fit in pocket. Being folded up was the piece of evidence to convince me she was guilty.

The two boys have confessed. They brought in cheat sheets to try and pass the course.

Sunday January 12
Well. The plot thickens.

I should give the girl a name ... so I will. I will call he Yvonne. So does everyone else who can not pronounce her real / Chinese name.

I finished marking the rest of the exams on the weekend. The final exam I marked was Operations. It was the longest and hardest, both to write and grade. I Followed my usual routine, picking out two top and two middle students and grade and double check my marking scheme. I then did the three cheaters.

When they wrote the Operations exam, it was only one hour after the Warehousing exam on which I had caught them cheating. The boys, being boys, were cool. They sat, took their time and finished in the usual amount of time. I expected the marks to be low.

Hugh had been slacking off all term. He came to class and talked instead of listening. I had a number of conversations with him after classes to try and get some work out of him. He was the lowest score on one of the tests, and close on the other two. He had trouble with very basic English. No cheat sheet? He scored only six percent.

Kane was also a concern. He was a singer and guitar player. He was the one who got me the guitar for the party. It was the drummer and bass player in his band who were now part of HELLO, my band. He wanted to party and jam with me many times, but I told him he had to come to more classes, and when he did come he had to stay awake. He was up playing all night, and slept through class most of the time. No cheat sheet? Thirty percent.

Yvonne was different. She came to class and listened. She is in the pictures of the four girls at my apartment back in September. She shares a dorm room with Rone and Jennifer, two of the top three Mah Fans. She wrote this exam in only 30 minutes. A good 20 minutes before anyone else. She then left the room in tears. It was at this time she wrote the note I spoke of earlier. No cheat sheet? Ninety one percent. Tied for second highest mark in the class.

Something didn’t fit here. I now knew she didn’t cheat her way to her high marks. The argument that good students don’t cheat does not hold. Perhaps they are good student because they are good at cheating! I decided maybe she deserved a break today ... I would not send her to McDonald’s. I still think she cheated, but now had some reason to give her a break. She thanked me and told me she was trying to get into a special program to be a judge. A cheating note on her file would prevent this.

Just after I told her she would get a break, I got an interesting phone call. The person would only say they were a friend of someone in my class, and knew Yvonne had done this a number of times in other classes. Maybe she cheated to go from 90 to 95? I will look into this again.

Monday January 13
All done. I am now unemployed. I turned in my grades, all the exams, an update on the students I had wrote about a month ago, and a discussion paper on alternate punishments for cheating.

I have until January 28, when I leave for Hong Kong. I will do some sight seeing, shopping for more DVD’s, as if 350 are not enough. Four hundred if you count the ones for the kids, wife and friends. Back to only 350 if you consider I bought TWO sets of M*A*S*H. The two suits and traditional Chinese men’s shirts re great. A few other things, but I am done shopping because I have little space left, little room for more weight, and I am over on dollar value.

I will ship home a box by surface mail. In it I will put books and school supplies, and most of the summer clothes. I can wait the two months for them to arrive in Canada. I won’t be wearing shorts there in March.

I am starting to plan the Hong Kong trip. I am staying right downtown. I arrive at noon on Monday, and leave at 4 PM on Thursday. That gives me two and half days of sight seeing. The last day will be a short shopping trip before I check out and head to the airport.

Thursday, January 17
The three cheaters wrote their make up exams today. One got in the nineties, one got 65 and one failed by a lot. Hugh, the one whose English was the worst, and only got six percent last week on the Operations exam surprised me. He got the 65. He actually passed the course. Final mark of 60. Yvonne finished first, breezed through the exam and finished with a 92 on the exam. Kane, my guitar playing friend only scored a 49% on the exam. Maybe he will pass next time.

I put a note on the board for them to read

“ For You to think about ...
You cheated to get a few extra marks on an exam.
You lost my trust
You lost my respect
You lost my friendship
You wasted my time and yours
Was it worth it?”

The water department made a visit today. I have only had one student ever cry about me leaving. Kitty, from Woburn Collegiate. She cried very hard when I left there. She was a wonderful Chinese girl, and every now and then I wonder what she is doing now.

I had two students come by today and leave me presents. They cried. I am sure there will be more. I do not leave for another eleven days. Already many have asked to see me off at the airport. I suspect my turn will come - it is contagious. If enough of them cry, I may too.

There are a few old saying that come to mind. “For as we get older, it is not the things we did that we often regret, but the things we didn’t do.” I will never regret coming to China. “It doesn't matter what we had along the way, but how we live our lives and the lives we touch along the way.” I have touch many lives here, as I am learning now, and many have touched me.