> Especially as a teacher, you get used to seeing the, uh, quality of work that gets produced.
There was a time when I had to discuss a paper that was too well written with a student. The paper was too well written in both my eyes and the eyes of others. The student told me which journals they read and explained they read it for both content and style. Were they cheating? Perhaps. On the other hand, I have never encountered a cheat who cared enough to make it look like they cared about how they approach learning.
I got accused of cheating once in a college intro class because my paper was ‘too good’. They had no actual evidence, it’s just that I spent a lot of time on it. It really pissed me off and was one of the reasons I took only the bare minimum of non-math/engineering classes. In math no one ever accused me of cheating if I came up with a clever proof so it felt a lot more respectful.
Yeah, it is a very sad state of affairs when a genuine effort is considered suspect. The thing is, so few students put in the effort and many of those who you do talk to are upfront about expecting a certain grade. It very much taints the expectations on both sides of the fence.
There was a time when I had to discuss a paper that was too well written with a student. The paper was too well written in both my eyes and the eyes of others. The student told me which journals they read and explained they read it for both content and style. Were they cheating? Perhaps. On the other hand, I have never encountered a cheat who cared enough to make it look like they cared about how they approach learning.