Academia's a sellout
So I've got an exam tomorrow, and I can't write too much right now, but I felt like ranting.

Why are some people in school at all?

There is a clique of people in my class that does nothing but copy assignments between themselves, memorize solutions, and essentially, do everything that school should not be about.

I'm sick and tired of being asked if I've done an assignment or not, only to be prodded for the answers (or in some cases, my final document!). I mean, I understand if you're stuck, and if you're just asking for some hint in which direction to go. But to ask for the step by step analysis, to essentially have the answers handed to you with no effort is quite annoying, not to mention dishonest.

I've helped my fair share of people in good faith, explaining to them the idea of the assignment question (when I did understand it), only to see my explanation written word for word in their final document. I've had to explain my way out of a plagiarism charge when I had one of my 'friends' hand in a pre-lab that looked exactly like mine (except the formatting) because I've had them print it off for me when I ran out of ink. Way to trust people, eh?

Anyway, what irks me more is that because of this type of clique, our marks lose all meaning. These people put together google docs and the like that summarize all the answers for assignments, for questions that the professor is kind enough to give to us to study off of. They defeat the learning process, and I'm getting sick and tired of having a shittier average than some because they choose to copy off of each other.

It doesn't help that the exams themselves are tailored to this rote memorization method, leaving the people more interested in learning for themselves, in learning the why's of it all, shit out of luck.

We have an exam that forces us to think (that essentially those that work by rote memorization cannot study for using their methods) and they bitch. They bitch until the marks get redistributed, until the weighting gets changed, or until we get a new exam tailored to their whims. We get one where the material has no depth, and they applaud the professor, leaving a bitter taste in their mouth and mine.

I don't care if I do that poorly, mainly because I'm not in for grad school or anything like that - I'm in this program for myself. I'm in this program to learn for myself. I do care, however, when all of my hard work means nothing because some people got together, used their fake friendships/sex appeal/whatever and compiled all of the correct answers for the assignment the night before it was due while I and many others toiled away at the problems, sources, and so forth for days or in some cases, weeks.

There's something clearly broken with either our program, our group members, or education in general. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has to deal with this kind of shit.

Thoughts?

Oh, yeah, I have an exam to sleep for. Hooray for late exam, means I get an extra few hours to study tomorrow.