The Weekly Dormouse. (aka Bike, est. 2007) Part 3236 by Angharad Copyright© 2018 Angharad

During the next week I marked the dissertation I'd been trying to read and felt the author deserved the mark I'd given it. It was clearly worthy of a PhD, however these days it also has to go through our anti-plagiarism software. Practically everything we mark nowadays has to pass through it and if it throws up two papers of any sort with very similar wording, then an enquiry may be held. Occasionally, collaboration is required by one or more students but those are relatively rare and there is a protocol for those. Something I don't miss is marking exams or coursework submissions, they are a real pain but it's important that we measure progress in our students or tell them to pull their fingers out.

I noticed that we had another bank holiday approaching, in the old days I looked forward to them because it gave me another day to be with my family, nowadays it usually means I've brought work home to do instead of going into the office. Very occasionally, I have actually gone into the office for some peace and quiet.

The girls are mostly able to amuse themselves these days and only require minimal supervision to make sure they're not dissecting the cat or seeing how much they can inflate a spaniel with the compressor--all in the name of scientific enquiry, naturally.

They once tried to discover if goldfish could live in salt water by adding a bag of kitchen salt to Tom's fish pond. The fish couldn't and all died, which was when Meems came and told me what was going on. I had to pump out the pond, bury the bodies and refill the pond with fresh goldfish before Tom came home. I played hell with Trish, who was the main instigator, who justified her experiment as moving the knowledge base forward.

I asked her where she was going to publish, bearing in mind her grandfather would probably see it and not be too pleased. She told me that I could write it up for her as my spelling was better but she wanted to listed as the main author and she thought Nature may be interested.

My response was not exactly conducive to her plans and the suggestion that the RSPCA may be more interested than Nature in someone torturing fish to see what happened.

"But it's what Newton would have done--it's empirical."

"Newton was a physicist and mathematician, not a biologist."

"He worked on apples."

"Only as part of his lunch."

"What about gravity?"

"It's possibly a myth that he was inspired to investigate what caused an object to fall to the ground after seeing an apple fall."

"I thought it hit him on the head."

"If that had happened, he wouldn't have seen it fall, would he?"

"He mighta done, looked up as it hit him."

"He may have done many things but I think the story that an apple fell on him isn't one of them."

"But you don't know for certain, do you?"

"Trish, no one knows for certain as it's so long ago. But probability shows it's most unlikely."

"We'll see about that," she turned and stamped off to do her own calculations. However, two hours later she came back and sullenly announced, "I hate it when you get the maths right."

"Meaning?" I'd forgotten about our earlier discussion as I was getting the dinner because David had a couple of days off.

"Newton probably wasn't hit on the head by the apple."

"Ah," now it made sense.

"It would more likely have hit shoulder or back."

"Or his hat--don't forget they all wore hats in those days."

"Why?"

"Stop apples falling on their heads," quipped Livvie walking past.

After that the discussion descended into silliness and they walked around in dizzy circles trying to pretend they'd been hit by an earthbound piece of fruit. A pommet no doubt.

Somehow, the weather hadn't noticed we were heading to a holiday weekend because in the south of the country it was forecast to be hot and sunny, with temperatures possibly warmer than Rome; which I suppose would be irritating if you'd just gone there for a holiday from the South of England or Wales.

Being a bank holiday, Simon would be home from the Friday evening, to either Monday afternoon or evening or Tuesday morning. I hoped it was the latter as we seem some weeks to be ships that pass in the night--actually that's incorrect, because we sometimes don't pass each other at any time if he's up in town and I'm here in the backwaters of civilisation.

I checked my diary. We have exams coming up and everyone helps with invigilation including me. It is so boring, it probably is worse than sitting the exam, but we have to do it. Cheating is on the increase, it even said so in the press recently, which does two things: it shows lack of respect by the student for the university and also it shows contempt for their fellow students who aren't cheating.

Cheating happens in all forms of assessment, essays, research submissions, exams and coursework. Much of it is copying someone else's work from the internet, buying in an essay from the net, or from a previous student. Then there is the ingenious use of technology, smart phones or watches, calculators which have been reprogrammed to become mini computers or transmitters/receivers. If they're that clever, why do they need to cheat?

The consequences are immediate and final. The student is expelled from the exam or course and from the university. There is an appeals process but unless they're even cleverer than they were in their fraud, the verdict stands and they are in the old vernacular, 'sent down'. These days, it's understandable that students are worried about paying off loans to pay for their education, but if they are expelled, they'd still be liable for fees and the loans they took out to pay them. So altogether, it's a huge risk to take, plus you would know at the end of the day that you were a cheat and you can't fool yourself.

I like to think that none of my girls would do that, cheat, because I've tried to instil a sense of honour in them, which occasionally has rebounded on me because they considered I told a lie about something and they were all suitably unimpressed or disappointed in their mother, who has to be angelic at all times--yeah, right.

Simon told me the other week that the bank had sacked someone who claimed to have passed some exam or other required for a particular level of job, and they found he'd forged the certificate or diploma, whichever it was, and he was disciplined and shown the door. Apparently, they have a small department which does random checks on the qualifications staff claim to possess and they publish their results in the internal newsletter, so banks staff in High Street Banks, know that it isn't worth it to cheat because they could be caught out at any time by the random checks that are done.

I actually approve of it and seeing as we have been caught out with so called qualified lecturers, have introduced a similar system to our department which the university is looking to implement across the whole faculty.