The season of AP Exams being immediately anterior to that of the regular finals, the first day rapidly proved to be a big nightmare to her because two of her four exams of the AP season happen back-to-back: US Government and Chemistry. Nightmare because she only had one weekend to study for both exams to the exclusion of all else.
But after the big nightmare, she can then proceed more calmly, because she feels like she can score a 5 on the AP calculus BC exam without any complication, especially when she considers the final phase of the Square Root of the Answer which asked multi-variable problems. Visibly bothered by the Advanced Placement chemistry course, several students come to her to ask her a favor the following week, after the end of the French exam. It should be said that it was the only AP exam that Dylan would end up taking. Speaking of Dylan, here he comes with Shane, who is visibly burnt out, but his academic challenges were not at all over.
That said, their report card won't be final before July because of the « highest between the regular final and the AP Exam » clause and the regular finals are administered, for advanced placement courses, in the order in which the AP Exams were administered.
"I apologize for looking down on multi-variable material, but also for these fights over content during the AP French project. For my forgiveness, I have a plan, if you accept" Shane pleads with her.
"Before I decide, I would like to know your situation in this course please. We weren't in the same section" Gen asks him.
If it's about a cheating plan, I believe that Marcia would be more inclined to accept than I. That said, we must realize that chemistry, like calculus BC, are two courses reputed to be very demanding and, for this reason, are courses that tend to primarily attract the best students in the class. They keep a close watch on their grades and, unlike the calculus course, where my confidence is more than absolute, in chemistry, I still have some way to go; extra credit was distributed very sparingly, she thinks, while Shane, who hasn't always been nice towards her, seems to be a little annoyed in this advanced placement chemistry course.
"All right... my estimate is that, to obtain an A in this course, I will need, in the absence of curvature, it will take me a ninety-three or better. Not easy but you are my only hope!" Shane yells at her.
"What do you mean, I'm your only hope? It's not about mathematics at all! And don't forget that it's the highest between the regular final and the AP Exam that will count, like any other AP course. I don't want to hear any more about that here; we should not be talking about it directly, at least not on campus"
With the invites on Teams that are sent out left and right, given by Shane, the meeting becomes virtual, the stakeholders thinking that the administrators won't realize anything if they don't openly talk about it in the hallway. For now, there's no one other than these two people who accepted it.
"You know among whom you can choose! There must be an egghead in your section that will accept to help you study or cheat!" she begins speaking.
"They accept, but the plan is too large for a single section; for it to work, it will require both sections" Shane points out.
"Unfortunately, the bigger the plan, the bigger the risks as well"
"Here's what it will require: two students, one in each section, with a mechanical pencil equipped with a hidden camera, and an intermediary will receive the video feeds from both mechanical pencils, two more students with a laser pointer and a smart watch who will communicate the multiple-choice answers"
"Multiple-choice questions are not the end of the story on this exam; there will certainly be a problem or two with short-form or long-form answers. This part of the plan does not cover everything, and, even if we could use mechanical pencils, cheating with a mechanical pencil requires having dental medicine-caliber dexterity!"
"I hope that there is one of two among you dreaming of dental medicine that will be ready to supply the required mechanical pencils, in which case making this scheme work would be a good indication of whether your dream can come true!"
That's the dark side of attending a school where students are not ranked; cheating schemes tend to have a much greater reach, she thinks before Dylan enters the conversation, and the first two stakeholders have left the campus.
"I only take a single advanced placement course, but why did you invite me to participate in this cheating scheme?" Dylan asks, confused because his only advanced placement course is the French one.
"I know from experience that the teachers will never suspect a student of cheating in an exam for a course that the student does not take. Also, the teachers will be more likely to go after the demand side than the suppliers" Shane tells him.
"That was more for Marcia or Gen than I" Dylan adds to this conversation.
"Dylan, you disappoint me a lot. During the entire year, you continually asked me for help for all kinds of courses, especially in French and in pre-calculus, can you please do me this favor, it will be the last time. On top of that, the people to whom you asked for help in the science courses will also be there in the plan or take advantage of it!" Marcia responds to Dylan.
"And I thought that you guys over in chemistry or calculus were all studious people that had their noses deep in their books, and certainly you three!" Dylan mumbles.
"Let's go back to the task at hand. For the short and long answer questions of the test, it will take two people per section to be seated next to each other at the front of the class. I will do so myself for my section" Marcia suggests. "The problem is your section, Gen"
"If that's how it's going to be, Marcia, I will be seated diagonally behind you" Shane says.
The infamous pyramidal cheating, where everyone wanting to cheat must look diagonally to look at the answers, either to their left or to their right, and position themselves accordingly. There's little risk involved; however, the fruits of a cheating pyramid depends on the person at the apex.
"All right, Marcia, I will supply the mechanical pencils with hidden camera for this plan! You will even receive one as a gesture of good faith!" Dylan announces.
"And I volunteer myself for using the laser pointer!" Sam announces in turn, while he has the chemistry textbook on a second screen.
Is that what he calls begging for forgiveness to me for his attitude of the past four months? A doubtful Geneviève ruminates, but she knows that, even without an organized plan, people instinctively sought, at least in calculus, to position themselves for the best possible access to her answers. Clearly, some students sought to make the best use of their position in the room to cheat.
"It pains me to admit it, but I am used to people cheating on my back in an exam, especially in calculus, I acknowledge that it's the price to pay for my very own academic excellence. That said, if you counted on it for the calculus course and that you are in my section for this course, unfortunately, I will not be writing it" Gen announces to them.
"Why?" Sam asks her.
"You can easily imagine the quantity of extra credit that I must have accumulated because of the competition and of all those supplemental problems in homework!"
"But now that we have resolved almost everything of the organization of this chemistry exam, let's study each on our own!" Shane makes a closing comment.
"Not quite, we only have one person that will use the laser pointer and we need someone in the other section!" Sam retorts.
"And who will supply the answers to the multiple-choice questions?" Dylan asks, aware that the answer choice supplier must be with him for this part of the cheating plan to work properly.
"Don't worry, Dylan, I know someone who will be with you for this" Shane answers the football player.
Since the studying process has begin about two weeks ago, since nearly everyone in both sections also took the corresponding AP exam, studying for this exam should be done without complication. Some problems here and there, drawn from past years' AP exams; after all, in most advanced placement courses, in sciences and in mathematics, the regular final exams follow more or less the same format as the AP exam, while not necessarily 100% identically.
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"Let me make that clear! I will be seated front and center myself, but I will not accept to take the mechanical pencil with the hidden camera, nor the laser pointer!" Geneviève clamors in front of the representatives of her section.
"I have a better idea than a laser pointer, Gen, it's there that I will be able to use my allergies to my advantage. I will take the point for your section" Lugh announces.
"Lugh? All that I remember about you was that you were running cross-country races! Never would I have imagined that you would be capable of such an absurdity!" Dylan declares, astonished about Lugh's proposal, and that everything he knew about him belongs to the domain of athletics.
"One must be ingenious to use nasal discharge and sneezing for code for answers!" Shane objects. "Now we can actually say that we agree upon how it will work. Now, study!"
"Good luck everyone, and let's hope that we will all work together!" Lugh makes his wish.
In the meantime, Dylan shops for hidden cameras under the form of pens, and not mechanical pencils, as a graduation gift for the one that helped him so much and ensure that the other end of the camera works before handing it to her.
On his end, the people who were present during the contest's final were warned that there would be an update relative to the extra credit attached to this competition for those who took it unofficially, but the team's turn must wait to know their individual results as well as the team's.
"There, the result has arrived! I got a ninety on the multi-variable calculus exam!" Marcia tells them.
"Bravo Marcia! You will be able to get an A in calculus without having to write the final exam, it was well-deserved, and for me as well. On a chemical level, I wonder if you need help or you would be fine..." Gen then points out to her.
"I should be fine; a quick review should be sufficient for me, and I believe for you as well. I'll go answer a few questions on each chapter"
Clearly, I have seen a few people that seemed to struggle with calculations without a calculator; I believe that those who took calculus BC, either previously or concurrently, will have an advantage in the multiple-choice section, Lugh thinks while he starts a few questions relative to Hess' theorem, according to which the enthalpy difference of a reaction is the sum of the enthalpy differences of its individual mechanisms (a bit like Chasles' relationship for definite integrals).
Meanwhile, Sam starts getting a little discouraged when he arrives to try how to understand how to link the Henderson-Hasselbalch theorem to the titration of weak acids or bases! Ouch! Am I actually capable of following this course? For a buffer it takes a weak acid or base, but I am lost past that point! Would returning to the proof of the theorem help me? I feel like this exam will make me sick, especially since I don't expect to do better here than I did two weeks ago! The highest between the AP Exam and the regular final, I am willing to accept, but I need to score above...
Henderson-Hasselbalch's theorem. The reason why the pre-calculus course is required at a minimum concurrently; we start from the acidity constant, which is nothing more than an equilibrium constant:
The reason why the pre-calculus course is required at a minimum concurrently; we start from the acidity constant, which is nothing more than an equilibrium constant: [https://img.wattpad.com/b1e5e16f2a1164790163bc6da81cc3e2c7b78064/68747470733a2f2f73332e616d617a6f6e6177732e636f6d2f776174747061642d6d656469612d736572766963652f53746f7279496d6167652f52636f476e376d616e7078676b673d3d2d313239303335343532392e313732623961353739363536326566643738313837343637333037372e706e67?s=fit&w=1280&h=1280]
And the theorem is but a part of the material on the exam, but everyone knows that there won't be two problems on the same notion.
Historically the « higher between the AP exam and the regular final » is a little ambiguous on the grade to assign to the AP exam according to the result out of 5. Sometimes certain teachers tended to raise the final grade of a student if it did well on the AP exam vs the rest of the year, Sam thinks while he is about to question Marcia.
"Something's not right: what made it more dangerous to cheat on an AP exam vs a regular final?" Sam asks Marcia.
"Why make so much effort to cheat on a regular final vs the AP exam? Is that what you're asking? The teachers are much more vigilant during the AP Exam season because we knot what implications the AP Exams carry regarding advanced standing that the regular final does not. I would have a question for you: what are your weakest areas?" Marcia asks back.
"Titration, buffers, chemical equilibrium"
"If you want, I can ask Dylan to give you a mechanical pencil with notes in it!"
"No thanks, I don't have the required dexterity for that. If you want, I will prefer notes in the washroom to this..."
All these people went to study for themselves for other courses on top, and the long study hours start to weigh down on them. I'm looking forward to the end of it, and the grade that will be on the report card sent in two weeks will be based on the hypothesis that the regular final will be the higher of the two. For students taking advanced placement courses, about 10% of them, they will obtain their actual grades only a month later. If difference there is, it will only go up, Marcia thinks.
The reason why I wanted to wait until the end of the mathletic season to try to obtain forgiveness from Geneviève is that, so long as the season is not finished, she would get an excess of attention everywhere in town. She always wished the success of everyone when the opportunity presents itself. I hope she is sincere, but because of the abundance of extra credit in calculus, trying to do that there would be useless. It was chemistry or nothing. I don't want to take anything away from Marcia, she was always willing to help students do better on exams, but I didn't want to be forgiven through friends as proxies, Shane thinks, while he continues to study the repulsion of valence electron pairs method and what that implies for stereochemistry.
Forgiveness or not for this AP French project, Geneviève starts crying while she continues to review for the umpteenth time for several courses in a row, but by some miracle there is no exam scheduling conflict between her advanced placement courses and her regular courses.
"Why? Why did I agree to doing this? Why did I accept to get seated forward on Monday, during the chemistry final, to encourage a vicious circle?" She continues to cry, while her mother sees her.
"What do you mean, a vicious circle? You should focus on your exams!" Gen's mom asks her daughter.
"It's precisely because of these exams that I find it a vicious circle! My friends just regurgitate the material to obtain grades, but do not always understand what it represents! I only unwittingly encourage a very superficial learning style by getting seated at the front!"
"Not everyone can learn like you, Gen. My own road through high school bears no resemblance to yours. The opportunity wasn't given to take college-level courses in tenth or eleventh grade! You accomplished a lot, a lot more than I did at your age, and also a lot more than the majority of the students with you in class"
"I get there was another student who begged for forgiveness for a semester project that went poorly, but did he pick the right opportunity to obtain forgiveness? Making me take part in a cheating plan that involves both sections?"
"You never gave me the impression that you needed to cheat to get where you are today. Why, suddenly, you're talking about a cheating scheme?"
"The cheating scheme is such that the people on my diagonals will try to look at my copy"
"Gen, you know no one would ask you to do this if the organizers of the plan didn't trust your talent in the subject. Everyone in this town knows by now how brilliant you are, and where we live, the entire sociocultural life revolves around the high school; surely you realized it. No matter what happens, know that this year was the best year of the school on an academic level, and that you are one of the people that made it possible"
So one may be wondering what will future Venomous Agendas fans will remember about the history of their cherished school: the good pre-COVID football seasons, or the years of post-COVID mathematical dominance. Except that, in all cases, the risk is real that their high school stars will find that it's not high school that represents the best years of their lives, but college. Even though, in college, they would not enjoy the same status on campus versus their country town, especially not if they end up attending the Dukes, UChicagos of this world.
Monday after lunch time, but not long before the exam, where they will only be entitled to a non-programmable calculator, Dylan approaches Marcia and positions himself to accomplish his part of the cheating scheme, with Teams activated between the primary actors. Lugh in Geneviève's section, Sam in Marcia's section.
"As a token of recognition for all these years, as a graduation gift on my part, a special pen. Keep it preciously as a memento of me!" Dylan ceremoniously hands over the pen containing the hidden camera to Marcia.
"Thank you, Dylan. I will turn it on to ensure that it works" Marcia then makes a gesture of gratitude to Dylan.
"Now, for the code based on my allergies: a sneeze for A, a sniff for B, a cough for C, and finally scratching my arm for D" Lugh explains, whose smart watch is calibrated to receive the answers from Dylan and his accomplice, who will answer with a time delay to the question that Marcia will have first given them, and that the proctor has not yet arrived in the room.
An exam made memorable by Lugh's allergies, who assumes a position left of Gen in front of the room, thinking that she would be a backup source of answers should Dylan and his « partner in crime » misleads him. Maybe even faster than to wait on Marcia and then Dylan... but, in the other section, the long answer portion can cause trouble to some students.
Once the multiple-choice portion ends, a lot of students in Geneviève's section sigh in relief and, even if there's still coughing and sneezing, it doesn't happen as often; he goes to the bathroom with the proctor before it worsens.
The students that counted most on the cheating scheme's success seemed to rush on her left flank in an attempt to look at the solutions but knew the time was short, a real academic run for their lives for those cheaters for whom every point counts. For whom their aspirations depended on every grade they could get in an advanced placement course, with the supposition that each point was worthwhile, and that the maintenance of a target average, even imperfect, was worth the risk for some of them.
As soon as some start feeling blood in the water,they rapidly returned to their places because every second counts when they seethat the proctor is back. Unfortunately (or fortunately) for these cheaters,this opportunity arrived a little too early to their taste, but neither sectionhas compromised the execution of the scheme. Nevertheless, a great manystudents could see in their eyes that even the best execution of a cheatingscheme would not protect them from potential panic attacks!