Copykittens

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This post is a sequel to the two earlier posts: "Copycats" and "Going..Going...Gone":

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Kedar writes:

"I did not copy during the exams at KGP 'technically', but I would say that knowing the pool of questions beforehand may come close to it. I remember one instance. This was in the 9th Semester during DB's course. I really enjoyed the class, however, writing the end-semester examination is never easy, especially when your class-notes have high information density on every page and ZERO doodles (a rare case in my KGP notes). Myself and Aniket were having dinner in the RP hall mess the evening before the exam and were feeling a little overwhelmed.

RP being very close to the library, we took a stroll there after dinner and had a look at some question papers (both mid-term and end-term !!) from previous years that were kept in the reference section. We did not quite solve the papers but certainly discussed some problems that seemed interesting. This trip proved to be rewarding for obvious reasons. DB was all praise for us for scoring very high, but I never had the courage to tell him about this trip to the central library on the eve of the exam. I don't think that the 'interesting' problems were unsolvable, but the element of surprise was gone. If I had not thought about them beforehand, I am not sure if I could have done that well in the exam within the 3 hours time."
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gps: Kedar was only doing what was expected of him. So, he is hereby absolved of all charges of 'copying', rather!

In our University at Waltair, the Official Outlet was selling on the Day of our Registration: (1) Syllabus (2) The prescribed text books (3) Question Papers of the last 5 years.

And then it is upto you to face the Exam. There was no attendance rule; please yourself. And our seniors used to pass on (sell) their 'prepared' essays, which they were inheriting for the last quarter of a century from their seniors. (I used to attend all classes religiously and prepare my own essays {;-})

And if you prepared well, you were sure to walk away with a First or High Second Class.

Only I was the most unfortunate chap. When it came to my batch, unfortunately SDM happened to be the external paper-setter (as I came to know later). They tried him this once and 'deleted' him from their list of paper-setters forever.

In our M Sc there was only one paper of QM. (In Indra's time there were 5: QM 0, QM 1, QM 2, QM 3, Advanced QM). There were only 16 Questions in our Bank out of which 8 were to be selected by the paper-setter. By permutations, combinations and probability rules, we prepared for 5 Questions from the Bank to be 'choiced' by us.

SDM neither looked at the Syllabus, nor the Question Bank, but set 8 questions based on his Calcutta and Cambrige University khata.

With the result that only 2 turned out to be the ones prepared by all 22 of us. The others were queer stuff like: "Write an essay depicting the similarities between Geometrical & Physical Optics on the one hand and Classical & Quantum Mechanics on the other".

Since I was ever chaste, I walked out of the Hall after one hour (out of 3) writing just my essays for the 2 Questions we prepared. But found that the two girls of our batch asked for extra time and extra loose sheets and got them too! We asked them how they could write for 3 hours. They said that they 'attempted' all the 8 questions and wrote whatever they knew; like Young's Double Slit in Optics and Inclined Plane in Classical Mechanics.

And there was this Board Meeting in which SDM was 'debarred'. They decided that whoever 'attempted' any question would get full marks (grace) on the lofty principle of HNB (another story for another blog): "When the question is like a Diamond, even the 'attempt' is like Carborundum".

The girls got 80% and the rest of us 40%. Still, God is There, and the very same HNB interviewed me and took me in at that Heaven called IIT KGP (serves them right: they got married and did more inventive Physics in CSIR Labs).

I was reminded of the story where this Class IX student prepared only the essay on Neem Tree but got Cow in the exam. He wrote that he was taking his morning walk the Meadow and saw a Cow tethered to a Neem Tree; and how beautiful was the Neem Tree, and how useful: Neem Toothpaste, Margo Soap, Neem Oil, and of course Small Pox for which Neem leaves were the only palliative.

He got 90% for his inventive essay-writing abilities (not ME!!!).

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'V' writes: The 12 grad-students of his batch were sure that they would flunk in this Professor's Exam which was well-known to be tough. And so they were looking out for Admissions for other Grad Schools.

But it so happened (these things do happen) that the Seniormost of that Professor's Post-Docs fell down from his scooter (I guess one of these 12 was responsible, though not deliberately). All the dirty dozen jumped on him, admitted him to the Nursing Home and nursed him for one whole month like those Mother Teresa Angels.

And this very same Post-Doc turned out to be the Invigilator and acceded to their request that the Closed Book exam be converted into an Open Book one. But they were all too scared to 'open' their books (for they found that the Invigilator was 'invigilating' seriously). Miraculously however they all passed with very high marks (the Professor having perhaps outsourced his 'paper-correction' to the very same Post-Doc).

I am reminded of the Panchatantra (or was it Aesop) Fable in which this Lion King was sleeping and Jerry thought it was a marble statue and was crawling up and down it. Lion King woke up and held Jerry in his palm and was inspecting curiously. Jerry was quivering but promised that he would help Lion King in future if he was let go. Lion King guffawed and loved the gumption of Jerry and let him go.

A month later, this Hunter spread this Net and went for lunch and Lion King promptly walked into it, which closed upon him. And Jerry came and snapped the strings of the Net phuta-phut and let Lion King run away scot-free.

Jerry passed his Qualifiers in flying colors.

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Note that both Kedar & 'V' were just careful enough to be on this side of the sin-border-line.

I guess they are being too sparse with Truth unlike me.

So, let us call them: "Copykittens"
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