I know that I am late to this thread but I have been keeping an eye on it since I read moes' post in the feedback about "what happened to rezdawg". I am not going to come down on you rezdawg for what you did as I don't believe in judging other people (at least I try not to do that but it is a hard thing to do). As others have said, I do think that this is an experience you need to learn from and try to become a better person. However, if you don't think you did anything wrong then you really aren't going to learn from the experience. It is like telling the loud mouth that they talk too much - if they don't think they are that way or that isn't a big deal, then you are wasting your time talking to that person. Where I am absolutely SHOCKED is that you kept running your mouth about this! Let me tell you something - you have been here for awhile and because of that, you are known by quite a few people here. I still remember you as the guy that had thousands of posts but was a junior member because you made some idiotic comment or post that enraged Clutch and he "demoted" you to junior member. I'm sure there are people here who remember me as the guy that tried to list every member of the BBS and rank them by post count. My point is that you never know what people will remember you by and if you have become somewhat known (known in the BBS world for your personality), you have to be careful what you reveal about your personal life. Before I got married and had my kids, I used to be an open book to anyone who would listen - whether it was in person or on-line. Then I began to realize how hurt people in my life would be if they knew I was saying stuff on-line that was really no one else's business. I rationalized it (like you are doing with the fact that it was just "homework and not an exam") and said to myself, "Eh, these are guys that don't really know me and will never meet my family." And maybe sometime you do need to vent about things in your personal life but you are better off to be able to do that in an anonymous fashion. Since you are known and even worse, you have a link to your personal stuff via twitter in your sig, then you really shouldn't be surprised that someone would take your on-line confession of cheating and turn you in. Like others have said, I am a little surprised that someone would take that much time to do it but the point is they did it and it could have been avoided if you had just refrained from going into explicit detail about what you did. Hell, you actually should have just not had the twitter account in your sig. You could have probably revealed what you did and wouldn't have worried about it if you didn't have that stupid link to twitter in your sig (and you shouldn't have revealed what dental school you went to). When it gets to the point that something you have said whether it was on the internet or by email or anywhere else and it causes you or your family a problem, then you have to step back and look at trying to be more private about your personal life here. Show some goddam discretion next time you get nostalgic about your salad days at BU, know what I mean, rezdawg?
WTF? why need to include the "indian" label? you could have just said you know people at UH that cheat (i take slight offense as an indian who has never cheated in college, though I know people who have and as a result got better grades than myself)
Indian is not a label. They were a group of Indian guys I knew. I never said ALL INDIANS ARE CHEATERS. I thought twice before I typed that if it offended you, I apologize. But I don't see anything wrong with what I said. These guys think everyone does it because all of their friends do. I am trying to make a point. If everyone around you (your friends) cheats, you think it's normal to cheat. These guys simply got it wrong, and they think act similarly to the OP.
Doing homework with other classmates could be considered cheating. We have all done that. Using programs and storing info on TI's for tests is a common practice for pre-med students.
nah nothing against you at all just i had in the past people ask me why I didnt cheat to get an A in class when I got a B. just rubs me the wrong way when other Indians assume that I also cheat because they did. doing work together could be considered cheating, but you and a friend(s) are still putting in an effort together to learn the material and do the assignment. thats a whole lot more than copying/inputting answers that you did not work for. and at times Profs/TAs encourage students to work in groups on the assignment...that is still a far cry from copying/cheating on the assignment. I know people store info on TI calcs all the time at least in the math classes I had to take the TA would inspect our calcs before handing us a test and look at any programs we had on there. Not sure if all schools/courses have that policy when allowing graphing calcs on an exam
Nah, I am pretty confident that you went through a stretch where you were a "junior member" even though you had over a 1000 posts. Moes can tell you that I don't forget those types of things on the BBS because I am just weird like that (sorta surprised that moes doesn't remember that because I am fairly sure we used to talk about in the chat and wondered what you had done to cause that happen to you). And no I am not confusing you with robbie380 - I know that "rezdawg" has never been called the "random idiot".
First off, that's again arrogant to assume you're one of the 'most ethical dentists'. 2nd, deciding to lose money on treating a patient is by definition 'philanthropic' not 'ethical'. Nice try though. 3rd, what other people do is not the issue. That's something that's been made clear here several times. It is interesting that you choose to draw the line here. Nothing you've described so far about yourself would lead to me think this is a line you wouldn't cross. Finally, integrity is integrity. It was as much a question of integrity then as it is in your clinic now. Your present actions don't erase your morality decisions of the past. As was previously stated, just admit integrity is not a high priority for you and move on.
Your current behavior is also not my concern. I'm glad you're not continuing to be unethical. Your past behavior and your attitude regarding it, I think, has been the issue all along. In fact, I imagine if you owned up to how serious and unethical it was and made some comment to the effect of.... "I was under a lot of pressure and I know it's not excusable, but I just did what I felt I needed to do at the time", you'd have gotten a much better response than your stance of (paraphrased) "I cheated in grad school, but it's not big deal because everyone does it and I WAS UNDER A LOT OF PRESSURE, MAN!" It's arrogance, it's entitlement and it's self-justification for unethical behavior. But, I've already said it doesn't matter - you'll never get that point. You've decided your subsequent "goodness" has made up for past breaches of ethics. I choose to look at character as something gained through errors in judgment and subsequently learning from them. That is what gives us wisdom. We screw up, we do stupid things - we own up to it and try to be better people. Past behavior and your attitude regarding it tends to assist people in predicting how you will react when squeezed in the future. It's not hard to be ethical when you have the power, is it?? But when the clamps got put on you, you chose to go with the crowd and take the easy way out. And hey, that's your choice. Just stop trying to defend it. Aside from the minority who are just as comfortable being unethical as you are, there's no way you win that argument. If you're not planning on apologizing to those you've offended - stop talking with them about it - because you're wasting everyone's time. Just like my son can use these same excuses to explain away poor behavior, you can, too. But just as it's his choice to continue to be that way - it's my choice to respond to that lack of judgment with removing priveleges, etc. In your case, it's our choice to think you're unethical, less of a professional or in the case of one poster, a scumbag. It also seems to have been one person's choice to turn you in to your school - and based on a screen shot a few pages back, the choice of SirCharlesFan to report it to a Boston area TV station. Hey - that's just the way it is. I guess talking about it until the internet implodes or Boston's version of Wayne Dolcefino is on area TV at the door of the BU School of Dentistry's Dean's front door is another option, but you're never changing our minds on this. You might get a West Side Story style rumble behind Niko Niko's out of it, granted...
