Suspecting AI cheating, Ivy League prof ordered in-person final; scores fell 50%

And it turned out to be true. Many of the students I went to school with had far better preparation than I did. And not only did I feel like an idiot, another person called me an idiot in front of everyone. Suspicion confirmed.

The thing is, once I accepted that, yes, maybe my preparation was worse, and that it was possible that I was admitted by mistake, I found a way forward. After all, if literally everyone is smarter than you, then in a way, you’re the luckiest person there: you’re surrounded by smart people, and almost any conversation you have with your peers will benefit YOU more than it benefits THEM.

Over time, I realized that the thing that mattered most was “time on task.” Unlike my peers, who had better instruction, because they went to better schools, had private tutors, etc. I had to work for everything. And I started graduate school late: I turned 30 the year I enrolled. So I was not distracted by social events, finding a romantic partner, or deep questions like “what do I want to do with my life?” I was all-in. I may have started a bit behind, but I finished well ahead of most of my peers.

I think it’s easy for students from my kind of background to wither under the pressure of an elite environment. As a faculty member, I’ve seen it happen many times, sadly. But there IS a way through it, and largely, the way forward is to value oneself, to develop one’s internal compass for good work, and to not let the social pressures overwhelm. I don’t mean to make this sound easy, but it IS possible.

I think education is incredibly important, but I understand that I'm going to have to retrain myself a little bit. A college degree can no-longer be assumed to be a proxy for having put in the effort to deeply study something.

Now what's the solution for this? I don't know, but we have made the mistake of conflating pieces of paper for expertise. And I say that as someone with 3 degrees.

Thinking back to my time as a professional pilot before I medicaled out and pivoted into tech, the FAA really (for all it's problems) has a pretty good system to train and test new pilots.

You have to have some hours with a certified instructor and some hours on your own. The tests to become a certified instructor are considered challenging, and many people fail. Then you take a written test, then you take a practical test. It's one on one. You and the examiner. And if you do not meet the standard, you fail. That's "ok." It's just fine to fail people who do poorly during a checkride. They go back, they get retrained, and they do it again.

If you have a lot of failures during training, you'll have to answer for them in interviews later on, but often times there's a sort of holistic treatment to it. If you busted a checkride 15 years ago, and have since been fine, you'll be ok. If it's a recurring theme, you'll have a hard time finding a job (and that's the right thing, IMO). But the format of "Written, Oral Exam, and Practical Exam" is the "right" model for making sure people know wtf they are doing.

How do we do that in tech? Hell if I know, maybe a proctored written exam, followed by an oral exam, then a project? But who knows.

(True or not, a story is a story.)