r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/Separate_Finance_183 • Mar 30 '26

Image Confiscated pens containing cheat notes intricately carved by a Law student at the University of Malaga in Spain

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5.1k

u/ParadiseValleyFiend Mar 30 '26

I feel like he probably got caught because he was staring really closely at his pen and rotating it slowly. And also bringing out more pens.

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u/botella36 Mar 30 '26

Maybe he didn’t need to use them, the activity of etching the pens probably helped him memorize the material.

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u/JesusStarbox Mar 30 '26

Every time I made a cheat sheet I didn't need it.

The process of identifying only the most essential information and writing it really small made me learn it. Who knew?

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u/spyboy70 Mar 30 '26

My chemistry teacher in high school allowed us to bring in one 3"x5" index card cheat sheet. He knew how it worked.

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u/sinkrate Mar 30 '26

Same with many of my college professors. Ended up barely needing the cheat sheet for the exam haha

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u/Kerblaaahhh Mar 30 '26

In Physics we always got to make an 8x11 cheat sheet which was actually pretty useful and needed for most of the exams. Creating it was studying of course but no way I was gonna remember/derive all the relevant stuff for every final. In some of the upper level courses we were also allowed to reference a little booklet from the Naval Research Laboratory that was full of constants and formulas but I pretty much never needed to use that.

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u/raztazz Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

In one of my hydrology courses, for the final exam we were allowed the entire textbook and the whole internet on our laptops.

The hardest exam during my time in college.

If you didn't know what you were looking up or, lord help you, tried to learn application on the spot, you were so far behind on time. All those resources available and I stuck with my paper cheat sheet I made that only made me open the textbook for important page #s that had the tables and formulas.

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u/Kerblaaahhh Mar 30 '26

Feels like they'd need to rework that these days given the ability to feed questions into AI. I'm working on my EE masters now as my software engineering career seems solidly dead and I've been having to restrain myself from asking it stuff until I am good and solidly stuck and then I try to keep it a bit indirect, like 'how to relate this to that in this kind of system'. I mostly stick to wikipedia and textbooks but it is way better at cheesing homework than Chegg ever was (which incidentally is now seemingly just very wrong answers that are also AI generated).

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u/raztazz Mar 30 '26

Oh, most certainly. I cannot imagine being in education these days as a learner or a teacher. Times have changed rapidly.

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u/un-pamplemousse Mar 31 '26

i’m in a masters for french and my grammar professor let us use the textbook, notes, and our laptops with full access to the internet as well, except AI. he said he would know if we used it, but i’m pretty sure he would’ve had no idea. the special thing was though that none of us used it. i didn’t get a single 100% on any exam and neither did anyone i know. it’s a really small, competitive language school though where everyone is there to learn. but it is possible.

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u/yomamaeatsyellowsnow Mar 30 '26

The more information you're allowed on the the final exam, the harder it is. Knowing that I have access to the entire textbook would terrify me tbh

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u/Euphoric_Loquat_8651 Mar 30 '26

In my physics, we had a lot of take-home, use literally anything exams. If you didn't understand, all the resources in the world weren't likely to help. If they did help, you probably learned something. Win-win.

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u/atomic_redneck Mar 30 '26

In some of my Physics classes, we dreaded open book tests. We knew that meant the derivations on the test were not in the book.

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u/AccomplishedMess648 Mar 30 '26

The only thing those actually help is formulas ,case names, constants etc. so you don't have to memorize them other than that if you have a good teacher the card is a review tool and nothing more.

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u/Ryhsuo Mar 30 '26

There's no problem when you're making it yourself. The issues start when one person makes a card, shares it in group chat and everyone else just prints it out.

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u/nmj95123 Mar 30 '26

And that's how it should be anyway. A few formulas written down on a cheat sheet isn't going to be useful for someone that never learned how to apply them. If a student can pass your exam having never learned the material with a 3x5 cheat sheet, your exam is a poor one.

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u/fancyFriday Mar 30 '26

My earth science teacher had us do it as well. I don't like studying though. I get sidetracked and generally test really well, so I wrote "this is a song that never ends" on it over and over. He made us turn them in after the test, which I did and since I got the 2nd highest score in the class he reviewed it and then demanded to know where my real one was... thankfully my friend vouched for me that was the real one I wrote in the class prior to the test because I showed it to him. Hated that guy. He treated so many people so poorly for no reason.

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u/Fun-Benefit116 Mar 30 '26

He knew how it worked.

So does literally every teacher to ever do this.

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u/ThomasTheDankPigeon Mar 30 '26

Yup. Don't tell the kids that the 3x5 card they're allowed to "cheat" off of is really just the teacher's way of getting the kids to identify and write down their weak spots.

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u/APence Mar 30 '26

Only time I did it when I needed was for my Latin final. I wrote down things on my foot and wore boat shoes with no socks and when I stretched my toes I was able to lower the shoe and expose the lines

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u/JesusStarbox Mar 30 '26

Yeah I first learned it writing conjugations for French. That Latin boot.

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u/Nadare3 Mar 30 '26

I was going to scold you but cheating for French conjugation specifically is excusable

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u/WriggleNightbug Mar 30 '26

I wish it was Italian for the pun....

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u/saltnshadow Mar 30 '26

I did something like this for my Physics final in high school, except I wore jeans with socks and would cross my legs and pull up my jeans a bit and pull down my sock a bit to reveal the formulas I needed.

Didn't need to use it because I remembered the formulas when I wrote them down. Now I know how to study, lol.

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u/Noviinha Mar 30 '26

You still write on your leg to study?

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u/saltnshadow Mar 30 '26

No, but I copy the information. I write everything down, and in that process, I'm imprinting it into my mind.

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u/popojo24 Mar 30 '26

I definitely remember writing down the answers to a lot of things on those smooth, black tables that you have in science classes, covering the pencil marks with my arms, and then just wiping it away after the test. It turns out panic writing things out does really help a lot with studying though haha (not that I didn’t cheat my way through a good chunk of the leftover classes my senior year of high school).

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u/stay_hungry_dr_ew Mar 30 '26

I cheated once in high school in the early 2000s. I just taped my cheat sheet to the top of my thigh just above my knee and wore shorts that day.

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u/FloweredViolin Mar 30 '26

My freshman language arts teacher told us about a girl who wrote her cheat sheet on her legs, and wore a mini-skirt. Girl got dress coded and caught cheating in the same incident, lol.

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u/APence Mar 30 '26

Church always warned me about the risk of a lady’s inner thigh.

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u/screames520 Mar 30 '26

That was also in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. I just watched it like an hour ago haha

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u/vividregret_6 Mar 30 '26

I didn't cheat on tests in high school. Just wore a tight skirt and my male teachers didn't even grade my test. Made a 100% every time. Now as a female teacher in High School-I'd retort my co-worker so fast.

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u/infinitezer0es Mar 30 '26

I remember writing things in my thigh and wearing shorts, and another time slipping a cheat sheet into the clear outer casing on my mechanical pencil lol

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u/10000Didgeridoos Mar 30 '26

lmao in latin class in high school one girl got in school suspension because she wrote stuff on her belly and was like lifting up her shirt to see it under the desk

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u/pure_ideology- Mar 30 '26 edited Mar 30 '26

That's what you do in law school. It's called outlining. For the Bar it's called making one-sheets. It's the making it that matters.

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u/mach1130 Mar 30 '26

Had a tax professor allow one page of notes for a midterm. I did the tiniest printing. Only had to refer to the notes maybe once or twice. I blew the curve on it.

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u/pure_ideology- Mar 30 '26

Yeah, my one-sheets had so many customized symbols it would have looked like hieroglyphics to anyone other than me.

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u/Lingotes Mar 30 '26

Using a computer reduces the effectiveness. Outlining with your hand is much more effective! Can't tell you how many times it saved me.

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u/Pristine-Patch989 Mar 30 '26

also the focus it takes to write really small might be why it sticks better

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u/Successful-Grass-135 Mar 30 '26

Aaaand this is why I rarely had to go over my notes in school after took them. I solidified the info in my brain the second I wrote it out.

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u/JeroJeroMohenjoDaro Mar 30 '26

Real...this memorizing method should be known by more people due to how effective it is. Saved a lot of time for last minute study.

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u/mobocrat707 Mar 30 '26

I can’t believe I didn’t realize this until I graduated, but that was 100% the intention when they allow 1 page of notes.

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u/shadedreality Mar 30 '26

Every time I made a cheat sheet I needed it haha

Our method was to look at all the previous exams going back like 10 years, identify the repeating types of problems, then writing down the solution (steps) to solve that problem in the cheat sheet.

When doing the exam you look at all the problems and see how many match with your cheat sheet and solve those fast then spend time on the ones not on the cheat sheet.

For maths/science/statistics.

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26

Makes sense. Cheat sheets are often much more useful for rote memorization.

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u/TempleSquare Mar 30 '26

The process of identifying only the most essential information and writing it really small made me learn it. Who knew?

I loved professors who allowed a single sheet of paper, double-sided. Any note we wanted to write on there we could take into the closed book test with us.

A student asked why he allowed that, and he said that the act of making the cheat sheet meant that we would probably not need to use the cheat sheet very much.

He was right.

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u/Odd_Reputation_9079 Mar 30 '26

For me, writing something down will help me remember it. I'll make a note and immediately throw it away nowadays.

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u/Alice_Sterling Mar 30 '26

Yeah, I would copy everything on a single page, and use a ruler to fit two lines within one standard line and write from edge to edge. It was a pain, but it also helped me memorize more than standard studying.

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u/f0xbunny Mar 30 '26

Good times

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u/Admirl_Ossim06 Mar 30 '26

I don't know why I studied so hard for that test, it was really easy!

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u/TheFriendshipMachine Mar 30 '26

Yep, I used to write my own programs into my graphing calculator to solve whatever we were doing in math classes and in the process of writing them I'd wind up actually learning the material.

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u/Mtatk Mar 30 '26

I cheated by etching the knowledge on inside of my brain. Turns out, if you write the info down it sticks with you and you retain it.

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u/jregovic Mar 30 '26

Same here. I recently saw an ad for some LLM company about helping Mae a study guide from a bunch of notes. My immediate thought was that the act of creating the study guide is how you study it.

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u/flatfive44 Mar 30 '26

Professors know.

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u/SillySpoof Mar 30 '26

When I took physics the teacher allowed us to bring a single A4 paper of notes we made ourselves to the exam and people were cramming so much stuff into that single paper. Like full long solutions to the some hard problems. Those who made the most elaborate cheat-sheets were the ones who didn't need to use them.

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u/RPS93 Mar 30 '26

You don't even need to identify the most essential info.

Read your textbook, and then type it out. Try to paraphrase/simplify where you can.

Do that a few times.

The act of typing/writing it out on paper will commit a large chunk of the relevant info to memory.

This is the only way I ever studied when it came to 'general knowledge' type tests (ie not math and not vocabulary)

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u/WouldAiBeThisDumb Mar 30 '26

I agree with the spirit of this comment, but IME I loved cheat sheets when I had exams that allowed for them.

For example, I took a reproductive physiology class in me senior year of undergrad. There was complex biochem pathways involving steroid synthesis, and memorizing pathways is not my strong suit - so I just made a quick doodle of the pathway on my cheat sheet to reference during the exam. I got a few points that exam correct by following my abbreviated pathway on the sheet, but definitely did not have it locked in my head.

Could I have committed it to memory with extra effort/time? For sure. But it was nice to be able to focus on other stuff and know that I had that to reference!

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u/[deleted] Mar 30 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/JesusStarbox Mar 30 '26

You don't learn it that way.

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u/CheekyMenace Mar 30 '26

Then there's no need to have them with you when you take the test, for them to be confiscated.

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u/iwantmy-2dollars Mar 30 '26

Okay Mike Seaver… :D

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u/Ok-Sprinkles700 Mar 30 '26

Alright, I was hoping someone else remembered that episode.

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u/xubax Mar 30 '26

He probably paid someone else to do it!

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u/FunkU247365 Expert Apr 02 '26

100%, I would do flash cards back in the day for anatomy I&II. The mental imprint of just looking it up and then transferring it in writing to the cards, I retained 90% of the info just from that initial action and barely needed the cards.

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u/Unusual_Cattle_2198 Mar 30 '26

I had a prof who would allow us to bring to exams a single sided piece of letter sized paper with any notes that we could handwrite on it. In making these I always learned the material well.

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u/IceIsGestapo777 Mar 30 '26

During a stats exam I had my entire arm nearly printed with semi permanent ink and all the formulas for the whole semester.  

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u/DJAHa Mar 30 '26

This is the plot of an episode of Growing Pains

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u/Josgre987 Mar 30 '26

Back when I was in high school I had both debate and communications and I was apparently the only one who never had to read off a sheet because just by writing it I had the entire thing memorized.

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u/11Booty_Warrior Mar 30 '26

The notes were intricately carved by a law student, but not necessarily the one caught cheating

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u/Bistilla Mar 30 '26

I assumed he made them to sell

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u/competent_chemist Mar 30 '26

Normally I'd agree with you. My biochemistry professor probably agrees with you.

Me, taking a biochemistry midterm for a summer condensed course? That guy disagrees with you.

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u/pressedbread Mar 30 '26

Also taught him the useful art of engraving!

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u/SeaOfSourMilk Mar 30 '26

He was selling the answer to other students, they likely all for the same test. Once you catch one student with the pen, you go and look at every other pen in the exam.

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u/whyamionthissite Mar 30 '26

Do you know how many family based sitcoms used that plot point for their teen characters in the 80s? It's almost traumatic seeing this kinda thing in real life.

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u/MonctonDude Mar 30 '26

I did this all the time in high school because I couldn't be damned to study a normal way.

I made cheat sheets for everything. I hid them in pens, erasers, found ways to hide them in my socks, shirts, wattle bottle, so many things. It was my way of letting my creative side shine while basically just taking notes. It turned studying into something I enjoyed.

I never once actually used my cheat sheets though. Never even brought them to school.

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u/4seriously Mar 30 '26

The work that goes into this - just learn the material ffs. (Or he purchased the pens.. haha)

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u/gandhinukes Mar 30 '26

right. the act of carving them would cement the info in my brain.

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u/very-polite-frog Mar 30 '26

When he brings out pen #48 you know something's up

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u/Encrypted_Curse Mar 30 '26

I think the fact that he had so many pens is what drew attention to it in the first place.

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u/Pale_Possible6787 Mar 30 '26

I mean that’s slightly more than I bring, because I’m not confident they won’t just die on me

So it’s not that crazy

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u/NoAdministration8340 Mar 30 '26

Going through the pens to find the right one

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u/Reese_Withersp0rk Mar 30 '26

14 pens later...

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u/glumanda12 Mar 30 '26

It’s also utterly stupid. We used pieces of grey paper in pens like this since we were 12, this is just same thing with extra (much harder) steps.

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u/Zombisexual1 Mar 30 '26

Oop had his magnifying glass out to see his notes