I'm aware that students can cheat with smartwatches, but wasn't aware of watches designed for cheating. Instructors may want to click through to the Amazon page to see what these look like.
And it's not just students being dishonest. I've had an archenemy in my department for a few years now and it's not pleasant. However, I could always step back and tell myself that he wasn't trying to hurt my career or enrich himself. He simply had a very different vision for what the department should be. Indeed, I think he had lost sight of what an academic should be.
But in a recent episode, I'm reminded of where the title for this blog comes from. The issue involved a personnel recommendation and, as usual, he was assigned to draft it (the committee would then have to approve it). He ignored what was discussed in committee (as per his usual), but he also saw fit to, at the very least, be very misleading. I would call it lying. This latter deception was surprising, but in the course of various emails trying to sway the committee members our way (him against me), he sends out an email similarly lying about the emails themselves.
I somehow find it surprising to find faculty act without basic integrity. And of course the fact that the paragraph in question is ultimately inconsequential just makes me even sadder about the whole situation. True to form though (the guy knows how to battle), when in the end he lost, he sends out an email praising the rewording as being better than his as if he hadn't just lost but instead succeeded in making the letter better!
