Re: cheating, I never believed it was an rarity. Simply part of how the world operates. People test what they can get away with. I do it myself in small, ordinary ways. I leave the car where I am not supposed to and sometimes nothing happens. Other times there is a ticket under the wiper, and I feel disproportionate anger toward the person who wrote it. The rule was always there. So was the risk. You learn this early, or you should. There is no system that can guarantee compliance, only consequences, unevenly applied, and the quiet understanding that most people will navigate between them as best they can.

I found it quietly amusing, over the past few years of teaching, how distressed some instructors became about ChatGPT. The worry arrived with a seriousness that suggested something had been permanently damaged. Not Bobsie. It seemed to me a mistake to imagine you could police how students think or what tools they reach for. The work, if there was any to be done, belonged to the teacher. You adjust the conditions. You ask questions that had to be answered in the room. You listened to someone explain themselves out loud and heard, almost immediately, whether they understood what they were saying.