After Will Tran accidentally cheats his way to a high school math award, he has to grapple with whether or not to come clean.

Will Tran is not a scientist, but he got close a few times. In high school, he interned at the National Institute of Mental Health working on a study of Alzheimer’s. He matriculated to New York University as a neuroscience major, but then quickly switched to the art school. Whoops. Will is a creative director in Los Angeles. He enjoys sunsets, long walks on the beach, and standing on stage to share profoundly personal stories with hundreds of strangers for no discernible reason other than the temporary appeasement of some deep, dark, inner desire to please. He also has a dog named Finch.

This story originally aired on June 28, 2019 in an episode titled “Youthful Indiscretions.”

Story Transcript

Let me start this off by saying that I have never, ever cheated on a test in my life and this I swear.  I was raised in an Asian immigrant family so I learned from an early age that academic success is the end all, be all, and to cheat would be throwing that all away.  Rule Number One of the Asian immigrant code was always ‘No cheating’. 

So it was with that open and pure and honest heart that I asked my friend Jason to give me his math exam so I could copy down his answers.  Here, I'll explain. 

I was raised in London, which I’m sure you can tell from my accent.  In the tenth grade we were given the opportunity to take this prestigious international math award exam.  It was administered in three parts.  It was totally optional and it had no bearing on our grade.  But, like I said, it was a prestigious recognition. 

We all know that stereotypes are bad.  But there was one stereotype that I always thought was maybe a little less bad and one that I was kind of proud of which was that Asians are good in math.  I had no reason not to believe that because, up until that point in my life, I had always taken honors and AP math classes and, for the most part, I was an A student, which means I got the occasional B-minus and B-plus which is basically an F in Asian-American family.

But, overall, I thought I was doing pretty well.  And stereotypes being stereotypes, apparently, others thought I was doing well too, or at least good enough to cheat off of.  I remember there was this one time in sixth grade, this kid Phil Reilly copied my answers for a math quiz over my shoulder.  And being the idiot that he is, he got caught and he got both of us sent to the principal. 

I remember that feeling when they told me that they called my mother and she was coming to the school to talk with the principal.  I nearly vomited.  I was so terrified because, after all, rule Number One is ‘No cheating’. 

But I explained vigorously that I wasn’t part of this grand conspiracy but I was actually the rube and the real victim here.  Even though they did believe me, that experience stayed with me and shook me to my core. 

So it was with that firm belief that I was good in math that I agreed to take the prestigious international math awards exam, but it wasn’t until I was in the middle of that exam that I found out that I was, in fact, not good in math.  There were numbers I had never even seen before.  It was just total madness.  I was utterly lost.  And learning that I wasn’t good at math felt like finding out Santa Claus wasn’t real again and I was completely gutted. 

So that was that.  I figured there was no point in humiliating myself any further so, when they announced the second and third parts of the exam, I just passed it up completely. 

About a week later, our math teacher returns our answer sheets so that we can see how we’d done and I performed pretty much as expected.  I got a few answers right but there were a lot of red Xs, a lot of wrong answers, and completely blank ungraded sections for the second and third parts of the test. 

But it was a completely different story for my friend Jason who actually aced the exam, all three parts of it.  That shocked me a little bit, honestly, because I had considered us intellectually equals and here he was intellectually cuckolding me.  I really felt that I had to step things up, so I asked him if he would hand me over his exam so I could copy down the answers and figure out the problems on my own time, because if he had been able to solve them then I really wanted to as well. 

So that’s what he did.  He gave me his test and I copied down the answers.  I gave it back to him.  At which point the teacher wanted to collect all of them again so we just passed those back up. 

At the end of the week, our math teacher announces the recipients of this prestigious international math award and there are only three in the entire school and all three are in this one math class so she's just ecstatic and overjoyed. 

The first name that she announces is David Jackson-Hanen.  I’m not exaggerating when I’m saying this kid was a bona fide genius.  He was the Cal Ripken of Calculus.  He was the Alfred Hitchcock of Algebra.  He was the Yo-Yo Ma on a TI-83.  He just fit the image of the nerd so perfectly.  He was just skinny, shy, gentle, sweet and awkward.  He had this aura of academic destiny around him where everyone was sure he was going to be the next Stephen Hawking so no surprises there. 

The next name she announced was Jason Danker, my friend.  He was a bit of an oddball, kind of an atypical nerd.  Socially awkward, for sure.  The first words that he said to me on our first day of school together was, he just came up to me and said, “Hey, I like to burn things.” 

We became friends after that.  It’s a hell of an ice breaker.  But he was also a bit of a jock and he was on the school rugby team so you could say he put the athlete in Mathlete. 

And the final name announced, the third in this Trigonometry triumphant triumvirate was none other than yours truly.  I was shocked, the class was shocked, the teacher was shocked.  Then the applause started from the class in that sort of don’t-really-give-a-shit way like office workers singing Happy Birthday. 

But Jason turned and his head nearly completed an Exorcist-180 as his gaze was just boring through my skull.  I ignored him and just soaked in the praise because, you know, why not? 

Here’s the funny thing is that I still, to this day, don’t know exactly how this happened.  I have some theories.  I imagine on the day that our teacher collected those exams again, she must have left school to go to do something both important but mentally taxing, maybe like a second job.  But ours was a private American school in London who’s notable alum included Andrew Luck, Steve-O and Devon Aoki, so I feel like the teachers were pretty decently paid.  So this must have been more of like a passion project, like volunteer fire fighting or ER nursing or at-risk youth basketball coaching.  Honestly, maybe like all three at once, which could explain this lapse of grading that she had but we’ll never really know for sure. 

But after that class when they announced the awards, I talked to Jason and he was understandably pissed but he agreed that he wouldn’t say anything about it because, honestly, this would probably be the last time we’d heard of this thing and we’ll just let bygones be bygones. 

On Monday, in auditorium, in front of the entire school, they announced that we’d be receiving medals onstage.  Medals for math.  Math medals.  They called our names out one by one, David Jackson-Hanen, Jason Danker, Will Tran.  It felt like the final scene of the only good Star Wars movie there is, Phantom Menace.  I’m kidding. 

It was the awards ceremony and there I was up on stage, all awkward and gangly and out of place, like Chewbacca, and then the audience started to applaud the entire school for real.  Jason made sure to stare at me extra hard but I ignored him and I just soaked in adulation.  Things were getting kind of ridiculous at this point but, surely, this would be the last we’d ever of this so, now, bygones could truly be bygones. 

A few weeks later I’m coming home from school and my mom greets me at the door with a big hug and a big smile.  I see she's holding in her hands the school newsletter that they print and send to every family.  On the front cover is a photo of the three of us and fucking article written about that goddamn math award. 

She's just overjoyed.  She's so happy and I’m overcome with guilt at this point.  I just have to stop her mid-praise and come clean.  I just need to tell her everything.  

So I tell her, “Look, I did take the test but I bombed it.  Jason got everything right and I copied down his answers because I wanted to figure out the answers for myself, but then they started giving us these stupid medals and now I have to give the medals back, right?” 

She puts her hands on my shoulders and she looks at me with her big, brown eyes and she says, “You will not tell this to anyone.  Do you understand me?  You're going to put this on your college application, you're going to get into an Ivy League school and you will never, ever, ever tell this story again.  Do I make myself clear?” 

It was then that I learned the one rule that supersedes ‘No cheating’ in Asian Immigrant code, and that’s ‘No refunds’.