Using prescription stimulants as study aids
chronicle.com
chronicle.com
Either way, I've used Adderall while programming (for which I do not have a prescription), and even small amounts make a significant difference in number of levels of abstraction and detail I can hold in my head at once, and how quickly I can both initially reach and drop back into 'flow' when interrupted. The best analogy I've come up with is that increases your mental RAM - so I'm not having to write anything to swap. Got a really nasty pile of code you need to refactor, or even completely rearchitect? Adderall lets you fit a whole lot more of the problem space in your head at once.
Sometimes on very rare occasions, I can somehow hit that sweet spot with caffeine and get the same effect as Adderall. But it happens very rarely - too easy to under or overshoot the caffeine dose, and even when I do manage to pull it off, the perfect mental RAM increase only seems to last about 45 mins. With Adderall, it happens every time, and I can can stay in that state for 12 hours or more.
I don't use Adderall frequently. It's kinda a pain in the ass to get, and a little pricey. But when you're just stuck on something, it can really help you break through that mental wall.
With regard to this: "If, for example, students use such drugs to mitigate the consequences of procrastination, they may fail to develop mental discipline and time-management skills.", as lots of HN readers may know, procrastination's a bitch. There are infinite methods to counteract it, yet we (I) keep falling through the cracks and not doing what I'm supposed to be doing. Not saying this drug suddenly eliminates that (I've been brain-boosted while procrastinating -hey, isnt' writing on HN hours before an exam procrastination?-), but it buys me time and a little edge in my gray matter to keep me going.
"Instead of ferreting out and punishing students, universities should focus on restoring a culture of deep engagement in education, rather than just competition for credentials"
Well, here in Argentina, and this college particularly, although I'm doing it for credentials mostly, the main problem is not "the culture", but how contents are delivered by proffessors in the classroom. My studying plan is from '95, and little has changed since then in it (System's engineering, btw). Some proffesors are like mummies from the 70's, talking about Algol and Ada like it's the next hot technology. On the other hand, education's free, there are lots of jobs, and IT is one of the fastest growing areas of work nowadays (where is it not?). I currently have a job working for a company that develops products for MS and some other clients, using MS tools.
That said, I'm a bit concerned about my health, and will be taking routine medical checks. Nevertheless, I'm not an addict (no, really). Although I use it now and then, I don't crave for it, nor I need it all the time. It's just an extra help for certain situations, like taking coffee when you're asleep, or ibuprofene when you have a mild headache (that perhaps could be solved by going to bed for a couple hours, but you have to keep working/stuying).
Prohibition, like on many other things, won't do any good to anyone, except maybe the ones that sell the drugs.
Isn't the main value of new technologies/drugs/utilities that people don't have to do things the 'old way' anymore? Nobody is using a slide rule these days, but why should they?
These days, my job requirements throw lots of new technologies my way, but my basic approach to learning a technique, incorporating it into my workflow and completing a project remains more or less consistent.
By all means, eliminate busywork and seek efficiencies that get you to your solution more quickly; but don't fall into the trap of thinking an all-nighter on bennies is a viable replacement for organization and self-discipline.
The former solution is what I've seen preferred by students who don't prioritize school, and the latter is what the so-called "nerds" use.
I get another chance in 2 weeks. I better go back to stuying..
Before I present my argument - ask first why you might think it cheating? It only makes sense to think of it as cheating if you think that education is a competitive activity, and that in competitive activity you should only be able to avail yourself of your god given abilities.
My argument then relies on the belief that seeing education as a competitive activity is heinous in the extreme. Yes - it IS treated as a competitive activity. Your grades reflect your standing relative to other students in your class as enforced by bell curves which academics are made to apply after the fact. It is ridiculous. What makes me really angry is the way universities then force course co-ordinators to give a clear statement of learning outcomes in course descriptions - as if they fucking matter. For if the point of education was to achieve a learning outcome - then YOU WOULD BE GRADED ACCORDING TO WHETHER OR NOT YOU MET THAT LEARNING OUTCOME - not according to your relative standing.
Education should be about learning outcomes. I want to know - who has this skill... etc... not, who was the best in year X. Because even if I only ever accept the best - it's still a crap shoot as to what I really get.
And now they want to restrict people's access to drugs that could help them meet learning outcomes? Because they are so enamoured of their perverted education paradigm that they can't see the forest for the trees. I work in a university and I honestly wonder if the people above me who make these decisions can count to three. No doubt on reading this the first question they'll ask is how they'll determine who should get the scholarships if they can't rank competitively.
To which I answer - rank competitively all you want. Just don't confuse this process with grading.
This brings us to the second aspect of cheating - that you can only use your god given abilities in a competitive environment. If we assume that grading has now been separated from the ranking process - for the purposes of finding the best students - one still has to ask if it's fair to use drugs to get an edge. The answer (and as far as I'm concerned this answer goes equally for sports and everything else) is an easy yes but only if the following conditions hold.
1) Access is universal 2) cost is negligble 3) health risks are negligble
You don't, for instance, want to award your scholarships to folks that end up dying of heart attacks at 30. But dexamphetamines and the like have been around for over 100 years. These are well understood drugs. The only problem is 1) - but as the author seems to demonstrate - this isn't actually a problem since it's apparently so easy to get them.
There are other aspects too, of course. Third-level education, outside of technical disciplines in particular, is largely about signalling, not learning outcomes; it's a socialization process for the middle class, a badge that encourages particular social groups to accept you as one of their own, and without which you will not advance far.
In particular I like your comment about signalling which is spot on. I would say this would be the main reason anyone bothers to do an arts degree these days. Ultimately, these are in fact the evolutionarily designed QA processes which have actually worked reasonably well up until now.
But we've reached the point where they are clearly holding us back. Being able to socialise with a certain class may well have reliably indicated competence or excellence in a field in the past. The rigours of specialisation almost entirely wipe out that correlation. We've got millions of people being produced out of universities that actually can't do anything. And it's not just in arts that this is a problem - how many posts are we seeing here on HN from people saying they've done a computer science degree but can't code for shit?
That the upper echelons of academe are in fact SO incredibly status orientated suggests that what many of the best academics are actually doing revolves more around signalling procedures than actually making a real contribution of knowledge. and while I accept that this seems like an extreme conclusion - I've seen it time and time again. Many of the academics who have achieved the most status outside the academic community actually have reputations for not doing very much at all. It's certainly not all - but so many more than most of you would initially guess.
Of course, if this is true (and I tend to believe it is), it's a vastly bigger problem - we are wasting 4 years of life and billions of dollars on a zero sum game. Performance enhancing drugs are an incredibly tiny problem in comparison.
When I was in college 15 years ago, I personally knew of at least a half dozen people who managed to get themselves diagnosed with late onset ADD or ADHD. Getting the diagnosis was trivially easy -- drug ads in major magazines at the time often included "quizzes" that happened to be very similar to whatever the doctor was told to ask by the pharmaceutical sales chick.
The reason? You got "special accommodation" for your "disability" (ie. you get to take tests alone in a comfy chair in a private office without time limits) and you could easily sell or abuse the drugs that were prescribed. Many classes in the engineering programs were open-book exams -- being able to use a book for an unlimited period of time instead of the 60 minute window that you normally had was a tremendous advantage.
I really don't care about the "learning outcomes", but I do care that we're creating a culture where casual abuse of medical diagnoses and health insurance for personal gain is acceptable.
Sorry - I'm gonna have a hard time caring about the rest of your argument until you justify that a little.
I'm not arguing that people should fake ADD to get scripts. I do think this is a wrong and bad thing to do - but not because it makes them "academic cheaters" - it's because it forces up costs on the drug that genuine ADD people need just to be level with ordinary people. I know - because I genuinely am one - believe it or not. And I'm gonna be pissed if I have to start paying 100 bucks a bottle because the government's budget gets blown on a-holes who are faking it. But that's a different issue to what we're talking about here.
Having said that - I think the solution to both problems is to throw open the market with certain controls to limit substance abuse - and let the free market bring down costs (since the larger market will allow greater economies of scale in production).
If you have a medical condition, the government or insurance company should be paying for the drug. I don't think passing out pills to get economies of scale makes sense here.
My real beef, which I have done a poor job at expressing, is that folks are popping pills at someone else's expense because they want to party and still do well in school. Another, similar beef is that drug companies market these drugs to consumers. The end result is that folks are trying to get various drugs, and folks like you who have a genuine condition end up paying more. (A better example is heavily marketed and very expensive heartburn drugs, which can be substituted for cheap, OTC drugs for most cases of heartburn)
I think your argument that a phony diagnosis is cheating is valid -- but only in the sense of accommodations. For what it's worth, I know several people with legit diagnoses (and some with illegitimate diagnoses), none of whom have ever asked for or received special accommodation in school or during any sort of tests.
As for the drugs -- why shouldn't an adult have the option to take amphetamine or modafinil or whatnot electively?
I also want to agree with you that an adult should be able to just go buy some amphetamine... it's an argument that makes sense to me at a high level. The problem is, the devil is in the details. Do you want to be a passenger on a bus or a plane when the operator has been working for 14 hours hopped up on speed?
If it were legal for truck or bus drivers to do so, companies would compel them to as well.
That said, I don't advocate scamming, stealing or lying (in fact, it's probably easier and cheaper to illegally self-medicate via the internet).
That's a false choice -- I wouldn't want to be a passenger on a bus or a plane when the operator has been working for 14 hours hopped up on nothing (though, gun-to-head I'll take the hopped-up-on-speed pilot/driver over the one dozing off).
The lie to the doctor is necessary in many instances (not many will just prescribe you Adderal for the sake of performance), but the lie to the company can be seen as abusive since it is someone's undeserved loss (the companies) for your gain.
Buying the medicine full priced would be morally clearer, correct?
Only if you disclose it to the school, and request special accommodation. If you remain quiet, you won't be treated differently from any other student.
> You're also a party to a felony, since you are either committing insurance fraud from the bogus prescription or are an accessory to fraud by illicitly purchasing the pills from someone.
Only if you have insurance, or decide to use your insurance for the prescription. You can always pay full price and be morally clear.
Secondly, I'd take arms against the idea that the prescription is 'bogus'. It was given by a licence doctor, and who is to say that you don't have ADD/ADHD? If a condition can be prescribed for purely on self-reported statements such as "I have trouble concentrating sometimes... more than I think is normal", then who is to say that the patient is to blame rather than the professional system?
In short, you've taken this situation and hyped an argument around possibility of someone already immoral acting to achieve the same ends that could easily be achieved through moral methods.
Then again, if all my problems were as severe as this one, I'd be a happy camper ;)