Apprehensively, I watch as the scantrons are handed out. Mine comes to rest in front of me, a daunting reminder of how unprepared I am for this test. The answer slots bore holes into my soul. I want to take back the night before and actually study instead of wasting my time playing that new Pokémon game. It’s too late now, and I’m going to have to settle for less than a B.
Diligently, I begin to work on filling in the bubbles. A hard question trips me up. Sweat forms on my brow when I realize there are only five minutes of class left, and I have more than 15 questions to go. That’s when from behind me, I hear two people whispering answers to each other. It has come to my attention this ritual has been occurring over the whole period, but in different forms. Someone has their iPod out, sneakily hidden in a sweatshirt pocket. Someone else is letting their friend see their answers, and yet another person is creeping a peek over someone’s shoulders. It seems like there are so many ways to cheat.
The next day, I check my grades. C+ … not bad. Then I hear the students who I knew had cheated brag about their score. Scenarios like this often repeat themselves. I run out of fingers whenever I try to count the times I have witnessed someone cheating.
What really irks me is I hate knowing some people are only getting better grades than I because they are cheating. I know they did the same as I and were just as unprepared. I took the fall. So should they. Now, I don’t necessarily care if you cheat on homework, but cheating on tests and quizzes is in a whole new ball park. Tests can make or break the grade, and they reflect the work you’ve done. Cheating is stealing. You’re stealing knowledge from someone else. You wouldn’t go into a store and steal a shirt would you? Your friend has a really nice ring, but would you just rip it right off their finger? So why do you cheat?
To make this scenario even more atrocious, this is taking place in Honor Classes. You would think as “honors students” we would have some kind of integrity to hold up. Being labeled an honor student used to mean you were someone who was willing to work hard to earn good grades. Looking around my college classes I only see people who want to have the title staked to their name. They want straight A’s so they can walk across the stage and receive that fancy tassel and be the applicant every college would die for.
At graduation I would love to walk down the line and take away their honor tassels one by one. You don’t deserve this. Your name is salt in my mouth. How can you be proud of yourself? The words honor and student together are as vacant as the fields after a swarm of locusts. Nothing grows there and nothing good will come of it. The term has become completely meaningless.
This winter I learned I was accepted into the National Honors Society. This is a huge honor to me, but I can’t help but thinking it is a huge joke. At least half the people who were accepted into it shouldn’t be there. I don’t want to share that title with them and I shouldn’t have to. The volunteering required to get in isn’t done in earnest. Kids just do it so they can stay in the program and pack their college resumes. I admire the effort to get students motivated to give back to the community, but again humankind has perverted the very system that was meant to help it.
The consequences for cheating might not be as obvious now, but wait until you get to college. Those who have made their way by cheating will suddenly find themselves up a creek without a paddle. You will have to do work individually. And if you think you can get by with it a little here and there it will not fly. If you get caught, guess what? You can wave goodbye to that fancy $25,000 scholarship, and possibly even say goodbye to your admission to the college you cheated to get into.
College is something you pay to get into because you want to be there and you are willing to put forth the effort so you can get into your selected profession. Your perfect 4.0 and exclusive club membership will not help you now. Your age-old safety net may ultimately be your undoing.

V.S.

It’s the day of the unit 13 slides test in Humanities English 12. Although we’ve known about it for at least a week, one would think Lange announced the test at the last minute by the panic in everyone’s eyes. The two or three students who actually prepared manage to keep their cool as the rest cram and scheme.
In the hours leading up to English, every possible option that requires the least amount of prior preparation while also yielding the highest possible score is explored. About 50 minutes later it all starts, the exchange of methodology and accounts of the success of each one. With an air of confidence in their voices, students smile as though they’ve conquered something, and they have; they’ve cheated..
Throughout my grade school years, I was an avid defender of honest work. I would never let anyone look at my paper and I certainly would never ask to see someone else’s answers. Cheating was wrong. I equated it to being lazy.
As a high school senior, cheating doesn’t bother me as much. The nature of cheating has changed and I can understand why my classmates do it. Often times the case is we’ve taken on too much. We’re in honors classes, the captain of several sports, involved in speech, youth in government, and have an after-school job. On top of all of that, we’re trying to maintain a 4.0 grade point average so we might possibly be accepted to our choice college.
If I said I never cheated, then watch my nose grow; I would be lying. I’ve copied the occasional worksheet and even had a little help from my cell phone on a test or two. I’m not the only one; it seems like everyone is doing it. What I find the most interesting about the prevalence of cheating is that it’s being done in the honors, AP and CIS classes the most. Don’t we take these classes because of their rigor and how impressive they look on a transcript? Yet, we’re cheating our way through the courses. The way I choose to look at is in the future, we’re just setting ourselves up. Eventually we’re going to cut so many corners we’ll get to a point where we can’t do the coursework.
I’m not trying to defend the act of cheating, but I think the reasons why we do it are understandable. Starting junior year, we start packing our transcripts with college and advance placement classes and our activities with leadership roles and volunteering programs. By senior year, we’re burned out. From my own experience, I can say we’re under too much stress. So any shortcuts that can alleviate that feeling are quite welcome.
Try to look at it in Machiavellian terms; the end justifies the means. As long as we all graduate and continue our education, shouldn’t that be all that matters? It might not be honest, but I really don’t see why I should work twice as hard as someone whose grade point average is probably higher than mine because they cheated. Sometimes doing the right thing doesn’t get you anywhere. So at graduation, when my fellow honors students cheaters are beaming proudly with our honor cords, it’ll all be a sham. Shockingly enough, the majority of us won’t care.