Cheating.

“The end justifies the means”

During senior year of high school, we fought the board of education because our salutatorian didn’t deserve to be honored as #2 in our class. She was a cheater, and we all knew it. Instead, another honest senior deserved to be ranked #2. As frustrated as I was that year, I thought to myself: college will be much better; my teachers always tell us stories about students being kicked out because they cheat.

But OH MY GOD, NO. It’s not any different. In reality, it’s even worse. Machiavelli clearly knew what he was saying. Seriously, I hear it all the time. So let’s take a step back…way back…and think about what he said. Do you really agree that the “end justifies the means”? I mean, why not? After all, who is actually going to sit there and look into your past to look at all of the small details that led up to the life that you’re actually living (or will be living). Think about it this way: do you think that the cheater or the honest student became the CEO of a company? Well, simply put: the cheater has the better grades. He probably had more positions on executive boards because he wasn’t busy studying for exams. And then he probably got a better internship than the honest student because of all of these reasons. Eventually, he cheated his way up there and now is living happily with his family, supporting them easily. And what happened to the honest guy? He’s still working his way up there…there’s a good chance he’s not even living his dream at the moment because he never ended up making that much money.

So then where does that leave us? What is our goal in life? Well, one of our goals is to be financially stable in order to maintain a family, right? So to reach that goal, are we supposed to be dishonest? Are we supposed to cheat our way up there? Is it okay to set up our desks so that we can easily look at each other students’ scrantons? Is it okay to pay someone to write our papers or do our homework?

And what exactly is your definition of cheating? Is helping someone on their homework cheating? How about taking someone’s answers because there are 5 minutes left before it’s due? Obviously glimpsing over at someone else’s test is cheating, but what about reusing your own paper? Or even portions of it? What about sucking up to a teacher so that he helps you more than he should on a paper?

Side note: why do professors suck at catching cheaters? Have they just stopped caring? If yes, what does that mean? They’ve lost hope in our generation…they don’t think it matters anymore. How sad. Honestly, I think that Rutgers should invest more money in hiring people to catch cheaters than using it for our football team (and I LOVE football). Even better: all professors should STOP texting, emailing, reading, etc. while their students are taking exams. I mean COME ON, you are getting PAID. Earn that money! Don’t just sit there. It makes me so furious! I lose all respect for that professor because they just seem…dumb.

Back to the topic: here’s my point of view: I HATE cheating. I HATE that I have so many friends that cheat. I wish I could just yell at them but I don’t have it in me. Instead, I just roll my eyes and continue with my life…I refuse to cheat on quizzes, exams, etc. I honestly rather fail than cheat-I just can’t do it. Yea…I definitely have looked at other students’ homework questions, but I’ve stopped doing it. I really rather not submit it than cheat because after all my research on corruption, I have a new theory that I’ll talk about later. Yes, India is extremely corrupt. But honestly, we aren’t much better here in America. Our corruption just comes in different forms, like cheating. And more than that, cheating will be the basis for worse corruption. Just wait and watch…we aren’t heading in a positive direction, and unless we stand up and fight for honesty and morality, we’re so screwed.

**I understand that this post is mainly questions…but I can’t really force you to think what I’m thinking. This is just a way to get your viewpoint on this topic, since we all come across it on a daily basis.

So long. <3