Dilemmas

Cheating: The Universal Internal Struggle

What do i mean by universal? well, anyone who has ever taken a challenging class has struggled with the desire to cheat. Free answers, a way to check your work on test, an almost guaranteed higher score and when you boil it down...not many people get caught so it almost seems worth it.

The Setup:

Senior year of high school, my college apps have been submitted and i am trying desperately to raise my grades after three years of screwing around so that I can get enough money off to make it feasible to attend a four year, private college. At my high school you took six classes, period. you couldn't overload your schedule like at college because of how the timeslots worked. that wasn't acceptable to me so I found a way around it. Honors Chamber Choir met after school and still counted as an academic class, in other words, my seventh class to help me raise my grades. My goal was this, i had a 3.3 gpa and I wanted something well north of a 3.7 to smooth the college process so I was taking two honors classes, and AP class, and a seventh class while all the other seniors were taking their well deserved rest. after a little I figured out that some extra curriculars would help a lot as well so on top of playing Track and Field, being the VP of the Young republicans, a group leader for two retreat leading groups, participating in a third retreat organization, and a ton of other clubs i decided i would do the play because....why not? My average school day was about 11 hours (7-6) and i did my homework before school, during break, and during lunch. To put it simply I had overloaded myself a little too much.

The What?:

Anyone who has every done a play knows what hell comes with tech week. basically you run the play through from beginning to end again and again and again... etc until it is perfect. throw this into my already horrific schedule and you have me at school until 10:30 most nights, factor in the 30 minutes it takes me to drive home and now there is actually no time to do homework and this is a problem. I made the choice to take the AP physics test while I was in Honors Physics because...im not really sure but i did. taking the AP test makes you exempt from a final in AP physics but in Honors physics apparently ambition is met with punishment because i still had to take the final, just two weeks before final week so i had less time to study...fantastic. Come friday and I am handed the final placed in the lab by my self and told to come back when i was done. I could barely stay awake, i hadnt even cracked my book open, the play debuted that night, and i was all alone, it was all too easy to cheat. I could have easily taken out my phone and looked up every single answer without ever getting caught and aced the final.

The So What?:

So basically in my mind at this point here is what is going on, it is almost justified to cheat after the week that i have had, I have an A+ in physics so we all know I know the stuff i just didnt memorize it for the stupid test. however, if i fail the test it will tank my grade and could easily affect my college acceptance probabilities. No brainer, cheat...right? when you boil it down i guess it really comes to whether or not you think the rules should be bent for you in special circumstances.

The What? v2:

so rewind again and in in a stool in the physics lab, whether because i had a sudden moral flux or because i was too lazy to look up 50 questions on my phone i decide to fail the test and take what's coming. life lessons and all. needless to say it threw me off my game for a while especially when i got the final back and saw a 65% marked on it. that would easily bring my A+ down to a C... then my teacher calls me in after class to let me know that because i was taking the AP test my final didn't count for my grade, however she didnt tell me because she made it harder than the AP test so i could experience the struggle of not knowing the answers to questions, like the AP test. to top it all off, later that week 4 kids in my physics class got suspended for cheating with their phones because a kid who was a little infatuated with our teacher told on the kids to get on her good side. one of those 4 kids could have easily been me.

The Now What?:

What did i learn? well as if it weren't painfully obvious, even in dire situations that seem to have no good outcome, sticking to your morals is always worth it. had i gotten suspended i would not have been able to come to santa clara even if i had still been accepted. the next time i get in a situation like this i hope that i can remember what i learned last time and do the right thing.

P.S. - the play was hello, dolly! and it was fantastic.