As we started talking about cheating in class, I thought of one particular science class in high school that was extremely hard. I thought about how common it was to cheat and nearly everyone in the class did it, whether it was as little as taking a peek at your neighbor's test to actually collaborating with the people around you to discuss answers while the test was out. I think that saddest part is, and what most of us mentioned in class, is that we did not feel very guilty for cheating. It was justified with excuses like, "this class is too hard" or "I'm not good at science" or "I studied but it was still impossible anyways" or "I'm too busy to study and teachers don't understand." Though I'm sure some of these feel like viable excuses, it still prevented me from actually learning in the class. I actually found it humorous because I found an article that listed eight reasons for why you should stop yourself from cheating: http://www.wikihow.com/Stop-Yourself-from-Cheating-on-a-Test.
After reading over the tips, I realized that a lot of these reasons are either not true or just don't apply. The top two reasons relate directly to what nearly half the class said on Wednesday: the morals of cheating in some cases are just simply disregarded and it doesn't stop people from doing it. Then, one of the reasons was remember that you can always retake the test or learn from your mistakes. However, when it is a big test or exam, everyone knows that you surely cannot make it up and if you want to learn from your mistakes that's great, but you will still have an F. Also, a lot of the times, cheating goes completely unnoticed and there are no repercussions, so the whole punishment aspect does not make sense.
Overall, I just thought that the irony of these tips and how they are usually disregarded helps to explain why students actually DO cheat on tests.
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