Picture this. You’re in the home stretch of the semester, assignments are piling up, projects are piling up, your last test grade in *insert worst subject ever here* is threatening to ruin your entire life, the pressure is on. A test is coming up that you HAVE. TO. PASS, your friend in another class has already done it and is like, “Don’t worry, I can tell you what’s gonna be on that test. Word for word. You know I have a photographic memory. I got YOU.” So, you let your friend tell you everything. After all, they offered. It’s not your fault Patricia is just really nice. It’s totally not cheating. That’s what 66 percent of College of DuPage APL English students think, according to a survey on students’ perception of cheating conducted by the College of DuPage Library Information Literacy Program.  

The surprising statistics don’t stop there. About 68 percent of students have been tempted to cheat on school work. A total of 29 percent of students don’t think it’s cheating if a friend gives you a copy of the exam answers. Nearly one in four students think it’s acceptable to cheat if you don’t care about the topic. And 61 percent would cheat if they knew they wouldn’t get caught.

Those are a lot of questionable responses. In today’s society, cheating in schools is an unfortunate reality. Many students now feel school has become less about learning new information and more about getting that ‘A’ at all costs. This has led to cheating seeming like somewhat of an unavoidable reality if students want to keep their grades up.

An article posted on ABCNews.com spoke about a six-month investigation they recently conducted, in which the focus was to find out how and why people in high school and college are cheating. The responses from students, who opted to remain anonymous, gave insight to the fact that many students feel cheating at some point is unavoidable.

“Mary, a student at a large university in the South, said, ‘A lot of people think it’s like you’re not really there to learn anything. You’re just learning to learn the system.’”

Others felt like cheating in school was actually preparing them for life after graduation. “‘The real world is terrible, people will take other people’s materials and pass it on as theirs. I’m numb to it already. I’ll cheat to get by.’”

Many students also feel their peers who are already cheating will enjoy an unfair advantage if they don’t join them. This is also shown in the ABC News article. “’There’s other people getting better grades than me and they’re cheating. Why am I not going to cheat? It’s kind of almost stupid if you don’t.’”

So, it’s obvious many students feel cheating is completely justifiable.

We all know school isn’t easy, but it’s actually not supposed to be. High school and especially college is supposed to challenge and stretch you. That’s the only way you’re going to become a more intelligent, well-rounded individual who can positively contribute to society. If you become too used to taking the easy route, what happens when you graduate from college, get a job and realise there’s no way to cheat your way out of the work? You just might end up doing some unscrupulous things to get the job done. They may be things anybody who wants to call themselves a good person shouldn’t be doing.

Look, we totally get it. All the work we have to put in at school can definitely become stressful, which is why we shouldn’t knock asking for assistance whenever it all becomes too overwhelming. College of DuPage has an excellent Learning Commons department, which offers a variety of academic support services to students, free of charge. COD students can also take advantage of their professor’s office hours if they need any additional help.      

Think how gratifying it will feel to know that when you get your degree, you and only you did all the heavy lifting. There’s a perfect solution to cheating, and that is time management and hard work. Those are attributes you’ll undoubtedly need to succeed in life, and college is the perfect time to gain them.