“But I wasn’t the one who copied the homework!” Sure, you had to lend your best friend your paper. Or else? She’d get an F for turning her assignment late and ruin your so-called nice reputation. Shouldn’t students be encouraged to help out others spontaneously by lending their homework to others? Well, if you want to get an F, I’d encourage you to do so…I mean, who doesn’t want an impressive learning experience? 😉 

Academic honesty, what’s so sacred about it? Why are teachers so concerned about it, and why do some students treat it like the Ten Commandments? Yes, I’ve wonder about it too. Academic honesty policies seemed to be so complicated and vague, like gray areas in love relationships. You never know when would you accidentally (or intentionally) violate it. The most exciting part is, it could completely turn your future upside down! Sounds fun, huh?

In case you want to keep yourself from turning a potentially bright future into a dark one, I think you should really know why not to violate the academic honesty policy. However, just because you know why, does it mean you can keep yourself away from temptations…? How easy it is to copy and paste an online essay! As long as the teachers do not find out, I’d get a guaranteed A+…right?

But first, would you mind to check out our presentation for a quick recap on academic honesty?

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Students feel as if their life success depends on getting the top SAT scores and the highest grades.

      – Denise Clark Pope, author of Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed Out, Materialistic and Miseducated Students.

“Wanna hear how I got those A’s?” Who can resist such temptation? When someone offers you such an easy route to get good grades, would you be a fool to turn down such offer? Why would you? Don’t you need those good grades to get into the Ivy League…?

We’re always so caught up about getting good grades that it becomes unhealthy, both mentally and physically. WHY? It’s true that getting good grades could give you a future that is likely better and more successful. However, after all these years of education, what have we truly learned and absorbed? That’s the question. 

Ludwig via Compfight

Good Grades > Moral Standards? 

How hard would people work to get that perfect grade? You wouldn’t believe it. According to a research done by Denise Clark Pope, 5 students who studied computer science spent most of their time “finagling the system” in pursuit of grades. In her research, Pope remarked how they knew cheating is wrong, but they felt like the most important thing is to get good grades. This has proven how education these days is somehow twisted. The pursuit of good grades is somehow misleading some students to the downfall of morality. As these computer science students cheated, did they truly learn anything? I honestly doubt it. 

When I was young, I used to panic because of tests. I somehow wanted that perfect grade so much that I thought about cheating. As a close “assistant” of the teacher when I was in fifth grade, I’m often allured to take a sneak peak at the questions of the upcoming test. It felt as alluring as making a deal with the devil. After doing it a couple times with my friends, I actually realized that such action never really helped me to get a better grade, instead, it made me feel annoyingly guilty and disturbing. Trust me, it’s not worth it.

Just as the snowball effect, once you have experienced violating the academic honesty, you would be tempted to do it over and over again. Little did you know, the guilt in your heart would grow larger and larger as the snowball rolls…

Violating the academic honesty would give you not only an F on your assignment, but also a disturbed state of mind for the rest of your life. Let’s think about it from another perspective, shall we? Let’s say you stayed up for the whole night to make your essay perfect, but someone else took credit for it the next second. How would you feel?

Instead of grades, think more about yourself. You’re not even respecting your true self when you are attributing others’ ideas as if they are your own.

–ok, I tried to make my post sound like a dialogue, but it kinda turned out to be a monotonous monologue…lol

Anyway, before you leave, I’m going to randomly throw some questions to you. So, if you are tempted to take the short cut next time, think about this twice – which would look better on your application: a trustworthy reputation or decent grades shaded with academic dishonesty? Keep the answer to yourself. ?

Huh? You said you got all your decent grades with academic dishonesty and never got caught? Fine, go on and take the “easy” route until the day you run out of luck! Don’t blame it on me if you got fired or expelled though. ?

…and just in case you need to picture the scenario ?

VINCE MCMAHON GIF via GIPHY

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Citations:

Palmer, Barbara. Pressure for good grades often leads to high stress, cheating, professors say. Stanford News, 23 Feb 2005, news.stanford.edu/news/2005/february23/cheat-022305.html. Accessed 7 Sep 2017. 

Bauer Academic Honesty. The University of Houston, 10 Dec 2015, www.bauer.uh.edu/current/academic-honesty.php. Accessed 5 Sep 2017

“Section 14: Academy Honesty Policy.” High School Handbook 2017-2018 Kaohsiung American School. 2017.