Let’s talk about cheating. Will it really help you in life? No. Cheating, no matter what level it is, doesn’t teach you anything. The definition of cheating is taking for one’s personal gain through deceit and dishonesty.

While homework may seem pointless and a waste of time, it isn’t. Teachers use it to gauge how well a concept is understood and it allows for application of the topics discussed in class. Aside from how well a topic is understood, homework allows for practice on that topic. It takes more than seeing a math problem, or anything else, more than once before it is ingrained into memory.

Why should one put in the effort to complete something as remedial as a daily assignment that most likely has nothing to do with life? As humans, we are lazy. We procrastinate until the very last second, so if copying homework five minutes before it is due is the last minute, then why take use personal free time that can better be spent binge watching something on Netflix?

Until a topic, no matter how basic, is solidified and completed multiple times, the probability of it becoming stored in one’s brain is very slim.

If one copies a friends homework, it doesn’t do that individual any good because they aren’t learning the material. While it is cliché, practice really does make perfect. It takes time to form a habit and that habit doesn’t form from thought, it requires practice.

Disregarding that cheating prevents one from thinking as an individual, it is morally wrong. Taking another person’s work that they have put hours upon hours of time doing isn’t right. In an ideal world everyone would have a moral compass that points north, but that isn’t the case.

Cheating in high school may seem harmless because once whatever class that is needed to graduate is completed, sometimes the information learned in that class is forgotten about. However, once the easy way out is taken once, why not use it again? It worked the first time. Well once the easy way is used, there’s no turning back because effort is now a thing of the past. Except it really isn’t.

Fast forward to college where studying is a necessity. That nerd who everyone always copied off of in history or math isn’t necessarily in that room so everyone who took the easy way out is set up for failure. Cheating gets one nowhere in life because the individual is no longer thinking for oneself and is dependent on others which isn’t how a job works.

Getting an education to better oneself in the workplace is the point of college. If hard work and dedication isn’t used throughout college then no one worth knowing would be anywhere in life. While college isn’t necessarily needed to be successful in life, hard work and the patience to do the grunt work is imperative.