Cheating Is Never The Answer

I am a freshman in college working late one night on some homework with another classmate. Our professor encourages us to compare answers with our classmates to make sure we understand the material before handing it in. Our school has a very strict no tolerance policy against plagiarizing so while we are allowed to compare answers, we are not allowed to simply copy another’s homework. It’s about halfway through the term and usually there’s another girl (we’ll call her M) working with us in our study group. For some reason she can’t make it and asks for us to send her our answers so that we can go over them through email. However, once we send them to her we never hear back, despite sending her multiple messages. We eventually decide to just work without her in order to get the assignment turned in on time.

We don’t see M in class the next day and later that week I receive an email from my professor asking me to meet him after class. Naturally I spend the rest of the day trying to figure what I did wrong. Turns out the TA’s in the class noticed that M had turned in screenshots for most of her answers. Normally this wouldn’t raise suspicions since many students like to do their assignments by hand and turn in scanned copies. However, in M’s case they notice the handwriting doesn’t match up with the rest of her answers. Turns out that M had taken screenshots of my answer, pasted them into her own assignment, and sent it in!

Of course this got sent on to the Honor Board. I went through weeks of anxiety submitting a testimony, evidence, and having multiple conversations trying to clear my name. I even offered to have them pull my text messages to show that I never gave her permission to copy my answers. I didn’t care that M had messed up her own academic record but I was raging that she had put my own in jeopardy as well. In the end they cleared me and M was suspended. I’ve never been so relieved in my life and since then I’ve had no patience for anyone who cheats. I’d rather fail a class than get kicked out of school. M tried to contact me through Popular Social Media Site sometime during the next term. I simply deleted it and blocked her.