Cheating

             Cheating is prevalent not only in schools, but exists in other areas of our lives also. Persons who cheat their way through life have everything to lose and nothing to gain. By cheating they risk losing the respect and/or trust of their teachers, parents, peers, and friends. They will never gain the self-satisfaction or knowledge that they would have obtained by doing the work on their own.
             I view cheating as the easy way out. Cheating is unfair to those people who work hard to achieve and earn their good grades and it is a sure sign of a weak individual. Students who are looking for an easy way to get out of their homework will try to find someone who has the work done and will allow them to copy their paper. These people will continue to rely on cheating and not finish their work. It takes a stronger person to accept the fact that they didn't get their work done and deal with the consequences.
             People who resort to cheating to get their homework done may get all of the points for that assignment, but in the long run it will hurt them because they will most likely do poorly on the tests or future assignments. Cheaters are only digging themselves a bigger hole each and every time that they choose to cheat.
             These days, for unknown reasons, it seems a lot of people view cheating as an acceptable option. More and more people are resorting to cheating and, therefore, are failing test after test. Just as the violence or crude humor on television desensitizes society, the growing number of cheaters has caused many people to look upon cheating as normal. People these days go to the extreme to cheat on homework, projects, and even tests just to get a better grade. To me, cheating makes no sense at all. The purpose of going to school every day is to learn and should be viewed as a privilege. People are not learning if they are turning in other students" work as their own. They are just growing farther and farther away from intelligence.