“What do you think you are doing?” “Uh….”

I promise that I don’t cheat. I hope you didn’t read the title thinking that I’m a bad student or anything. I’ve never cheated on a test in school, maybe except this one time. Never have I been a student who cheats for good grades. I’d say I’m generally a pretty good student. I’m always working to the best of my efforts, maintaining my grades in the “A” range. I always try to be honest and being a good student. I’m pretty shy in class, but sometimes I do step up and answer a question. I typically like to work independently, but group work isn’t something that I hate or dread. 

However, in 5th grade, I guess I just wasn’t thinking right, and I attempted to do the worst thing ever.

5th grade was probably the best year I’ve ever had in school. I loved my teacher, and pretty much all the people in my class were close friends. You could talk to anyone and play with anyone in our class during recess and lunch, without being left out.
Every time it was lunch, everyone would either walk or sprint out of the classroom, hurrying to get the basketballs, or going to the field to play with your friends. Most of the girls in my class, including me, would go out to the field to play something like chaos tag, or a more “chill” game like mafia. It was awesome back then. Most of us wore your average clothes, no one trying to be too fancy or anything. I always wore shorts and a short sleeve t-shirt because I really enjoyed sports and exercise. Even though learning wasn’t very fun at times, hanging out with my friends was the best part of 5th grade.

Other than that, my teacher was probably the best. She was strict, but funny 24/7. She was the kind of person who would work hard for our benefit and was very experienced at teaching. She was able to get everyone in the class involved and generally didn’t choose favorites among the students. She was large, kept a smile all the time, and had short, frizzy brown hair. Our classroom was like any other. Large, filled with posters and our own work on the tan, textured, walls. In one corner was where we would walk into the classroom to hang our backpacks and put our lunch bags in the bright orange tubs.

The whole rest of the classroom was where the desks were. Which was faced toward the long clean whiteboard, which was also placed into small clumps or table groups, each with a different color representation. The back of the room, which was opposite of the whiteboard was the orange counter and shelves underneath, with supplies of all kinds.

Before our (actually my) unfortunate downfall, my friend and I had already started this agreement of cheating. We were sitting right next to each other, which pretty much lead to the agreement. Also, we were close friends, so neither of us really cared if we cheated off of each other. On a math test prior, we had already cheated off of each other, without being caught. Although we knew it was wrong, we both just brushed it off and thought we wouldn’t get in trouble since no was saw us. Don’t worry, this was the only test in which we cheated on before something happened… you know what.

The science test was coming up. Just like last time, we agreed that if there was a question we didn’t understand or know, we could cheat off of each other. So on the day of the science test, we all scurried back in the classroom right after lunch and sat down in our seats until everyone got in the classroom. Just like any other test, we got up out of our seats and walked towards the end of the room, opposite of the whiteboard. Under the bright orange counter, were mini cubby spaces filled with rulers, markers, and colored pencils. Right in the middle was the open space for keeping the blue cardboard test partitions. They’re used for creating a wall in between your tablemates, so you would have privacy and that way they couldn’t cheat off of you. Well… it would be more difficult to.