“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.
We all formed this clump around the partitions, grabbing one each, and walking back to our seats. Some people had nervous looks on their faces. Others were just talking to other classmates as they walked past everyone. We all slumped down in our seats, opening the partitions and grabbing our pencils and erasers, preparing for the test.
Our teacher walks over and passes out all the tests, telling us not to start until she says so. She also goes over the procedures for what we can do after the test. Like reading, drawing, or playing games on the classroom iPads silently. After she passes out all the tests, we all just look over at her as she says, “Alright you can start.” And the test begins. I fly through the multiple choice questions and am feeling like this test will be no problem. Then all of a sudden, I stumble on a word problem. In that word problem, it uses a word where I’m not 100% sure of what the meaning is. That one word… was biology.
So, I then slowly turn my head over to my friend, and whisper, “What does biology mean?” Unfortunately, while I’m saying that, my teacher catches me talking and slowly walks over, and I don’t even notice this happening. However, my friend doesn’t respond and looks over at my teacher as she walks over. I gulp, and straightaway my heart starts beating as step by step she trudged over, and whispers, “What do you think you’re doing?” She says this in a tone which makes me immediately know that I’m in trouble. I feel like I’m about to shiver in fear. I barely say, “Uh… I was asking her what biology meant…” She then says in that same tone, “Why didn’t you just ask me?” Before a single sound can even come out of my mouth, she grabs the paper right from my desk. Then she starts walking slowly towards the recycling bin. Right away I realize what she is about to do. Even though I knew what her intentions were, there were way too many thoughts in my head to really process what was going on. Feelings of regret and sadness. With a steady but quick motion, my teacher rips my paper right in half and tosses it in the bin. The whole time everyone stops doing their tests and looks over in silence. After my test is thrown into the bin, my teacher heads back to her desk and kind of sits back down with a thump noise on her chair. I know how she is feeling.  My heart is pounding faster than it ever had before, and I feel like going in tears. Since I have nothing to do, I awkwardly reach into my backpack for a piece of paper, and I grab a clipboard from a shelf. I quietly head to the carpet and take a seat against a wall.
I try to pretend that I’m just casually drawing, so I draw a penguin. However, I didn’t feel like I was really drawing at all. My pencil was wobbly as I tried drawing. I was painfully holding in the tears, thinking about what other people thought of me. A few minutes pass, and some of my friends come over and sit next to me, feeling bad for me. They don’t say anything but I feel a little better. After school ends, I keep thinking about that test, and how disappointed my teacher is. Thankfully, this test was in secret. I didn’t tell my parents, nor did my teacher. A few days later, on a Friday, my teacher tells me that she will let me do the test again during free time. I felt like it was my time to redeem myself. I grab that test and go sit by myself. This time, I knew what biology meant. I don’t even know or cared about what I got on that test, all I know is that I learned my lesson. Ever since then, I’ve never ever considered cheating on a test in school again. By the way, my parents still don’t know this even happened.