Last month, I was walking down the hallway on my way to my music lesson; I suddenly realized that I forgot to get my practice record. In our school, the homework for music class each week is to fill out a practice record and get it signed. If you don’t get it signed, you get an automatic zero. I had filled out the form the night before but I had completely forgot about getting it signed. I quickly ran through all the options that I had. I thought about telling the truth and getting an F… but that didn’t exactly appeal to me. I also thought of calling back home and asking my mom to sign it but I didn’t have any time to do that. Another possibility that occurred to me was to forge the signature but that violated academic integrity. I wished that I could go back in time to sign it but there was no way in a million years that that would happen.

My only two choices were to either get an F or forge the signature. I considered the pros and cons of each choice. First I realized that the main issue with coming forth with the truth was that I would fail the assignment. That was a huge con. There were actually no pros to this idea except a clean conscience and that isn’t really worth anything. The pro for plagiarizing was that I would get a good grade but if I got caught then I would get in huge trouble and possibly get suspended. I realized that even though coming clean wasn’t appealing, the cons of plagiarizing were too great so I decided to come clean.

When I got to my music lesson, I told my teacher that I forgot to get my practice record signed. He yelled at me and I wondered what would have happened if I had plagiarized. Unfortunately, there is no such thing as a time machine.