Cheating is wrong. Most, if not everyone learns this at a young age from an older sibling, friend, etc. There are many different types of cheating and ways to cheat. Types of cheating can range from cheating on tests, plagiarism, cheating on a partner in a relationship, using performance enhancing drugs, etc. No matter the case, cheating is wrong, and everyone should learn how to identify and stop cheaters to better the whole of society.

Most likely a child’s first cheating episode in school is on a test or a worksheet. Of course, there are many ways, as a teacher, to identify and stop cheating. One example is simply moving the students around to new places before the test starts. But to truly stop cheating, I think it should be up to the students to report a cheater to their teacher. A way a teacher could convince students to report cheaters is by rewarding students with extra credit or perhaps a treat of some sort to give more of an incentive to students to report cheaters. Rewarding students would prove beneficial to teachers in the end, because more often than not, when a student is copying another student’s paper, the victim often doesn’t care. Change could happen by offering the victim a reward for reporting the event. This is why rewarding students would give them a better reason to report cheaters. In theory, this would greatly help stop cheating and make test scores more reflective of the student’s actual knowledge in the end, and help student’s build problem-solving skills.

Another form of cheating that involves academics is plagiarism. Plagiarism is a form of cheating in which a student is assigned a paper to write and simply copies all of his information for his/her report from another source (Internet, books, etc.). Plagiarism is cheating, even though the victims may not ever know that they’ve had their work plagiarized. Plagiarism is a difficult form of cheating to combat because it’s not possible for teachers to watch their students outside of class. In order to tell if a student has plagiarized and to put a stop to it, it requires dedication from the teachers to look up sources and make the sure the writing is the students, not Wikipedia’s. It also requires the student to be responsible, but more importantly learn to be more creative and original with their work!

“Cheating between committed couples in a relationship is a betrayal; it’s sly, conniving, and generally just not good.” These words were spoken by my mother who has been happily married to my father for 25 years. Every word of it is true. She also made another good point when she stated, “It goes against marriage vows.” It’s true, when two people are together in an intimate relationship, it should be just that. It’s quite difficult to define what cheating in a relationship exactly is, because it’s different to every person. Yet another statement my mother proclaimed that, “Being in a relationship isn’t always easy and we don’t always agree on everything, but in the end I wouldn’t trade him for anyone else.”
When a couple believes they’re responsible enough to be in a relationship, the couple needs to be willing and able to work problems out. Having the ability to work problems out without cheating is a recurring theme. People need to have the ability to solve these problems before taking on a significant responsibility. Whether the responsibility relates to academics or a serious relationship, it doesn’t matter. People should be willing to work out the problems and therefore better themselves naturally.

Another large branch of cheating is performance-enhancing drugs. There are different kinds of performance-enhancing drugs which range from steroids, to types of painkillers, all the way to stimulants. The one used most often in athletics is steroids. Steroids are sometimes used to reduce body fat, build muscle and can also reduce the amount of time it takes an athlete to recover from an injury. Another type of performance-enhancing drugs is painkillers, and painkillers do what the name implies, ‘kill the pain.’ What actually happens is that blood pressure is increased, causing cells in the muscles to obtain a higher supply of oxygen. Painkillers basically just shield athletes from pain so that they can continue to compete and not get fatigued as much as a normal athlete would get. In the academic side of the playing field however, a person can use performance enhancing drugs such as stimulants to increase focus, improve study habits and improve test-taking. Obviously, the prior situations are illegal and much more frowned upon. However, that doesn’t take away from the fact that students can enhance their academic performance by use of drugs. Like a lot of types of cheating, it may not be illegal but is still theoretically cheating.

On a more casual aspect of life, have you ever caught yourself playing a board-game, such as Monopoly, and catch yourself stealing money from the bank? Even if it’s just a game it’s no different than any other form of cheating. You’re trying to gain an unfair advantage and theoretically hurting the other player’s chances to potentially beat you fair and square. This would be the same in a situation in online gaming. Say you’re playing the game, and you discover an item, or are exploiting a glitch in the game of some sort, you are gaining an unfair advantage and also ruining the fun for everyone else. Cheating in a casual environment is no different than any other types of cheating. It’s wrong, and it ruins the fun for everyone else.

Cheating in the art of gambling is a little bit different however. Cheating in casinos is determined by the severity the action that was committed, or the region the gambler is gambling in. For example, in Nevada, cheating in a casino is a felony under Nevada state law. A skillful or mathematically knowledgeable player can use the art of card counting to gain a fair advantage over his opponents in Blackjack. Not everything is legal in gambling though, an example is loaded dice and these are certainly not legal. Gambling is a lot different from other types of games in society, some whole games are built on how well a player can give himself a better advantage over other players, and isn’t considered cheating.

In most situations, more often than not, cheating is a bad thing and is looked down upon by the general public. In most situations, the best thing you can do if you catch a cheater is to just report him to a teacher, coach, or authority and let the manner sort itself out and let the cheater learn his lesson the hard way. But there is one thing you must ask yourself, can’t I just get better on my own and work harder? Think about that question the next time you peer at someone’s test, click copy and paste, or take drugs to enhance performance. Think to yourself: “Am I cheating?” Do the right thing, don’t cheat on anything.