Teachers often state, “Your grade does not define who you are; it is your learning that defines you.”  Yet, when a test comes back with a low score, things are suddenly different. The number you receive is all anyone wants to discuss: parents worry about it, colleges will judge it, and even teachers may treat you differently. If grades are not supposed to define us, then why do they go on to control everything?

That circumstance is the trap so many students fall into. On one hand, we’re told to strive for growth and to obtain knowledge. Nonetheless, the entire system screams that a single bad grade can ruin you.  When those messages clash, cheating starts to feel less like breaking the rules and more like a survival instinct within the educational system.

The harsh reality is that students are increasingly overwhelmed nowadays. Not only do you have one test after another, but essays are constantly assigned, there is homework from every class, and the pressure to participate in activities outside of school feels relentless. Sleep and mental health fall to the bottom of your priorities when those around you pester you to join clubs, play sports, volunteer, and build the ultimate resume for your college applications. So, after studying your brain off all night — knowing you’ll likely still fail because it was impossible to cover all the material — cheating becomes the solution the system dares you to take.

That’s why, when I cheated, I didn’t regret it. Not because I think cheating is necessarily right, but because it proves something important: the education system doesn’t always leave room to be honest. It instead rewards the student who cheats and passes, while punishing the student who tries and fails. It presents a facade of prioritizing learning, but, in reality, it only rewards performance. It claims to care about the individual, but it reduces them to numbers.

In my mind, cheating is not about being lazy: it’s a last resort to escape pressure. Cheating is about feeling like you’re being backed into a corner where you feel like anything you could do is somehow the wrong choice, and cheating feels like the one choice that would at least allow you to keep up. Of course, the concept of education should matter, and, of course, learning should matter. But when school makes their only ‘measure of worth’ a number, it’s hard to be shocked when students do everything in their power to achieve it. That’s why, until something changes, until learning becomes equally as important as grades, until workloads are not crushing, until mental health is taken seriously, cheating will happen. Not because students don’t care, but because the system doesn’t give them a true choice.

So yes, I cheated. And no, I don’t regret it. Because the real problem isn’t me, it’s the system that made me believe a number on a paper mattered more than everything else.