I almost cheated in my math class the other day. I emphasize the word "almost" so that I won't find myself tomorrow begging to a bunch of administrators who are just itching for a chance to add me to list of "The Academically Dishonest." But I did consider cheating.
It would have been so easy, too. The math homework was assigned and a friend who took the class before said a problem I was having trouble with could be found on the Internet.
I balked at this at first, thinking that maybe I could get it done on my own. I tried it out myself and had my teacher check it out about a half-hour before it was due. It was wrong.
And so, the tempting world of the Internet called, promising not only an answer but full credit on the homework — small change to be sure, for even though was just homework, every point counts. No one would know.
The Internet is a vast world and many students have gotten away with cheating. So I brought in someone else's work from the Internet and sat there in class, as definitions of academic dishonesty raced through my head.
According to ASU's course catalog, "Violations of academic integrity include, but are not limited to, cheating, fabrication, tampering, plagiarism, or facilitating such activities."
And then I began to wonder: Why did I do it?
I began to blame my teacher. How dare he put a problem on the homework that I couldn't do correctly! I began to blame society. How dare it instill a desire within me to do well at all costs!
And then, when all the blame was cast about and yet the dissatisfaction with the targets still lingered, I finally found the real culprit behind the problem.
I began to blame myself.
"In short, I was afraid," as T.S. Eliot wrote. I was afraid of failing, afraid of being wrong. This fear runs rampant, not just through me, but through all people, for all people have been punished for being wrong at one point or another.
The mantra, "don't screw up" is proclaimed in various ways throughout a person's entire life. Mistakes are the enemies of progress, and the enemies of society for that matter.
Or are they? There is a story about an inventor who was working on an project that he knew would change the world if he could just get it right, but getting it right seemed to be the last thing he was able to do. He tried making it a hundred different ways. It didn't work. He tried making it over five hundred different ways. It still didn't work. As the story goes, he finally got it right on his thousandth try after nine hundred and ninety-nine mistakes. His name: Thomas Edison. His invention: the light bulb — a creation that Edison described as having 999 steps.
Elbert Hubbard once said that, "the greatest mistake you can make is to be continually fearing that you will make one."
And yet there I was, doing something that could very well have gotten me kicked out of school forever, all because I was afraid of being wrong.
Still sitting in class (after all, math lectures are rarely swift), I began to look at the answer I had done on my own. It couldn't have been more wrong.
And yet, I began to like it better than that beautiful answer I had turned in. It was mine. It was wrong, but it was mine — a product of my own thought processes and no one else's.
I looked at my mistakes and saw why they were mistakes. I began to understand the true answer better.
In other words, I began to learn, and I probably learned a great deal more than I would have learned had I been paying attention to the lecture instead of thinking about how I had turned in someone else's work.
Time was up. The lecture was over, and the teacher was gathering the homework. I picked up my answer, walked up to the front desk, found my homework, and switched my wrong answer with the right one that had been found on the Internet. Then I walked out.
Some may say I was weak, and let guilt get the better of me. I doubt I would have been caught, and when I got the homework back, I discovered that I had received half-credit for my wrong answer. Those lost points might have come in handy later on, when my grade possibly comes down to the wire.
But that half-credit was mine, not some guru's from the Internet, and it is worth more to me than any grade I had received thus far in college.
And when it all comes down to it, years after college is over and classes are but vague memories, I know I will remember the time when I almost turned in someone else's right answer instead of my own wrong answer.
And I will remember how I made one less mistake that day.
Jonathan Winkler is a mathematics sophomore. Reach him at jonathan.winkler@asu.edu
