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-Eli

Choices

Choices. Any choice we make in life can turn your life on a dime. The choices we make now, whether we can see it or not, will affect our life down the road. Even the smallest of choices will affect your life in some way. These choices can be good but they can also be bad. Sometimes a choice might seem good but end up turning out to be a terrible choice. That's what happened to me, I made a choice that [at the time] seemed like a great idea but now looking back was a terrible idea. I hope you can learn from my mistakes and make better choices when you're given the opportunity.

In school, cheating is a big "no-no". But what exactly is considered cheating? Wikipedia defines cheating as "an immoral way of achieving a goal. It is generally used for the breaking of rules to gain advantage in a competitive situation. Cheating is the getting of reward for ability by dishonest means." So an immoral way of achieving a goal. But what if someone doesn't have morals...well, I wouldn't want to be around them. Anyways, what could this goal be? In school cheating is when you write the answers to a test on your hand/desk or text your friend the answers during the test. Those are some of the more common cliche's of cheating. When I was younger, a common way that I remember kids cheating was taking the answer book and just memorizing the answers. I never wanted to do any of that kind of stuff, and never thought I would.

Yes, I cheated. But in a weird way. I am obviously going to keep the names of the people involved anonymous but here's the story. In one of my classes, we knew we had a test coming up and it was planned to be the next week. That day the teacher said it would be the next day. Nobody liked the idea and everyone seemed really stressed out. The teacher also mentioned making a "Jeopardy" review but wasn't going to give it out because it too closely resembled the test. After class the teacher was showing a couple students the Jeopardy because they really wanted to see what they were missing out on. Now at my school there are projectors in every room and at this point the teacher had the Jeopardy up on the projector screen and I happened to see the URL where it was posted.

At that moment I remembered how stressed out everyone was and thought to myself, "Wow. Here's my chance to help out my fellow classmates who are really stressed out." So I copied down the URL and went on with my day.

As most of you probably know, I'm pretty good with computers. So, I made a fake email using a proxy web browser and sent the email to my classmates. Side-note: The email took me literally 2 hours to send, because the email kept kicking me out for using a proxy. I should've taken this as a sign saying "YO IDIOT! STOP TRYING TO SEND THIS FREAKING EMAIL BECAUSE IT'S GOING TO BITE YOU IN THE A$$ IN THE LONG RUN!!" Yeah...I'm not too good at the subliminal message thing...

Anyways, the email went out and I didn't think much about it because I legitimately thought I was helping my fellow students. The next day after the test the teacher finds out and obviously brings it up in front of the class and asked someone to fess up. I wasn't gonna fess up! I thought I did something good! Fast forward a couple days.

Everything settled down but I had this huge weight on my shoulders. Just that thought of, "I did something wrong and now the whole class is getting in trouble, when I tried to do something good...crap." Then something that I learned, in school, came into my head "Own it". Own your mistakes like a man, grow a pair and take what's coming to you, because if you tell the truth now, it will be a lot easier in the long run.

And holy sh!t, did it take A LOT to walk into my teachers office and tell them what I did. I was never so scared/ashamed in my life. I just about crapped my pants. I thought I was going to get kicked out of school and be completely f*cked (but I did realize it was my and only my fault). Not the case at all. My teacher actually applauded me (figuratively) for being mature about the whole situation and "owning" it.

They said there will be consequences but since I was mature about it and "owned" it, they would be less harsh. I will be able to stay in school with this incident not harming my pristine "record", if you will.

What about my parents? Well, my mom was OK with it mainly because I "owned" it and told the truth. My dad? Well...let's just say it's still sinking in...

If there's one thing I hope you can take away from this is: just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should. Another thing to take away is telling the truth will set you free. Literally. I feel so much better now that I told the truth and it's over. Back to the doing something because you can...just because you have certain "talents", if you will, doesn't mean you should use them in the wrong ways. Just because you can shoot a .22 doesn't mean you should become a serial killer. Use your talents in the right ways! Use your skills to help others, go into the marines or something and become a sniper and help your country or something! Just because you're given some information that you shouldn't have, doesn't mean you should share it with anyone and everyone. If you know you're not supposed to have it, just forget it from your memory and move on. Trust me, it will help you in the long run.

Thanks for reading and happy holidays!

~Eli

Carpe diem.