Super-Cheaters: The Injustice League (December 4,2007)

Super-Cheaters: The Injustice League
By Maria Reylan M. Garcia

“By the end of this exam, three of you shall have a grade of zero”. The college instructor adjusted his glasses and moved past the aisles of the classroom, his watchful eyes caught hold of juvenile heinous crimes ripening within the four walls. I felt a sudden flow of rushing current within my veins. I know I was not guilty; it’s against my principle to cheat, to take advantage of people in my own accord. But as my penmanship couldn’t get any worse than of a five year old, a scream of injustice within me would just like to approach those three nincompoops and do the honors to place a big 0 on their test papers. Pathetic, they would sink that low just to ensure their fate in a fifty item examination? This is where it all starts. Believe me, the next thing that will possibly happen, are those same three people who’ll be denying their tax duties, laying extra unmerited charges on their services, or selling some scam of gadgets unregistered in the Bureau of Customs. This is where it all starts, earlier perhaps. Just like how he took his best friend’s pokemon cards without permission.

I would often lose interest and due respect to persons who cheat their way out of messy situations. How unfair it is, that you stayed up late memorizing all the dates and hard to pronounce surnames of significant people ending up with an insensitive fool copying off you. How unfair it is, that you wasted a cup of coffee just to extend the night ending up with a tactless freak extending his neck just to get a glimpse of your 1.0-worthy answers. How unfair it is, that you got 1.0 in the exams but with due course of sagging eye bags ending up with an inconsiderate dupe getting 1.0 as well but with a tightly detoxified face. These people have some nerves of pure steel, willing to literally do everything for the sake of achieving what they desire. In fact besides having a nervous system made up of metals, they have some unique qualities or what I call super-cheating powers. An X-ray vision that could see past any blockages you’ll be defending your exam paper with. An elastic neck that could tantamount the stretching capabilities of a flamingo, ostrich, giraffe and lastikman joined together, that could extend to a maximum length just to nose around your answers. A supersonic hearing that could detect some few minute hushes of information within a thirty kilometer radius. See how extraordinary these people are, they deserve a round of applause and a bucket of rotten tomatoes.

Cheating is a form of dishonesty, which in any angle is against the moral principles of any society there is. Soon I’ll be a full-fledged nurse, and in my hands depend the different fragile fates from a pediatric (child-care) to a geriatric (elderly-care) setting. I couldn’t afford to make any mistakes; I couldn’t even dare to cheat, because I’m dealing with lives. One wrong diagnosis, one error in assessment, one misled injection of a syringe would mean also one thing, loss. I value my life more than anything I own, I guess the other billions of people, the other billions of my would-be patients think the same way. It would be unfair if I cheated with their lives.

Take a look around you, cheating is everywhere. From a simple 5th grade girl changing her answers during the checking of their test papers to a statesman pocketing the funds for a road construction in a remote barrio, these are acts of dishonesty, they are cheaters. There are times when I’m already in panic, sweating hard like a pig in his pen, facing a difficult question in an exam and would be tempted to take a few degrees to the left and peep in my seatmate’s answers. But you know what? I couldn’t bear to do so; I wouldn’t risk a point, a single point in an exam in exchange for my principles. Yes, I may get a low score. Yes, someone might end up being higher than mine. Still, I have more examinations to which I can uplift myself without the cost of others, without the cost of dishonesty.

Now before you would dig your hands inside your mom’s purse for some extra allowance without telling her, remember what you’re doing is maybe the same act you’re persecuting and telling off alleged politicians gobbling up the nation’s funds.

Soon, in around six semester’s time, I’ll be a registered nurse working in a local hospital here or attending to Bill Gates as his personal nurse. But one thing remains true and always true, I’ll be able to reach it without cheating my way out.

I smiled at my score after receiving my test paper.

I got 46/50, second highest.

Still happy.

It’s better than getting zero, right?