Your teacher gives a test that you did not study for. After reading the first few questions, your mind has a feeling of vacancy. You know you will fail, but you need this grade to pass the class. The adrenaline rushes through your blood as you pull out the sheet of paper containing the answers. Not bad, right?

Wrong. The extent of cheating alarms teachers. The implications it brings about leads everyone in the wrong direction. While both unfair and misleading, cheating causes an inaccurate norm in the mind of the teacher. Due to the multiplicity of cheating, peer pressure, and technologic tools, like cell phones and computers, openly available, cheating continues to thrive as a major problem in schools.

Cheating does not only pertain to taking a test, for it can also occur when copying homework, finding and sharing answers to a quiz, or plagiarizing assignments. Methods of cheating vary from writing on the arms to putting a piece of paper with the answers in utensils.

According to The Educational Testing Service and Ad Council Campaign to Discourage Academic Cheating, many students feel that their individual dishonesty in academic endeavors will not affect anyone else. Looking out for only oneself and immaturity play key roles in this opinion.

Cheating transactions occur daily. Peer pressure causes numerous students to feel that they must cheat to fit in and assimilate.

Based on statistics from The Educational Testing Service, cheating among high school and college students has risen dramatically over the past 70 years. Reports of cheating instances increased over 44 percent during the 2008-2009 school year.

Technology has enabled the rise of cheating. Through cell phones, computers, and iPods, whole new generations of enigmatic and effortless methods were born. According to numerous teachers, technology makes cheating a lot more difficult to catch.

Seeing that colleges choose fewer students to accept, schools tend to get more vigorous. As a result, cheating becomes increasingly rampant.

In addition, students could encounter heightened stress from their parents at home making cheating seem like their only option.

Some authorities do not comprehend that the reality of cheating needs to be addressed. Without role models that show their disapproval of cheating, it causes students to see it as morally acceptable.

Consequences of cheating do not reach the standards at which they should. A zero on the assignment will not stop the student from continuing to cheat, but a referral or some other document that goes on their personal record might.

If a person cheats, then they are a cheater. Governments and administrations anywhere do not want corrupt people in their communities. Without their objection of cheating, it will continue, and more of those kinds of people will end up in the world. If they have been cheating as students, then they will not know any different once they create their own life in society.

Many cheaters in school see it as a means to an end. However, if students were to spend as much time studying and preparing instead of devising ingenious ways to get around the system, then they would accomplish more in the long run. When everything catches up with them, they will turn out as the real fools.