Helping or cheating?

     As I was growing up, my mom always encouraged me to help others everywhere I went. As most Puerto Ricans, I was raised a Christian, and as we would pray at night my mom's favorite prayer was always “God, please put someone in our path tomorrow, preferably a stranger, whom we can give a helping hand; for it is the only way to remotely attempt to repay for all the good that you have blessed us with.” Although I myself am not religious anymore, I do consider myself to be very spiritual, and my mother's wise teachings have proved to be useful and still play a big role in my daily meditations.

     In school, I never dared to even think about cheating. I was not only terrified I would get caught, but I also felt I would be ashamed of myself (even if nobody found out) if I knew my achievements were not really my own. I have always enjoyed the learning process thoroughly, and so for most of my life my classmates thought of me as the bookworm (especially when it came to math). I have always felt great pleasure from helping other people, and tutoring has been one of the ways I've done that through. I must confess, though, that I have been known to “help” other classmates by giving them the answers during an exam, or so “helping” is what I thought I was doing...

     The reason for doing so is that I was always so encouraged to help anyone in need, that whenever I saw someone having a hard time during a test I couldn't help it but to take pity on them and “give them a hand”. A fairly recent experience, however, completely changed my perspective on the matter. Not long ago, I was taking a math exam in college and helped a friend out. I told one of my other math professors whom I've developed a good friendship with about this (we'll call her Lauren), and she made me realize that I had been doing something that was very wrong. She asked: “Would you have done it if it was my class?” I, of course, immediately said no, as this professor is someone I greatly admire and I would never dare to go over her authority. Then she said: “Cool. We're friends, that's nice of you to say and I appreciate it. But you have to respect him (my other professor) and his position as well.” On this particular exam, there were only two A's in the whole class of about 15 students, mine and my friend's. Lauren explained how my professor's perspective on the class was now contaminated by the exam results, and he wouldn't know exactly what difficulty to set it upon because he was wrongly thinking that at least 2 people were understanding the material clearly.

     I'd never thought about it this way. I just thought: "if I'm still gonna get an A, then someone else getting one is not harmful to anybody." WRONG. Not only this, but the person I thought I was helping is actually suffering harm, as by giving them the answers I am depriving them from the opportunity of failing, learning and starting over, which are some of the most important parts of any learning process in life. So, in conclusion, I very much agree with Jim Cooper's perspective on helping vs. cheating, and I think there is a great problem related to this in Puerto Rico, highly influenced by our culture. Since this experience, I have learned to find other ways of truly helping my classmates whenever I can.