I wasn't an idiot in school. Throughout 4th to 6th grade I got all A's. In 7th grade I did great in all classes besides Math and Shop Class. Two pointless things I didn't need in my life. This is when it all started. I wasn't a stupid cheater, you know? Not like those people who look off people's papers and all that. No that wasn't me. I wasn't smart in those classes, but I was still a smart thinker and I always found a solution to my problems.
Mrs. Shammel(my 7th and 8th grade teacher) was a good teacher, I just hated the nonsense she taught us. Every day she would give us equations and problems out of the book to solve. Math class was my daydreaming class. I would think myself into another world until the bell would ring and I would snap back into reality and then she would give us our homework. I would have no clue what she taught. I would try to get the answers off the internet but nothing would show up. After 30 minutes of deep thinking I came up with the solution.
Springboard was the name of our Math program we were learning. I made a fake account, pretending to be a teacher online. I clicked on the book, and what do you know? All the answers to the book were there online. Showed all the work and everything. I was acing my homework. Now it was time for the quizzes and tests. That's the easy part to math, all you have to do is remember the process and steps to completing the work and different equations. You're doing the same thing except for it's different numbers. I finished 7th grade math with an A. If you read or see this Mrs. Shammel. I'm sorry. Hey at least I didn't cheat on the tests!
Shop was a different story. I definitely hated it more. The good thing is that three other students didn't know what they were doing either. We were giving a time frame of 3 weeks to make a stool. Pretty easy right? Not for me. I knew what to do, but I kept screwing it up. So what did I do? I would switch my crappy created parts by me with the fantastic made parts by my classmates. I WAS HORRIBLE. Selfish. "Woah what the hell is this, where did my part go?" I heard from afar two days later, I pretended not to hear. I got an A on "my assignment." I kept this up for a month until it got suspicious and the class had a meeting. "Someone's been switching their parts with other classmates. I don't know who it is, but when I find out that person is gonna be in huge trouble!" said Mr. Braaten. I had to quit, so I decided to team up with the other two kids who still didn't know what they were doing and we helped each other out.
I never did anything that horrible again. Surprisingly I found High School to be much easier then Middle School, maybe my brain was starting to develop faster or something lol. I got all A's my freshman year without cheating and got a 3.8 GPA, then sophomore year came. Algrbra 2. It actually wasn't that hard. I loved my teacher Mr. Kadrmas. The problem is that he never taught us well at all.
It was that same springboard junk our superintendent was making us learn. We were forced to get into groups and complete 10 page activities. I didn't mind this because sometimes I would get put into groups consisting of either Cody Boucher, Celeste, or Jackie. The three smartest people in the class at the time. I got done faster without having to use my brain haha. Never did a thing, just copied them. Tests were risky and a struggle though. Like me, my good friends Rafael, Kollin, and Kenny didn't exactly know what we were doing. We all sat next to each other. Each of us had a pretty smart classmate next to us though. So we would look off that classmate and then share our answers with each other to make sure they were right, whenever Mr. Kadrmas wasn't looking. One time a classmate told on Kenny and tried to get him in trouble. Good thing Kadrmas was a laid back teacher. Maybe too laid back, cause he got fired after that year. I finished sophomore year with a 3.4, hmm that's reasonable. Math was the only class I cheated on usually.
Junior year was hell. Definitely the worst year I think I finished with a 2.3 GPA. You know it's bad when Child Development was my best class and I winged it too! It was either this class or Advanced Computers, and I thought taking Child Development would be the easy way out, 5 girls and me. Mrs. Shammel taught this class too. It was mostly notes, which I didn't mind, I would just daydream and go through the motions writing the notes. It was all fine until the week we got the baby. At first I didn't even know how to hold the stupid thing, It would cry every 25 minutes, and you know my friends were giving me huge crap for it too. I was in basketball at the time, but we were supposed to be with our baby at all times. My mom and friends weren't able to babysit it because they were busy. So what did I do? Every game I would put the baby outside in the cold under the bleachers, with a blanket and it's plastic bottle taped to its mouth so it "automatically" gets his drink when he needed it. Haha genius. Thankfully no one found it there and told on me. Multiple times I dropped the baby on it's head too. In the end I got an A though and actually got better grades than the girls. Astonishing.
The problem is that we had no clue what we were doing. I failed my first two quizzes, we had a test coming up and I couldn't fail it. Mr. Ronnander made the tests too so I couldn't look anything up on the internet either. "C'mon Cheyenne, you always come up with a solution. Think, think think." I thought to myself. And then I did.
Mr. Ronnander wrote his own tests. He always had a copy with the answers on it. I came to school early in the morning. My heart was beating fast. I took my paperclip and after 5 minutes of jiggling, I opened up his door, ruffled through his papers in hope of finding it. Praying to God he wouldn't walk in. Found it! I took a picture of the test with my phone. Put everything back in place and locked the door.
During tests we were allowed to listen to music. I pretended to listen to music, as I was actually looking at the answers on my phone, the picture I took. I purposely got some wrong so it wouldn't look suspicious. 84%. I'll take it. I did this throughout the year and got away with it until one embarrassing day during class.
We were doing problems on the board and he was randomly calling on people. I hated when teachers did this. "Cheyenne why don't you come up and show us how to do this problem. You did pretty well on your test." said Mr. Ronnander. I had no clue how to do this stuff.
"Uh sure." I said. I had to think of something fast. It was a huge calculus problem. 20 minutes left of class, I couldn't stall. Everyone looking at me. "Ok Rafael how do I do this problem?" I asked him. Raf looked at me with a goofy smile, confused though. "No, Cheyenne I want you to do the problem." said Mr. Ronnander. "Mr. Ronnander, the only way to make a good learning environment in this class is to make sure we all know how to do these problems, working together creates a more enjoyable and understandable environment and also lessens the fear of embarrassment" I said. Wow I had no clue how that came out of my mouth. "Oh um what? Ok sure let's all make sure we understand it." he said. "Yeah I'll just call on random classmates and they'll tell me how to solve this problem." I said smiling, relieved. Today, I'm still impressed that I came up with that, and that Mr. Ronnander bought it. "You piece of crap." laughed Rafael after class. I finished Pre-Calculus with a D+. Reasonable. Good for not doing anything at all I guess.
Senior year was much easier. I was taking one class I didn't like at all, Advanced Computers. It was either Welding class or this. Sophomore year I almost burned down the shop room with the acetylene and oxygen. It was a horrible experience, and Mr. Braaten still to this day reminds me of that. Mrs. Puckett taught Advanced Computers. She was great. We did adobe and cool stuff with animations. It was all read until we got to programming. I HATED THIS STUFF. It was easy at first and then slowly started getting harder and harder. Soon it got to the point where I had no clue what I was doing. I was stuck, but for some reason my classmates weren't having trouble at all. Even the juniors weren't having trouble. "Ok something is up." I went to Xavier's computer. "Ok how are you this far ahead, I have no clue what you're doing." Xavier looked around to see if Mrs. Puckett was near, he whispered in my ear. "All you have to do is press this button and it does it for you." he said. "What!? Why didn't you tell me this earlier?!" I said.
I was relieved now, until a week later. "I have an announcement to make" said Mrs. Puckett. "How stupid do some of you think I am?" she asked. "I can see if you guys actually did the work on my computer you know." she said. Code.org was the program. She took away our points. We had to redo all of them at a certain point of time, and on top of that we were all failing. The others struggled to learn, slowly but surely they got better. I still refused to learn it and continued to have no clue what I was doing. I almost gave up and thought I was going to fail. "You always find a way." I thought to myself. No answers on the internet or anything. I then thought back to my strategy in 7th grade.
I decided to make another fake account on code.org and pretend to be a teacher. What do you know? They have all the answers on it. Bingo. Finished the class with a B. After senior year I realized how pathetic I was. I gave up on something too fast instead of actually trying to learn it. I put so much effort and work into cheating and getting the easy way out on stuff, instead of actually putting the effort into learning it. I felt bad for what I did, I still am. You ever get that feeling when you feel stupid? Lol. At the same time I was actually kind of impressed with myself for my creativity. No other student at Sheridan ever did such out-of-the-box thinking like I did, I always told myself that to feel better. I finished Senior Year with a 2.8 and I finished High School altogether with a 3.1 GPA.
Mrs. Puckett you might see this, I really don't want to post it on social media but I will because that's my honest way of saying I'm sorry. People lose respect for doing what I did. You're a great teacher, I learned a lot from you. I guess it took me a while to learn from my mistakes. It's easy for me to post and admit things like this in public because I know I'm not the only one and I know many relate. I just have the gift of not worrying what people will think.
During college, I learned, studied, and completed all work and tests without cheating. No more. Haven't ever cheated since High School and never will. It feels good. You feel smarter. I only finished my first year of college with a 2.8 GPA though, so not that well. I had my excuses though.
So what did this teach you? Probably nothing. Because cheating is easier, but it's wrong and you shouldn't do it. Nowadays you can get expelled, kicked out, and suspended. It's not worth ruining your career. You're better and smarter than that. Don't pull a Cheyenne Fuller. Be smart. Cheating isn't smart.
Cheyenne Fuller
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