Essay Glossary

Cheating

When you’re supposed to write an essay, it’s important that you write the essay. There are a lot of awesome essays out there on the Interwebs, but your teacher doesn’t really care what Joe Schmo circa six years ago thinks about the Gilded Age. They want to know what you think about it. Or at least they’re going to pretend they do.

So don’t ask your older sister to write your paper, don’t download an essay off the Internet and claim it’s yours, and don’t photocopy an article from US Weekly and present it as your own. The consequences for cheating are severe—they might range from getting an F on the assignment to having your parents called in for a chat with the principal to ten years in Leavenworth.

Also see: Plagiarism