Everyone was nervous for the upcoming exams, flipping through notes until the last second, hoping that every bit of knowledge was memorised. But Anila seemed least concerned about the exams.

She wasn’t dumb; in fact, she was pretty smart, yet she always wanted to take the easy way out. While the other students stayed awake all night, usually to study or finish assignments, she had her own “strategy” — tiny chits of paper hidden in her sleeves, formulas scribbled on her wrist and sometimes an entire essay. She always got away with it. But not this time....

It was the board exam, not a regular school exam, so the invigilators were from outside her school. During the first paper, halfway through the exam, she began peeking at her tiny notes hidden under the desk. She wasn’t even nervous, thinking she’d get away with it as she had before, but something unexpected happened.

When one of the invigilators caught sight of Anila’s unusual hand movements, within seconds, he was at her desk. The invigilators’ team had strict rules, which didn’t just give warnings, but took action.

“Stand up!” he said.

For the first time in her life, Anila’s face turned pale; she hesitated but stood up, at the same moment a tiny piece of paper fell from her lap. The entire hall went silent and stared at her.

No explanations were asked. The team took her paper and wrote “Cancelled!” in big red letters, then asked her to leave the hall. At first, she refused, but then she had to comply with what she was told and leave.

With a heavy heart and embarrassment, Anila walked out of the hall, looked down and murmured, “Ah! How could this happen?” “What will I say to my parents now?”

This time, she didn’t just fail the exam, she was facing failure in life, at least for a while. A stain of cheating on an academic record isn’t something that could easily disappear, it lasts wherever a person goes.

Everyone else felt relieved for not cheating, they knew that cheating was not the way to succeed. But at the same time, they also felt bad for her and wondered why did she do it in the board exams under such strict rules? Do students think cheating in an exam means they are smart? Does it give them confidence? Or is it the fear of failing, of disappointing their parents, of not being “good enough”?

The thing is that cheating is not just about one exam. It is a habit, a mind-set and a shortcut. And people who live by shortcuts never really get anywhere.

Anila might have thought that she was outsmarting the system, but in reality, she was just failing herself. A person who cheats can pass the exam, but what will happen when they need to solve real problems in life? There are no cheat codes in the real world; you only need strong skills, hard work and experience.

That day, all the other students got a lesson and they promised themselves one thing — they would rather fail honestly than pass dishonestly.

As for Anila, she learnt her lesson the hard way. An exam lasts for a few hours, but the stamp of dishonesty lasts forever.

Published in Dawn, Young World, May 3rd, 2025