As finals week approaches, many of us are going to be tempted to make some bad academic decisions. Procrastination is a common example, but the one I would like to focus on is cheating.

We’ve all cheated on something. It’s a simple fact. The problem with college isn’t that you have to take a test or do homework, but that your teachers don’t seem to realize that you are also enrolled in four to five additional classes. And, somehow, the stars seem to align, and all your tests and assignments fall within days or even hours of one another.

The reality is that school asks a lot of students, and sometimes some people feel that it gets to be too much for them to do honestly. As a result, many students fall victim to the pressure and make poor academic decisions to get themselves out of a deep hole of work.

Regardless of how many of us have cheated, it’s something we should all learn from right now.

The common phrase is, “When you cheat, the only person you’re cheating is yourself." However, for a majority of students, the “consequences” of cheating seem to be higher grades and lower stress. While many universities, including my own, have very strict academic integrity policies that are recited to us hundreds of times during syllabus week, many students feel that the risk is worth the reward.

So, clearly, that deterrent isn’t working.

But there is another way to think about it, which is the way I think about it. The other common phrase is, “You wouldn’t want a doctor that cheated his way through medical school, would you?”, to which most of us would say, “Of course not."

That’s the way we should be framing the problem of cheating.

When you cheat, it isn’t you that you’re short-changing; it’s people you haven’t even met yet. Professionals such as doctors, lawyers, pharmacists, and engineers have hands-on jobs that require a large skill set and a vast amount of knowledge. The reality is that cutting corners on the academics of any of those professionals could be a matter of life or death, literally.

But the list doesn’t stop there. Individuals in finance, management, education, or even communication fields have an obligation to be well-versed in their specialty. Any of those individuals could say or do one wrong thing and have a profoundly negative impact on the life of an individual, a family, or a company.

Every career has its place in society, and the responsibilities of that career are centered around the assumption that you have earned the position you are in. This assumption is called into question when things like nepotism arise, which is a whole different problem by itself, and when you consider cheating.

If you cheat, especially if you do so consistently, you are not fulfilling the prerequisites for your position and, therefore, will not be able to fulfill your duties properly. The people that are affected by your inability to do your job should not have to suffer.

To put it frankly, either do the work or don’t pursue the career.

Because yes, college gets to be a lot at times. It’s very stressful and overwhelming and, oftentimes, teachers are unforgiving. But that’s life. It’s not meant to be easy, but rather reveal who you are when things get hard.

So be an honest person; if not for yourself, then for all the people whose lives you will impact in the future. Everything you do and learn now is shaping you into the professional you will be in the future, so don’t do yourself, or anyone else, any injustices.