Honesty Will Never Bring You Down

Honesty Will Never Bring You Down

One quality in life that I have always believed is incredibly powerful is honesty. In the past and present, honesty has done so many great things for me, while dishonesty hasn’t done anything but get me in trouble. It may have something to do with my not being a very good liar because every time I try, I start to laugh because I get nervous knowing that it’s not the right thing to do. In any case, honesty is such a powerful quality that everyone should have in their lives.

In the past, I have done so many stupid things in my life that has dealt with dishonesty. One of the things that will haunt me forever is my suspension at the beginning of 7th grade, which must have made history for the worst start to a school year. You see, I had this choir packet due and I had about three pages left to complete. I started to panic until I saw a friend of mine who had already completed this packet. So, I stopped him in his tracks and made one of the worst decisions of my life that I will never forget. I told him, “dude, I haven’t finished mine, you’ve finished yours, could you just like finish mine using yours.” At first he said no like a normal smart person. But he got so annoyed by my begging and begging so he finally just said fine. I was so happy, cheerful and grateful…..until a teacher came down the hall and saw my friend doing my packet for me. The funny thing was when I got to class I found out it wasn’t even due that day. Even if it wasn’t I should have just went in there and said, “You know what, I wasn’t able to finish this would you be so kind as to give me an extension.” I should have been honest. But instead of doing that, the next day I got a phone call telling me that I had been suspended. I also got word that my friend had to serve a detention as well. What I took from that experience is that if you are dishonest, you can not only get yourself into trouble, but others as well.

As I said I had practically the worst start to a school year in the 7th grade. The school that I attend doesn’t put up with many missing homework assignments, or disrespectful behavior. I got a hint of that when I didn’t do my math homework for about the first two weeks of school. At the beginning of the year, I started to figure that my math teacher was never going to check my homework because she never did. But, one day she told us we were going to do our first homework check of the year. I told myself I should have known this was coming but, I then told myself I wasn’t going to go down without a little dishonesty. I thought for a moment and remembered that our teacher posted the solutions to all of the problems on our school website. I didn’t think twice about it, I copied all of the answers from the website. Smart kid wouldn’t you say? So, when she checked it for the first time she suddenly became suspicious obviously when all my answers were identical to the ones on her download with all of her solutions. She called my father and my dad grounded me for two weeks without sports which is basically a prison sentence for me. What I have taken from this experience is that schoolwork isn’t that bad if you just do it, get it over with and not have to worry about being honest or dishonest about it.

No matter what the situation, I have learned that honesty will never get me in as much trouble as dishonesty will. Most of the time when I am dishonest, I get caught because most people know that being honest is the right thing to do. But at times I won’t tell the truth because if I don’t like something about someone I wouldn’t just go up to them and deliberately hurt their feelings. But, I will never stop believing that honesty is one of the best qualities a person can have because when someone needs someone to count on, they will always come to you with the knowledge that they can trust you, this I believe.