Competition and Cooperation in Puerto Rico

            I am very amazed that an American came to Puerto Rico and choose to write about the cheating problem happening at Puerto Rico. I know that for a professor (specially Jim Cooper who is a “continental” one) that may be something shocking but for me this is not significant. Maybe it is because I am a student and I see this environment from another point of view from Jim Cooper. I have plenty of personal experiences on this topic but I promise that I am not the one cheating in all of them. The way in which Cooper introduces the problem sounds awful, if people who have never been here at Puerto Rico read this, they may think that we are opportunist and that everyone reaches their goal cheating. But it is not like that, for example, I have two friends that could be taking the Medical College Admission Test, and I know that if they have the key to it, they would not used it because of not trusting someone.

            Competition and cooperation are two ways different approaching to life, but in this aspect both of them have their place and moment. I am the type of person who thinks that helping each other is not a bad thing, but the other person must be learning or at least interested on what he or she is cheating. In high school on a test about a Spanish novel which name I do not remember, I got the test of my friend, did it for her and handed it back to her. When I did that I didn’t think about all the things that could have gone wrong but some days later, when I was calm I realized that there are certain topics that do not help you for anything in life. For example, she read the novel a lot, and it did not help her at all. I know that she could learn more reading any other book, other than that because she reads a lot but mainly in English. So I knew that I wasn’t affecting her knowledge because she already has that custom of always been reading and she learned that she has to learn to dominate more Spanish books.

            Another example was on a chemistry test, someone was cheating for almost three (3) entire pages. I just could not believe it, I kept staring at the person cheating for a long time. Maybe I could have used that time to think more about my test, but it was difficult because I had never seen something like that before. What is more unbelievable is that the person supervising the test, was a friend of the cheater and the supervisor was the one giving the answers. When I saw that, I was enraged, I almost ran through the hallway looking for the professor. Chemistry was not easy for me, and when I saw that it hurt me. The next day, when I saw the professor I told her everything, but I never knew what happened later. I only knew that I felt better.

            With these two (2) examples, I want to emphasize that every person who is thinking about cheating, should reconsider because the material that is important must be learned. For example, if someone cheats on the MCAT exam, what kind of doctor do you think that person would be? There is time and place for everything. Maybe Cooper saw or heard about people cheating, looking at each other’s papers and thought it was helping, but I know that in very important tests such as the MCAT exam, you must know that competition exists and for this type of exams it must be an individual one. Plus it is obvious that everybody will have their exam answers covered. I mention this exam many times because soon I will be taking it and will not look at any other test no matter what. If someone ask me for help, I clearly will say no because this is another level. On this category, you are separating from been a regular college student to been a medicine student. This is why you must always be clear about when can you help someone and when you cannot.