You won’t remember most of your test grades. You’ll remember the one you cheated on.

Ordinary results fade because nothing about them needed storing. A grade sits in a system and leaves your memory within months, while something you did that you would not want known gets filed differently, with the feeling attached, and it comes back at odd moments years later. The score was temporary and the memory is not.

If you are near that decision, the honest version costs one bad afternoon and nothing after it. If you are past it, you do not have to carry it forever either. Doing the next one properly is usually enough to settle it.