Jason Schaffer, 21, 3-D art major, is sitting in one of the many lounges of the school, relaxing and conversing with a few friends.

Suddenly, his phone buzzes to life. He fishes it out of his pocket and checks the screen to find that his mother is calling. He dutifully answers.

The call is quick and to the point- and exchange of formalities, a “how’s everything been at work/school?”

Then the mother asks how classes are.

“I’m in class right now,” Jason says in response. “I have to go now though.”

He quickly says goodbye, saying he needs to get back to the lesson and shuts his phone. He goes back to his friends and continues the conversation where it was left off.

As college students, we probably lie a lot. From our childhood up to young adulthood, we all have memories of spreading those little white lies. Whether or not we were raised around the concepts of truthfulness, we can’t help, but let that little lie escape every now and again. The question is though, what do we all lie about and why?

What do we lie about?

In all honesty (pun completely intended), college students lie about a lot of things.

Just to name a few:

“I did my homework.” This lie is common amongst many students, regardless of their major or age. Some students, even when they have moved out and are as far away from their parents as they can be, they still get the occasional call asking if they are doing well in school and if they did all of their homework. Most of the time we do our homework, but then there are times when we know we can get it done (even though it hasn’t even been started) and just tell them it’s as good as finished.

“I’ll be home by….”/ “I’m on my way home now.” We’ve all been at that point- A parent/friend/significant other asks when will we be home for the evening, but we honestly just don’t want to go home yet. So we give them a time or just tell them we are on our way and we’re just stuck in traffic. The reasons why we do this are varied. Andrew Stapleton, 21, a liberal arts major, said that he would sneak pass his curfew in his senior year of high school to make sure his parents fell asleep and he could stay out later.

“I didn’t want them to stay up worrying about me,” said Stapleton remembering how his mother would always say that she couldn’t go to sleep until he was home.

Then there are those like Heather Scrip, 18, a liberal arts major, who once told her parents that she was on her way home when she was actually still at school doing make-up on one of her friends.

“Of course I went to classes!” As immaculate as we like to seem when it comes to our punctuality and attendance, there are many students like Schaffer. Some days we just don’t feel like going to classes. We could not be feeling well, we could be sleep deprived, or we just may not like the teacher and decide to skip a day.

Schaffer said his main reason for skipping classes on some days is simply because he knows most of the material.

“If I already knew the material we were going to cover, then I didn’t see much point in going that day,” he said.

These lies don’t just start in college either. Any parent can tell you the list of lies their own children have told them at any given age.

A 22-year-old medical assistant major at Bucks said that one of his most memorable lies was when he framed his brother for a bad thing that he did:

“One time when I was young, I put a note on a door with curses on it and signed it by my brother.”

When his parents got home though, they believed that the signature was the real deal.

“He [his brother] got in so much trouble when our parents got home,” he said.

Why do we lie?

So with all of these lies we tell, the question stands: Why do we do it? Is there something appealing about lying or are we all just carbon copies of Colonel Jessup’s “A Few Good Men” shouting “you can’t handle the truth!” until we’re blue in the face?

“Lying really isn’t easier than telling the truth,” said Wilma Starr, a psychology professor at Bucks. “However, we may prefer to tell a lie instead of the truth because we don’t want to have to deal with the consequences of telling the truth. Depending on a child’s relationship with his or her parents, parental disappointment could definitely lead to lying if a child believes [they are] valued for what he or she does instead of who he or she is,” said Starr.

This seems to line up with a lot of students’ thoughts. Many said that a big reason why they would lie to their parents is because they didn’t want to disappoint them or be punished. Some also stated that they just didn’t want to explain their situation to their parents.

Do we lie because our parents lie to us? It seems logical. The parents tell us that we must tell the truth, but when they lie themselves or just decide not to tell us what is going on, we begin to think it is okay to lie too.

Parents are trying hard to keep children from lying though- this can be seen in many modern practices in parenting.

One of those parenting exercises says that parents shouldn’t lie about things like Santa Claus or the Tooth Fairy, so the children know the parents are being honest with them and are promoting their children to tell the truth.

“The saying, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” is very true regarding lying,” said Starr. “Children model after what you do not what you say. If you tell your kids it’s important to tell the truth but they hear you lie to someone, don’t be surprised when you catch your kids lying.”

Regardless of why we lie, it is a common occurrence in our lives. Whether it’s our parents teaching us to lie, or maybe even our friends, in the end, we all do it. It’s inescapable and there will always be a point in our lives that will tell us that lying is the easiest way out.

But like most lies, they catch up to us if we lie enough.

Until the day those lies do catch up though, many students will probably react the same way Jason does and regret absolutely nothing.