Plagiarism
A wise man once told me, “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying”. That wise man happened to be my Grandpa, who barely completed his high school degree and cheated his way through a barber’s exam in order to pass and provide for his family. He was also always the ringleader of cheating during family games at parties. Perhaps Grandpa’s words weren’t something that my parent’s cared to hear him say as there is no way they wanted us to cheat our way through life. They constantly instilled in us the value of hard work and doing things the right way to combat his remarks. However, there was one time when I took his slogan too literally.
In the spring of my final year in junior high, I had what they call at the high school level “senioritis”. I was so mentally checked out that I would often procrastinate to the worst degree possible (i.e. finishing up a piece of homework during the 5-minute passing period before that particular class). I was fortunate enough that this system had seemed to be working for me, until our English teacher handed us a major assignment. It was a 5-page packet with about 20 questions that required our response on a book that we had read, or supposedly read. Fortunately I was not the only one in my class that was suffering through this “senioritis” and the race was on to find a way around this assignment. To make a long story short, my teacher nailed 25 of my fellow classmates along with myself who had answers that were a little too similar. We had all copied off of the same student in what has to be the most boneheaded effort of cheating ever. The repercussions to our actions were bad, and from that day forward I made sure that this would never happen again.
Besides the fact that it is absolutely unacceptable and wrong to claim someone else’s work as your own, I feel that it is almost more work to do so. To take the time and effort that you are putting in to cheating, you can just as easily put in your own work and come up with a better product. Likewise, you are losing the value of the assignment. Assignments are generally used to enhance your learning experience and by cheating your way through an assignment, you are also cheating yourself.
