Plagiarism: The Eighth Deadly Sin

As one of my high school teaches once told me, “If ya ain’t cheatin’, ya ain’t tryin’.”

I took this to heart. It has become my reason for being. It is my highest standard. Not really though. Cheating makes me sick, unless it is at games. I am fine with cheating at games, because I like to win. Cheating in academia is unacceptable. There are a few reasons I can think of as to why a person would plagiarize a paper.

I think the main reason a student plagiarizes a paper is unintentionally. It is quite easy to plagiarize a paper. All a student has to do is forget to cite a source. Sometimes the students may not know if they even have to cite the source. If it is common knowledge we are supposedly not supposed to cite the source. But what the h is common knowledge. What may be very common knowledge to me could be something someone else would have to cite up the wazoo. Cite everything that is looked up, is a good rule of what to cite. They might not even know what plagiarism is. It is kind of a big word. And if they do not even know what the word plagiarism is, how can they be held accountable for the word in which they do not know?

The more evil form of plagiarism is the intentional form. When a student copy and pastes an article and calls it his or her own. This is a crime against humanity. These people should be drawn and quartered. The only reasons I can think of that a person would intentionally plagiarize is because he or she is lazy or just plain stupid. Laziness has become quite the problem in our time. It is all about instant gratification, no waiting, and no work. We are the fast food generation. They are just plain stupid, because how hard is it to put quotes around something, or summarize. If a student cannot summarize or paraphrase an article, he or she is severely behind in schooling.

I totally agree with Derek that sometimes they do it just for the sheer thrill of it. Many people enjoy breaking the rules. It makes them happy. Especially when they get away with it. I can just see those rebels have a blast copying and pasting an entire paper, and shouting for joy at their adrenaline rush. Erin also made a good point. I also watched Community, and yes “people are evil.” They proved it on the show. So now it is a fact that people are evil. So, since people are evil, they plagiarize. Which kind of logical fallacy is that? Slippery Slope maybe?

Now to add my two cents to Derek’s comment. Can this Dave fellow read the entire Twilight Saga in 24 hours, or one day? I do not think so. It has nothing to do with the fact that the series is childish. The books suck. I hate them. But he cannot do it. It is just pure math. They are pretty long books. I would say the whole series is around two thousand pages. That is a lot of reading to do in one day.