Why Plagiarize?

I don’t have much experience with plagiarism, well, with the intentional kind. Accidents happen. Intentional plagiarism is something that I cannot relate to.
People who steal other people’s work – why would they do it? Maybe they are afraid they can’t do a good job on their own. Wouldn’t that be evidence of low self-respect? Maybe they waited too long to do an assignment, and now they have to come up with SOMETHING or admit blowing it. Wouldn’t it be easier to just ask for more time?

Some people have suggested that people plagiarize for the thrill. That I can’t understand.

I never liked breaking the rules. I preferred doing my own work. I enjoyed it, and I liked knowing that I did it myself, and didn’t need to lean on someone else for help. Besides, I needed the peace. I’m the oldest of nine kids, and peace of conscience was the only kind of peace I could get.

I know that is not a popular attitude. I don’t care. I’m older, and I’m opinionated. Actually, I’ve seen what thrill-seeking ends up doing to people, and I don’t want it. There are many things I don’t want.

I don’t want to waste time. There are too many fun things to do to waste time on stupid things like plagiarism. Why would I spend hundreds of dollars to take a class, and a couple more to buy the textbook, then waste it all by “borrowing” a term paper? I’d rather spend the time it takes to do it right, and then move on.

I don’t want to repeat the mistakes of one of my parents. One of them has tried to be a thrill seeker, and has lost everything of value in that person’s life. I don’t want to let that mistake spill over into my children’s lives, and into future generations. It has gone on long enough. It stops here.

There are also many things I do want. I want to continue spending time with my family. No, they aren’t perfect people. My family is not “normal,” but it functions well. My husband is kind and supportive and GORGEOUS! My children are learning and growing and generally happy. Yes, many of my children are autistic and obsessed with Pokémon, and strangely unaware of personal hygiene, but they are becoming amazing people.

I want to write. I enjoy creating something new with the pen or the computer, something that expresses a feeling or an idea. I love finding ways to express those things in my own style. I love writing poetry and short stories and love notes and silly birthday cards. I want to teach that love of writing to others.

I want to continue to study and learn new things. I love going to school! The fatigue, the stress, the crazed scramble at finals week to get that last assignment in, they are all worth it. That feeling that comes when I say, “I did it!” is something that cannot be duplicated. It’s my kind of thrill-seeking.

And then it all blew up.

There are a myriad of reasons to explain why people plagiarize. Perhaps they were never taught that it was wrong. Perhaps they accidentally copy and paste a quote into their essay to either quote or look at as they are paraphrasing it, then have to leave it, and then come back and forget to properly cite it or edit it out. Perhaps they do indeed get so frustrated, so overwhelmed with the assignment, that they reason with themselves that no one will notice. Perhaps they have gotten away with doing it ever since grade school and see no reason to stop now.

Or perhaps the zombies invade and steal their brains.

Though quite a bit of the time from what I see, it seems to be at least partially related to the first reason. It goes back to what we were discussing in class--some grade school teachers could care less what was written in their students' papers, just as long as the assignment got done and met the minimum requirements for page length, font, and type size. Some kids learned at an early age from these teachers that all they had to do was write as much as the teacher would read, and then copy and paste the rest, or just write an introduction and conclusion and then copy and paste all the other stuff because it's written better than they could ever write. Then they get to lovely college and life hits them in the face like a special-infected hunter zombie.

Other students come from different cultures where they may not have been asked to write research/argumentative papers (as most plagriarized works I've heard of or seen are in this genre of assignment). They may have been taught the rules, but unless they have used them, then they hardly remember how or why or when to employ them.

The majority, however, as seen from the current Health Science 1110 students, just have no idea how to cite their sources to avoid plagiarism. Some are non-traditional students who have never had to write a research paper like that in their entire lives. Others were never taught how to cite their sources. They just don't know, and most don't have that programmed into their sense of right or wrong.

It usually all goes back to another part of our discussion--the internet. There are millions--billions--of possible sources to use for papers. Take a little here, take a little there, and some people think that no one will notice their patchwork mess of an essay. They have also been copy and pasting everything from newspaper articles to books onto blogs, journals, Twitter, Facebook, and the entire face of the internet world. If I looked hard enough, right now I could find not only the latest bestselling book completely typed up and slapped onto a hidden blog, but I could also find illegal uploads of movies that have barely made it into theaters (the average upload time for these is usually two days after it's been released on theaters in the US); video games that have been ripped, stuck into a torrent, and offered to the world free of cost (moneywise, anyway, since getting a virus is a cost that is very probable); the latest hip song along with the rest of the album it often comes with; puchase keys and codes for a variety of programs that are free to download and try for the first 30 days, and then require the purchase keys/codes that everyone else so "generously" provides.

There is no owerership on the internet. Anything that can be uploaded, downloaded, copyed, pasted, and ripped is free game. Many students have grown up with this mindset. Some students just don't care; they only want a passing grade and that's that, because they're probably never going to be writing papers in their respective fields.

I had a tutee tell me that. He was going into Nursing, but was taking his pre-requisites, including the English composition classes. He sighed and told me he was frustrated with this class because he was going into a field that would never require him to write a paper like this every again.

The next day, I got a 12 page paper from a student who was writing it for one of the Nursing program classes. And what about the BioMed students? It doesn't matter what prgoram they're going into--they're going to have to write, and many of them are going to end up plagirizing because they don't take the time to learn it the right way. They just don't realize.

As for the zombies stealing their brains? Left 4 Dead 2 came out this week. So zombies may actually be involved. But who knows? There is always a reason, but just like people, each reason is variously different.