The plagiarism assignment surprised me. I had thought that plagiarizing would make writing considerably easier and that it wouldn’t take more than an hour for me to write my essay. I was very, very wrong. I suppose if one plagiarizes poorly, that’s only how long it will take, but plagiarizing “well” I found difficult—especially combining the styles of the three articles from which I plagiarized.
As to my “good” plagiarizing technique, I actually used articles that I found on the library’s website—very scholarly, academic articles that I thought would be easier to find than it turns out they were (my group only found one statistic plagiarized in my paper). I also wrote my own intro, conclusion, and all of my transition sentences. I had to conjugate some verbs differently so the entire article flowed, and often times I moved whole clauses around in sentences so they would be more difficult to find. All of this editing and rearranging, however, took a significant amount of time. It got to the point where I was sick of trying to express myself through other people’s words and would’ve rather just written the paper myself and finished it in a shorter amount of time.
One thing I learned is that it is easier to get away with plagiarism than I thought—especially if you use more obscure sources that are available in print only and not online (that’s what Kait did in our group and she handedly won). As long as you take the time and effort to mix the plagiarized bits around, try to keep your overall style/voice, and cite a few things to throw people off track, I would say that it would be very difficult to catch most people. All those things, however, take a significant amount of time and in the end, I think most people who would be prone to plagiarism or not have any problems with it, would not be willing to expend the effort to blend in the copied bits. As for me, my plagiarism days are over—I would be way more stressed plagiarizing and waiting for people to catch me, than I would ever be if I just did the work myself (regardless of the quality). What about the rest of you? Do you think you could get away with plagiarism in another class? Would you ever consider doing it?
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4 comments:
I agree that I think it would be difficult for professors to find any plagiarism that wasn't cited or taken word for word off of an electronic article. I used a book that has probably been opened by 12 people in the past so I had a good chance of winning this award. Therefore, I think people could get away with plagiarism if they took the right precautions. I would never do it. I think if I did plagiarize something I would sweat the entire week until I got the paper back. I probably wouldn't sleep either, and the little sleep I would get I would have nightmares about being expelled and disappointing my family and friends blah blah blah. I would like to know if a student would get caught if he or she would approach it correctly, but I think I will let them try it and get back to me.
I just don't see the point of plagiarizing anymore. I enjoy formulating my own ideas and shaping them onto a different medium. Why go out of my way to copy what someone else has already done? Besides, I don't want to cheat myself in the student maturation process. I think most students at this point in their careers feel this way as well and that most of the plagiarism that is caught is usually unintentional.
I agree with what has been said. I think that it would not be overly difficult to get away with plagiarism if an ample amount of time was put in doing it well. This does not seem practical however, as a work of equal or better quality could be produced by the writer’s own hand in a similar amount of time. So I do not think I would plagiarize for that reason.
After going through this experience, I agree with everything that has been said. I think if a person is willing to spend enough time and plagiarize well, it would be extremely difficult to be caught. The only thing is that most who plagiarize do so to finish their work quickly, and when done this way the chances of getting caught are far to high. It makes more sense to just create your own work, in the end there will be no feelings of guilt and the satisfaction of doing well means more when the work is your own than when it is truly someone elses.
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