High School Plagiarism
High school for me seemed like an unending schedule of school, sports, and extracurricular activities. It seemed that after three hours of swim practice, six hours of school, another hour or two of clubs and band I was exhausted; though I was never alone in my struggles. Countless amounts of my classmates were just as busy if not more involved than I was. It never came as a shock to me then to hear that many of these busy souls cheated. Many would cut and paste, while others sneaked a peek over their neighbor’s shoulder; either way remains synonymous with using other people’s intellectual property as their own.
According to dictionary.com, intellect is defined as “the understanding, the faculty of thinking and acquiring knowledge”. The many students whom I saw cheating from time to time did not have little or no intellect; they just hated the prospect of working and pushing themselves. To them, turning in some one else’s answers assuaged deadlines of assignments that were forgotten or abandoned. These people all had the ability to do well and learn, but many found their efforts futile in the long run. Thinking like this, once they began to cheat, each successive time that they were faced with a similar decision to either be honorable or cheat they were more likely to feel less guilty while executing the latter.
This reason may be why some students struggle so much academically and why some high school students fear writing. With classes other than English a pupil can simply jot down answers from another person and turn in the homework, quiz, or test. There is no room for questioning the student’s opinion on the subject because the answers are definite. In English, specifically writing, a student has to put his or her own opinions and ideas on paper open to criticism by teachers and his or her peers. If the student had been repeatedly apathetic and not taken the initiative to learn they may not have a base on which to build their arguments. Thus, the writing of some high school students may be void of useful and intellectual information. Students need to become aware earlier of the repercussions their actions create; cheating can result in less experience and knowledge of important subjects.
With my many activities and responsibilities in high school came many temptations, cheating being one of them. Though I never once plagiarized I cannot say that I did not give thought to taking this easy way out of some academic situations. A year later now in college brings a sense of responsibility. No longer can people slide through prerequisites with others answers; the courses that fill schedules are shaping futures and lives other than our own. Cheating in high school may have been acceptable, but in the college not knowing information and not having your own intellectual property will bring dire consequences. I was lucky in the fact that I never started this habit that would follow me later in life; something that a number of my high school classmates unfortunately cannot.
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28 Aug. 2007
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