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Kaitlyn Lekas

Mrs. Cramer

College Comp, Pd,7

20, November 2020

Creativity with plagiarism

All through school we find ways to get things done, and sometimes it doesn’t

work in our favor. Students take approaches that can land them in big trouble and make

them look not smart. All throughout the school years, students are taking things from the

internet and copying them down as their own without any credit. Plagiarism is a problem

in school due to lack of knowledge and understanding of the text, difficulty meeting

deadlines, and chronic cheaters.

When an assignment is assigned to students, some may get confused on the topic

and have no idea how to write it. In a source, Steve Peha admitted to plagiarizing because

he had no understanding of the topic. When people don’t understand something, they

look it up on the internet and take what's on there and copy it down. People don’t tend to

write the sources from where they get the information from because they try to take it as

their own. Plagiarism is when you take someone’s work or words, and trying to pass

them off as your own without giving any credit to the original source.(Silvester) This can

easily be done from the internet, and as a student this has been seen many times because

people think it’s the easier way to get things done. Having very little or no knowledge of
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the topic is what makes kids go on to plagiarize, and by doing this they are not learning,

and they are taking someone else's work. The lack of knowledge plays a big role in

plagiarism today because students aren’t taking the time to learn things, and by thinking

that the internet has the answers to their problems leads them to take it right from a

certain source without credits to the people that it originated from. Students cheat their

way through classes because of miscommunication or misunderstanding of what is being

done. Plagiarizing can get you in big trouble and can make you fail something, so it is

always good to ask for help if you don’t understand something instead of going out and

copying something from an unknown source and trying to pass it off as your own.

In one source, “Overwhelmed by the deadlines, some students plagiarize to do

whatever it takes to get a good grade” (Peha), meaning they take information off from the

internet or someone else and turn it in just to get it turned in on time. In school, deadlines

are important and students stress about getting assignments turned in on time. If they

don’t know the topic or wait until the last minute, then they come close with not meeting

the deadline. Whether they know what they are turning in or not, they want to get good

grades and they resort to plagiarism to do the work for them. As a student, deadlines are

stressful and they come upon fast, especially if it’s put off so long to do them. The

internet has all sorts of answers and it’s easy for kids to take that information and turn it

in. Getting good grades is one of the main priorities' students have in school, so some will

do anything to make sure their grades are good. People are always in a rush to meet

deadlines, so plagiarism is the wrong and quickest way people go about when they want

to get things done in time, and if they don’t know what they are doing. Assignments are

half done and not done right, and by plagiarizing them and being caught you will end up
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failing and it's not worth it. Instead of waiting until the last minute to complete something

and plagiarizing, students can do things ahead of time, ask questions, or if you are going

to use something from the internet make sure to use quotations and add sources that were

used.

It should be noted that plagiarism is the biggest way student's cheat. The founder

of a company that helps with teaching kids, “21% of students in 7-12th grade have turned

in papers downloaded right from the internet.” (Peha) Students take information right

from the internet, try to turn it in as their own, and end up getting in trouble for

plagiarism. They are cheating because they are looking up the answers and stealing that

from the original source without credit. They think that teachers won’t know that they are

plagiarizing, but teachers are smarter than that and know how well that kids writing

ability is. In another one of my source, the internet makes it easier to plagiarize and have

student's cheat.(HT digital Streams) You can pretty much find anything out on the

internet, and that’s why teachers have us use quotations if we are using something from

the web that another person said. Cheating is big problem in school along with

plagiarism, and it's easy to do that when everything is put out there for everyone to see.

The source also has students from colleges saying that the internet helped them graduate

because they didn’t understand their projects. If you get use to plagiarism then that will

cause further problems down the line, because you'll be used to looking towards the

internet for help, and you're going to have trouble learning how to do things by yourself.

The longer a person plagiarizes, the harder it’s going to be for them in school because

they aren't learning by copying someone else's work.

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Plagiarizing can hurt grades in many ways nevertheless you're the one doing it or

you're the victim. Reasons why most kids are plagiarizing is because they don’t

understand what is going on, having trouble getting work turned in on time, and cheating

their way through it. Students don’t realize how bad plagiarism is and how it affects

grades if you get caught. They try to take the easy way out by cheating, taking others

information because they themselves don’t know what they are doing, or because they are

trying to meet deadlines due to waiting last minute to turn or start an assignment.

Plagiarism is illegal if you're taking someone's work and words and making it seem like

they are your own. Many students don’t take this seriously and it ends up ruining things

for them.
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Works Cited

"Finding a cure for the plague of plagiarism." Citizen (Dar es Salaam, Tanzania) - AAGM, 18

Aug. 2020, p. NA. Gale Academic OneFile,

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A632793299/AONE?u=pl1949&sid=AONE&xid=6fd8b6

10. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.

"How to Stop the Plagiarism Plague." Education.com, 2 Apr. 2014,

www.education.com/magazine/article/stop-plagiarism-plague/. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.

Silvester, Niko. "Before you turn it in: how to avoid plagiarism." Writing!, vol. 27, no. 3, Nov.-

Dec. 2004, p. 22+. Gale Academic OneFile,

https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A127713583/AONE?u=pl1949&sid=AONE&xid=5f197f

48. Accessed 23 Oct. 2020.