Plagiarism Copying other people’s work and taking it as your own is the simplest way to explain plagiarism. There are different ways to plagiarize something; you can plagiarize by copying someone’s work such as story from a book or a magazine, information’s, paintings/drawings, songs, movies/dramas, or anything that is an idea of someone without giving them credit of their work.
People copy others work because of various reasons, those reasons includes less time needed in doing the work. Some people are lazy and some don’t like spending too much time doing one thing. Some would decide to do the work the very last minute to the point where they don’t have enough time to finish without copying. And others want to have a better quality work than what they came up with so they search and copy or modify a better one, they don’t have knowledge of the work so they copy, or they don’t have the patience to do the work. Procrastination, laziness, lack of knowledge of the topic, writes block, low self-confidence of own work can lead someone to plagiarize.
There are times when plagiarism is done without the knowledge of that person. They could have an idea, turn it into reality but end up realizing that their idea is exactly or almost similar to someone else’s. You can borrow the work of someone as long as you give credit to the people or person who created them. No matter the reason is; it should be common sense that it is bad to copy and steal someone else’s work. It is better to create something knowing that it is unique and it came from your own hard work. People should not plagiarize because it is unethical, someone worked hard to create something and they should get credit of it. Before deciding to copy someone else’s hard work, imagine yourself in their position, you worked hard to do something and someone else decided to steal it and claim it as their own. Common sense should be enough to stop you from copying. Plagiarizing is also hurtful to the person who originated the work from as well as the one who copied. It hurts the creator because their hard work is stolen and it hurts the person copying because they are not learning anything, they are not thinking of their own ideas and topics. For example, students are given written assignments to improve their understanding of the topic and they are given the opportunity to learn and grow by creating their own ideas, coming up with their own topic and figuring things out on their own. There are different consequences of plagiarism, some example in the academic field depends on the number of times plagiarism was committed. Penalties varies from failing an assignment, loss of privilege such extra credit points in homework, test and quizzes, getting a low-grade, and even being kick out of the school. Professors take plagiarism seriously because they take their time teaching the class topic to the students and they make sure that everyone has an understanding of the topic. Knowing that a student plagiarizes a work is unforgivable because he or she should have knowledge of the homework and that it should be easy for them writing or doing a homework that was taught by the professor. Being able to do homework without copying shows the professor how much understanding you have of the topic.
Outside the education field, legally, people can take you to court if they find out that you plagiarized from them. Violators may have to pay large amount of money to the original writer and sometimes, penalties include imprisonment.
People should not plagiarize because it can ruin a person’s career in their job and education, and it can also ruin their own selves and plagiarism can give them a bad reputation. In the academic field, students plagiarize because of the reasons stated on the second paragraph. Students today do more than go to class, pay attention and take notes, prepare presentations, do homework’s, and study for exams and quizzes. Some students need to go to work in order to support their education, family and other things. Other students are also involved in internships or other extracurricular activities. The student’s responsibility outside their class can affect them to decide to plagiarize their work because it is sometimes easier to copy or modify a work, it saves them time and energy. It is a challenge being a full time student and an employee but the key in avoiding is time management. Manage you time by thinking ahead of the due dates of homework’s and presentations, date for exams and quizzes. Make a clear timeline outlining the dates of all of class homework, exam and quizzes. Having a clear timeline will show you how much time you have to do certain homework and when you have a lot of time or when you have little. No matter how busy the schedule of a person is, if they know how to manage their time then they will not have to copy the work of others. Students are also pressured to do great on their work. Their classroom could be filled with competitive students or professors with high expectations and they are not used to that kind of classroom environment. Students would be pressured to copy a great quality written paper to meet the professors’ standard as well as to be able to compete with the other students. Other students worry that they will get a low grade and let their parents down. It is important to be successful in school and in your education, but it is not really your own success if you copied your way in achieving it.
There are different ways to avoid plagiarism. People should just be original, come up with their own ideas and approach and solve problems their own way. Every person has their own unique way in doing things, making being original as your habit will help you in the long run, both in your education and career. The ideas of other people can be used as long as they are given credit of it. When using quotes or information’s from other source, use quotation marks and cite things such as the name of the author, name of book, what web address if it is from the internet, and all other information’s of the writer just to show that you are giving them the credit of their work, cite your sources. Another way to avoid plagiarism is avoiding copy and pasting and then replacing words and rearranging them to make it look like a new sentence.
Instead of plagiarizing, people should just come up with their own ideas and express their own thoughts. When writing a paper, be creative and have fun, brainstorm and challenge themselves and create a paper filled with words and ideas that originated from them. Having the knowledge that you came up with something by yourself will make you appreciate your work instead of someone who doesn’t give a care and just copy.