Monday, September 22, 2008

A Misnomer for "Plagiarism"

Being a college student means assuming multiple roles. More often that not, your master role as a “student” is challenged and often conflicts with other obligations like love life, social life, family duties, etc. This is particularly true especially if you land on a very reputable university. Sometimes you can’t just juggle all the demands with just your two hands. In real emergency cases, it is permissible by my standards that one asks help from an essay writing service. It is not plagiarism in the strictest sense of the word because all ideas that the original writer (who is not you, just to be clear) has written are properly cited (or should have been; the site boasts of adept essay writers). What one is actually buying here is the service--the output--and it being plagiarized is out of the question. Rights and intellectual property are purchase-able. If you really can’t avoid to beat the deadline, even if you had been diligent and have been all those things you learned in your GMRC and Christian Values class, then asking for an essay help could be a good, temporary escape. Order essay services are there not just because of lazy students. They are there to help out even responsible ones who have just been caught in toxic college moments.

2 comments:

Patricia Rockwell said...

Well, you might have guessed that I would be the first person to comment on this post. I taught for over 40 years and was a student for many years too, all while raising a family, so I KNOW how busy life is for a student.

Just to be clear--what you describe clearly IS plagiarism! It is NOT the buying of the essay that is the problem--it is the submitting it to your teacher and claiming YOU wrote it, when clearly you didn't. The fact that the person who wrote the essay cited his/her sources only means that that person did not plagiarize. YOU plagiarize when you SUBMIT the paper and claim you wrote it!

Technically, these essay paper writing sites aren't doing anything wrong by selling these papers, BUT when students buy them and then submit them as if they WROTE them, that is ethically and academically wrong. Most professors will give a failing grade for the assignment and many will give a failing grade for the course if this behavior occurs. Many institutions will kick you out of school if they discover you have submitted a paper that you purchased.

DON'T DO IT!

leia said...

Justification, justification...