Plagiarism is a serious issue I see may increase as online schooling happens through the pandemic. Plagiarism is not worth the risk. Paying for school, and working towards your future is not worth risking the consequences and suspensions. Especially when many acts of plagiarism can be easily spotted. A great fear of mine is being falsely accused of Plagiarism. I believe a fair amount of plagiarism could come from confusion and misunderstanding.

In high school, I was never taught how to properly reference sources. The way we would “reference” was to simply write down the title of the website we’d use. Other students may relate to this or have similar experiences. When it came to my first semester, I was totally panicked about making sure my references were correct. Learning how to cite references on my own was challenging and brought a lot of stress to writing any assignment. Thankfully it helped me understand and focus much more which I now feel more confident in my writing. The most challenging part of learning on my own was understanding the different referencing rules for different styles.

While learning how to properly cite I discovered many citing webpages to help however some don’t clearly explain the rules. The best citing pages help by showing examples of what references should look like. This helped me out a lot when I was first figuring out my references. Potentially some students may accidently plagiarize due to their lack of understanding.

Plagiarism is very strict, these rules all seem fair however sometimes hard to work with. Paraphrasing was a struggle for me to understand as you don’t want to use too many words from the source however want it to still be understood. Words can be difficult and it can be hard to pull them from your own mind. Some students may struggle with this form of referencing which will lead to plagiarism.

Sometimes its easy to forget which style you are using. If multiple classes request different styles it can be easily mixed up with the wrong format. This is why it’s important to proof read your work a few times paying attention to different things. Another possible reason for plagiarizing could be issues due to language barriers. I could see someone who doesn’t understand English very well may have a hard time understanding the rules of plagiarizing. As well maybe they do not understand the assignment and go to the internet for full answers rather than references. However I don’t see this as a valid excuse due to the many resources the college, and online provide. if you reach out to help there is a better understanding all together.

I was discussing this topic with a friend of mine, she is currently in grade 11, she shared she thinks plagiarism occurs a lot when people don’t give themselves enough time to research and think beyond their readings. Or they did not give enough time to find the right amount of sources to give valid points. This could also be that their topic they discuss does not have a lot to share and leads to them feeling the need to take words from other sources to make their own.

With classes online people have less of a work drive, tend to choose the lazier route of assignments, I’ve heard buying papers a common form of plagiarism, many students assume they can get away with this as they think its not coming from online. however writing styles can be easily understood so if a tone of someone’s writing changes the professor can figure it out. If they think they can get away with this they will attempt it. Plagiarism is a terrible thing to commit, I can’t believe how much its emphasized yet students still try to follow through and cheat. Hopefully as we work our way out of the pandemic students can learn the values of working on their own and writing with academic integrity.