[Martin’s note: Helpful links at the end of the post.]
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Wrong.
Desperate times call for calm and controlled responses.
No matter how difficult the situation is, you are guaranteed to be doing the worst possible thing if you plagiarise. From copying a few sentences through to a whole essay, it’s such a dangerous move. So dangerous, in fact, that you’d be wrong to think it’s possible to beat the system.
The only way you’d ever beat the system (and it would still be a huge risk), is if you were to spend more time perfecting the plagiarism than it would take to write a good essay yourself.
Yet people still do it.
Even if you’ve done a grand total of ZERO work, you’re better off trying to blag some marks and making do with a fail than it is to copy somebody else’s work and ending up chucked off your course. Even if you don’t get excluded, you won’t be given the chance to redeem yourself and the entire module will be a fail.
I write about this, simply because I’m still in utter disbelief as to why anyone still things plagiarism is a good idea or a possible last resort.
Get this straight…plagiarism is just plain pointless.
This post is admittedly more like a rant than anything else, but I think it needs to be said. Hopefully this message will get through to one or two hopeful plagiarists who come across this on a Google search. While this website is all about improving your study, I do get one or two searches that are focused the other way around. I sincerely hope they have clicked to find out the positive ways of sorting out their situation. And if they hadn’t, I hope the post has helped to change their mind anyway.
Still, I’m not willing to leave it at just a rant, so here are some links from the web to enjoy about plagiarism:
Lifehack.org – Advice for students: How not to plagiarise Studenthacks.org – Avoid Plagiarism Chronicle of Higher Education – Funny Thing About Plagiarism
TheUniversityBlog 