Anne-Yael-+Plagiarism

With the internet playing such a huge role in our modern society, I often find myself “Googleing” the answers to everything. The only problem with that is that when you Google something and come across something written by another person, if the text you read is copied verbatim, that is when it become plagiarism. As a writer, if I would like to recycle another person’s thoughts, research, or ideas, I must find a new way to present or word the information to avoid possibly being accused of plagiarism. The fear of that accusation alone, because of its harsh consequences, is enough to completely direct my writing process. Usually when I am given an out of class essay where I am given a lot of time to complete my essay I follow this process: first, I reread the prompt over until I believe I have a clear understanding of what is being asked of me; second I try to come up with my own ideas and support for the prompt; third, whether I was successful with the second step or not, I will usually do a little research to see what has been said on the topic previously. If I find good feedback I will read as much on the topic as possible and usually choose the ones I agree with to use in my essay, or try to create my own ideas based on what I had read. This part of my composition process is where plagiarism becomes a problem. I often times get hung up on making sure that my word choice and my summarizations are not different from the source to avoid accusation of plagiarizing. I habitually lose focus on what my point was and start worrying about wording. Because of plagiarism, I am always anxious that my ideas are not original. Especially because in 2011 there are not many ideas that one may have that no one has thought of and recorded. The problem becomes how to word it so it does not seem like it was stolen, which is the issue I and many other students have. It makes it hard as a writer to feel confident and comfortable in my work because of the possibility that it has been said in a similar way before. I try sometimes to think to myself that “if I know it is original, then there is no way I can be told it is not,” but with software that scans papers for plagiarized text, and that can be inaccurate at times, there is still that thought in the back of my mind. I have never been personally accused of plagiarism, but in the 7th grade we were assigned a partner project in math where we were to do research and put or research into different graphs. My partner and I decided to split our work up, each of us doing one half. I knew all my data and graph were authentic, so the thought of plagiarism never even crossed my mind. However, when the time came to get our grades back my teacher called us in to have a talk with us. Apparently my partner had copied and pasted all of her half of the project and because my name was on the project too, I was under suspicion. She confessed that it was her fault and I was not penalized, but it goes to show that anything can be plagiarized. From that day on I became very aware of what I turn in because of the fear of being accused of plagiarizing.