Bria's+Page

In my high school experience I never got caught plagiarizing but in the eleventh grade our high school had a mandatory senior project that all juniors had to complete. The senior project consisted of an eight-page research paper and a presentation. Our teacher told us about plagiarism before we began to write our research paper. She informed us that if there is any hint of plagiarism that we will have some serious consequences. We was told that if caught plagiarizing on our research paper that she will tell the principal and we could be suspended or have a few days of in school suspension. From there I knew that plagiarism was a really serious and that it shouldn’t be done. When writing a paper that I dread doing and something that is really long and very time consuming, I do have a really big urge to plagiarize because I don’t want to do it. I know that I’m not the only one that has had that urge also. If I would have plagiarize the benefits would have been it was a lot quicker and I probably would have sounded really smart copying an author’s article that is very intellectual. But the main consequences would have getting serious trouble and to say that my work was not really my work and it was taking someone else’s credit. It was not my own thoughts or was it original in any way.

My research paper was on Cystic Fibrosis. The only reason that I did this topic was because I have a family member that suffers from this disease. The paper was really base on facts, what the side affects were and what are some of the treatment that a person that suffers from this disease could have available. My paper was very medical related and sounded like I was doing a report for some type of doctor that specialized this disease. In the facts that I was writing about there was very big medical terms that I didn’t use in my daily vocabulary and some how I had to use those terms and make it sound like I would use those words. Doing an eight- page paper was grueling because after the fifth page it was really hard to find something else to write about with out using the same information and repeating yourself in the paper. It seem like the more information that I try to look for the more that I was getting the same thing that I had already written. While I was writing my research paper it was very hard not to plagiarize, the urge was becoming so strong because I was getting more and more frustrated with the paper because I couldn’t find nothing to write about and from the beginning of the assignment I really didn’t want to do it but an outlet that would help would be paraphrasing. Paraphrasing is using other words but still having the same idea. The only downside to paraphrasing is that it is still not your own idea. The upside to paraphrasing is that you can put it in your own words still be original but still have the same idea of what the author was talking about. I believe that is a good example of plagiarism because I feel that many students have been encountered in this situation.