May 13th, 2009 in Featured, Productivity

Lessons from a Plagiarist

It happens every semester. Some student, thinking themselves very clever indeed, Googles up a WIkipedia entry, some obscure facts page from some obscure website, an essay from one of the plagiarism sites, or, one time, even one of my own papers, and hands it in as his or her own.

The smarter ones cut out the links and references to the site their paper came from. The smartest ones cut bits and pieces of several sources together into a seamless new creation – a ton of work and almost admirable, if any of the words had been their own. But what the smartest share with the dimmest is this: they’re all easy to catch.

Confronted, they fall into a couple of patterns. The defiant offer up powerful excuses like “My cousin told me she wrote this!” and “No, that’s all my work.IT’s just a coincidence that Wikipedia put the same words in the same order!” The contrite shuffle their feet, beg to redo their assignments (sometimes turning in more plagiarized work!), or just plain disappear, humiliated.

But this is not a post about plagiarism, it’s a post about life – specifically the lessons we can all learn from plagiarists. Because while I am professionally, legally, and morally bound to be harsh to plagiarists, I also believe that getting caught offers them an opportunity to learn some very important lessons. Lessons about living with a certain degree of grace and decency and, if they put their mind to it, lessons in redemption.

Here are the five big lessons I think we can all learn from plagiarists:

Never do anything that would embarrass you if anyone knew about it. The reason students plagiarize is because they believe they won’t get caught. That’s simply the wrong attitude to take, about anything. This is a very simple moral rule: if being caught would be humiliating – even if you’re not technically doing anything wrong – don’t do it.
Never underestimate the intelligence or resourcefulness of others. I know PT Barnum said nobody had ever gone broke by overestimating the stupidity of the average person, but it works the other way, too – people often turn out to be much smarter than you give them credit for, and they have access to resources you might not have imagined. You’d think students would figure a guy with a PhD-level education and 6 years of classroom experience would be pretty savvy to the ways of plagiarists, but they don’t get it. Which is fine by me – it means catching plagiarism is the easiest part of my job, not the hardest.
Own your actions. You’ve plagiarized, you’re caught – quick, who do you blame?! If you say “myself”, congratulations, you’re well on your way to being a decent person. Or, you didn’t plagiarize, you worked hard and did good work, who gets credit? Hopefully you said “myself” again – and if you see why it makes sense in the second case, you can see why it’s important in the first case. When we try to shift blame for our shortcomings to other people, we sell ourselves short, leaving no room for growth or improvement next time. It becomes a self-sustaining cycle – if it’s never your fault, then there’s never any reason to stop.
It’s never too late to seek a second chance. No matter how badly you screw up, there’s always the possibility of redemption – but only you can follow that path. You have to seek it out – ask for a chance to redo whatever you messed up, try doubly hard next time, take your lumps and resolve never to make the same mistake again. There’s two conditions here: the external condition – what it takes to satisfy the person you’ve wronged – and the internal condition – what it takes to satisfy yourself. You may never be able to redress the injury to the other party, but only you can decide what measures you’re willing to go to in order to try. Likewise, only you can decide when your own standards have been met.
Sometimes, the most important lesson you can learn is failure. My department chair told me this during my first semester as a college instructor. In education these days, success often comes too cheap. K-12 educators have to fight for permission to fail under-performing students, competitions are set up so that everyone wins, and so on. But ask any successful person, whether in academia, public service, or business, and they’ll tell you that the most important events in their lives have been the failures, not the successes (and especially not the easy successes). Learning how to fail with grace – and how to pick yourself up and go forward without repeating your mistakes – is an incredibly valuable lesson, and while it may suck to live through, it’s an occasion that we should be at least a little thankful for.

These are valuable lessons, and they apply far beyond the immediate context of plagiarism or academic work. All of us can benefit from avoiding actions that we wouldn’t want others to find out about (from hiding a relationship to committing a crime), respecting the competency of others, owning our actions and their consequences, redressing our errors, and learning from our failures. It’s only unfortunate that so many young people have to risk so much – I could conceivably have students who violate my school’s academic honesty policy censured or even expelled – to learn these lessons.

WRITER'S BIOGRAPHY

Dustin Wax

Dustin M. Wax is a freelance writer and project manager at Stepcase Lifehack. He is also the creator of The Writer's Technology Companion, a site devoted to the tools of the writing trade. When he's not writing, he teaches anthropology and gender studies in Las Vegas, NV. He is the author of Don't Be Stupid: A Guide to Learning, Studying, and Succeeding at College.

Follow him on Twitter: @dwax.

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Paul says on May 13th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I have never commented on any article before, never mind a stepcase article of which I’ve been a fan of for so long.
However, there is a first time for everything. (not an original line by the way).
A line though which partly goes to express my thoughts on individuality.
While I’m not advocating plagiarism, I also believe that it is practically impossible to be unique.
As an artist, I am aware that no matter how original you may think something is, it’s almost certainly been done or said before, and probably better.
“Never do anything that would embarrass you if anyone knew about it” simply does not work. Taken literally we all do things on a daily basis that if others were watching, we would be embarrassed about. Think about it!
The written paragraph makes no sense.
With the obvious ‘embarrassments aside’, I’d also like to bet that ‘technically’ people are also doing things wrong on a daily basis. When I say people, I am of course pointing at the author here to make my point.
A minor traffic violation? White lie at work? Crossing or ignoring some Bylaw? Using common words and sayings because it’s easier than thinking up an alternative and possibly not socially acceptable?
A teacher by definition has become one through the reading and learning of prewritten and agreed material from others.
“Never underestimate the intelligence or resourcefulness of others”.
I would add ‘or the stupidity and laziness’ of others to that line too.
You suggest that a guy with a PhD-level education and 6 years of classroom experience is not able to be fooled.
Not so I’m afraid. Logistically and based on probability, no more, no less than any other human being in fact.
You are as fallible as any other person.
“Own your actions”. People rarely do this if there is a way to point blame elsewhere, or divert the truth. After all it’s about keeping face, which is a social expectation to keep at all times. Even at the expense of others. There’s even game shows where people win by being able to show an ability to shed responsibility and use others to get to the ‘top’.
Whilst working in law enforcement, I’ve had experience of working with people from all backgrounds and races who all lie and fend off the blame.
In fact, the higher up you go, the more experienced the person, the more a person is in a position of control, the more they lie and distort the truth.
A well know saying goes, “Is my truth the same as yours’?
I partially agree with the last 2 paragraphs though. Though, I believe people will instinctively resort to whatever they do best, whether that be get through life by lying or plagiarism, or by other means.
Dustin Wax says on May 13th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Paul: Of course, these are ideals, goals t5o strive for while recognizing that we live in a messy world where we won’t always be able to live up to our ideas. That’s when you own your decision, aim to redress your mistakes, and try to learn your lesson from the failure.
As to uniqueness, there’s a difference between being a part of your culture and society and being influenced by the people, ideas, and media around you, and plagiarizing. Consider the artist who learns to paint by copying the work of the masters — there’s a long tradition of that, and it’s essential to the development of the artists’ own style. Now, consider the artist who buys or steals another artist’s work and sells it as his or her own — that’s a different sort of beast entirely.
I don’t want my students to be unique — I’ve just spent 16 weeks teaching them a body of ideas that are crucial to thei feild, and I want them to demonstrate their mastery of those ideas. They can’t do that by handing in other people’s work as their own.
As for underestimating others, two things. First, I don’t think I can’t be fooled — but I certainly am underestimated! It generally takes less than two minutes from the time I start reading a paper until I’ve marked it as plagiarized; a particularly complex work of plagiarism might take 5 or 10, but that’s more becuase of the record-keeping involved than becuase it’s hard to do (I have to be able to show my superiors what happened if the student appeals their “Zero”). I can be fooled, but it would do most of my students well to assume that I can’t because catching plagiarists is part of my job — which might suggest I’m pretty good at it. A student who assumed I could easily catch plagiarism would hopefully realize the futility of trying; it’s the students who assume I won’t that end up failing.
Finally, people may rarely own their actions. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t. Taking possession of your own actions, especially your failures, is a huge step towards personal growth. That few people manage it is beside the point.
dave says on May 13th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
Properly done, I don’t have a problem with part of what the author considers plagiarism. Specifically, the copy/pasting of lines from 3rd party sources without attribution, especially if the instructor places limits on the volume of attributable work.
The person who turns in a pre-written essay in its entirety is a failure. The person who takes great pains to disassemble and then reassemble several related works into a coherent essay – this person is a great success: He knows enough to recognize masters of the field, and he knows enough to emulate them. Eventually, he will exceed their ability.
David Cain says on May 13th, 2009 at 4:33 pm
Recently I heard a college professor being interviewed on the radio about students plagiarizing internet sources in university.
He said it’s not a problem for him, because he catches them all.
“How?” the interviewer asked.
“I just Google a paragraph from each paper, and see what comes up.”
Debora says on May 14th, 2009 at 4:04 am
Though the 5 lessons given are very valuable, I’m actually not against this type of plagiarism. As a child I loved to read. My high school book lists completely demolished that. It was only years after high school that I fell in love with reading again.
It being the early to mid nineties, I didn’t copy book reports from the Internet, but from summaries found in my local library. And I can’t say I feel I missed anything essential doing it.
You might say this doesn’t count when it comes to information that is essential for people to know, but I believe that these people will be caught up by reality soon enough, so I’m not bothered about them.
Dustin Wax says on May 14th, 2009 at 4:31 am
Debora: I’ve graded about 450 essays in the last two weeks, so maybe I have a slightly different perspective han you. I think the thing is, you think essays are about content. Only the worst professors teach content. Think back to, say, 2nd grade math; your teacher didn’t teach you 2+7 and 4+3, s/he taught you how to *add*. At the college level, it’s pretty much assumed that any student can find out any piece of information with minimal fuss; that’s not why we assign essays. We assign essays to develop students’ skills in combining, evaluating, and manipulating data from several sources in the construction of an argument. Computers can define “kinship” (and when my students cut-and-paste from Wikipedia, computers *do* define “kinship) — if my students are going to replace computers in the workforce and society of their future, they need to have skills that computers don’t have (yet) — they need to be able to use that definition to say something meaningful about the world. Teaching that is my job.
Debora says on May 14th, 2009 at 4:39 am
@Dustin
I understand your point of view, you being a teacher. But I wonder about your argument. If writing an essay is about “skills in combining, evaluating, and manipulating data from several sources in the construction of an argument”, than wouldn’t one good essay be enough? After all, with one good essay a student has proven his or her capability and no further development is neccesary. Is it?
Yonathan says on May 14th, 2009 at 5:33 am
You just made me realize I’m sometimes a plagiarist.
Thank you.
Angela says on May 14th, 2009 at 6:07 am
Great lessons, and very poignant. I am shocked by some of the responses from people who think it is ok to plagiarize. Let me say two things about that:
1) Most essay writing assignments are about interpretation. YOUR thoughts; YOUR opinions. If you can’t be bothered to use your own independant thought then take whatever good grade you get with a bitter pinch of salt. Worse, if you rely on these grades you better be prepared to step it up in the real world.
2) Plagiarism is theft. Whether you steal a pair of jeans and remove the label, or patch together several bits of denim from various pairs of stolen jeans, you are still left with something which was not yours to take.
Pat says on May 14th, 2009 at 8:25 am
It is that time of year, isn’t it? I get emails and visits from professors to alert me to the students who will be failing due to plagiarism (a strict rule at our college).
I found the comment about Googling a paragraph amusing. With 450 essays to grade, how much time do YOU have for this? Anyone who teaches knows that you can generally tell when someone has stolen the work of others from much simpler means…and then use Google to verify.
I am so grateful I don’t teach large writing courses anymore!
Dustin Wax says on May 14th, 2009 at 10:24 am
Pat: I had a chuckle at Googling a paragraph, too. First of all, it usually only takes a few words – and like you say, it’s ususally pretty obvious when an essay is plagiarized, and Google merely confirms that hunch. In terms of difficulty, I’d rank “detecting plagiarism” just above “finding my classroom on the first day of class” and just behind “finding a campus parking place the Wednesday before Thanksgiving”. Not too hard…
Dustin Wax says on May 14th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Debora: We have that “one good essay” — it’s called a Master’s thesis. Even the best writers still have to learn the ropes of academic and disciplinary thinking. ANd of course they still actually have to *learn* all the content, it’s just not the point of an essay assignment to pour all that content out — for that, you can give a multiple choice test, and I *never* give multiple choice tests (I have a section in _Don’t Be Stupid_ explaining how inane they are and how students can pass virtually any test based on multi-choice).
Prayerthegate says on May 14th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
People who don’t have an original thought support plagiarism. Nice article. Give credit where it is due. It is the right thing to do.
VTAMethodman says on May 14th, 2009 at 8:59 pm
K, I know that plagiarism is a reality for many students. I’ve caught many students plagiarizing as a teaching assistant and lecturer but regardless of how many students do it, I still think we should throw the book at every last one of them.
Out of university! If we took that stance, plagiarism would stop… immediately.
Just my Thoughts
Liam McIvor Martin
Twin XL says on May 14th, 2009 at 10:44 pm
The who plagerism thing is really hard because it is nearly impossible to be unique with your words. This is why I stay away from writing classes whenever possible!
Jimmy says on May 15th, 2009 at 3:53 am
So let me get this straight. You’re saying that coincidence is not possible? I disagree. With all the information out there today coincidence is bound to happen. Also, what if the best way to say something happens to be the way you find it in an article or the way the article or source puts it is the exact same way you would say it in your own words. Now you’re forcing your student to change who they are for your stupid and most likely impractical assignment. Colleges and college professors take themselves way too seriously. Most of them aren’t educated enough themselves but are allowed to teach anyway.
Jimmy says on May 15th, 2009 at 3:55 am
Never tell and academic that what they know or do is not important. That’s plagiarism!
Johanne says on May 15th, 2009 at 5:14 am
That was an excellent post. Very insightful!
Irene says on May 15th, 2009 at 11:25 am
hi all!
fantastic article, the tips speak straight to my plagiatristic and preferring-easy-victories conscience ))
last year I failed to submit a BA thesis in time, therefore I had to wait +1 academic year for another chance. the whole year I’ve been watching myself repeating the full circle of mistakes, which had led me to a failure in 2008.
it has become more painful with a realization of my own responsibility for my insufficient efforts and poor performance. I wanted to cross out this experience like a nightmare; and only lately it seems to me that maybe it was worth it after all, because when I do something like that in business, in the “real life”, I will know my weaknesses better and I hope I will deal with similar situations more successfully.
once again I am late with the whole project; every section has some holes to fill up. the weekend will be dedicated to expanding the file with characters. I will try to do it quickly and, regarding this post, not to plagiarize very much :)
Patti Stafford says on May 15th, 2009 at 12:12 pm
@Debora You said, “After all, with one good essay a student has proven his or her capability and no further development is neccesary. Is it?”
Further development is always neccesary in any field a person goes into. If it wasn’t we’d still be stuck trying to invent the wheel.
Dustin Wax says on May 15th, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Jimmy: Yes, that level of coincidence is not possible. Two or three words, sure — happens all the time. Not 800.
If the best way to say something is the way someone else said it, we have an *excellent* set of procedures for quoting and citing the source, which every single student in the American system is drilled with from high school on.
Finally, you don’t know me, my classes, or my assignments, so I’d be careful what I assumed. You might come off as lesssmart than you’d like to appear.
PS Google any sentence in just about any blog post, here or elsewhere, and see if you come up with someone “coincidentally” using the same words in the same order. My students have a better chance of accidentally stapling a winning superlotto ticket to their paper than of accidentally coming up with the same language someone else used. Since I’m still teaching for peanuts, it’s clear that my superlotto boat hasn’t come in.
Matt Hill says on May 19th, 2009 at 10:28 am
It’s been a long time since I was at school, but there’s one thing I took from my education that has stuck with me ever since, and still seems to be an issue today:
Much education is about imparting knowledge; it often fails to teach people how to think.
If your educational establishment is rife with student plagiarism, I’d wager that the students haven’t been taught how to think for themselves.
Kadia says on May 21st, 2009 at 11:15 am
I taught at a British university for 7 years, one of the ones with a very small group teaching system. I saw my students in groups of 2 or 3 every week for a year. I have to say that I completely agree with a lot of the content in this article – catching plagarism is trivial especially when you know the students well. If they’re bothering to plagarise then it’s usually because they don’t fully understand and that’s fairly obvious.
Because none of the work that I was marking counted towards their degree, I would normally let a first occurrence off with a reminder that a single instance of plagarism was enough to be thrown out of the university. I was absolutely astonished that in the majority of cases they went on to do it again.
It makes me feel a lot better that the course I taught was assessed entirely by exam, so it truly was themselves they were cheating by choosing not to work harder to make sure they understood properly.
Incidentally, I disagree that if a student is plagarising then they haven’t been taught to think. Firstly, students are all adults. Being at university means taking responsibility for your own learning. I gave a lot of extra classes, answered questions by email and bent over backwards to ensure that students who asked for help got it, and that they knew they could ask. If they can’t be bothered to ask then I’m certainly not taking on responsibility for it.
Bursa Evden Eve Nakliyat says on May 24th, 2009 at 2:06 pm
thank you
Dave says on May 24th, 2009 at 6:21 pm
When I was in grad school the problem wasn’t catching cheaters and plagiarists. The problem was the University not backing up the professors / instructors when they actually — gasp! — wanted to fail a student for cheating. So the student learns that they can be lazy, maybe get embarassed, but there is no real consequence for their action.