Don't be a thief

I never saw plagiarism as a big deal. When i was in poly, we never had to quote any source for the information we used (until the final year, when one of our lecturers made us do it). Information was free and we could use it in any way we want.

When I was went to Uni in aussie land, we were told on the first day that plagiarism is a very serious offence. You can get your ass seriously kicked. And by that, I mean you can get kicked out of your school. Now, I was thinking ... "What is the fucking big deal? It's not like my paper is ever gonna make it to the Australian Times or something." But I did my references properly anyway cos I really don't have that much of an ass for the kicking.

In my second semester, I did a paper on marketing for one of my electives. I spent days and nights (stopping only to bathe, pee, smoke, eat and sleep) to complete that paper. At the end of it, I was so proud of the finished product that I actually sent my paper for a review to my tutor. She confirmed that I was most likely to ace that paper. Which I did. In fact, I scored a whopping 95 out of 100, ranking 2nd in the entire cohort. Man, was i proud!

Anyway, after that, a schoolmate wanted to borrow my paper for reference when she had to take the same subject the next semester. I hesitated. I didn't know if this particular schoolmate would put her own effort into the paper or just steal all the goddamn brilliant ideas from mine. Which made me realised that plagiarism is not just something that is against the school rules. It's morally and ethically wrong to steal somebody's ideas and pass it off as yours. It's something equal to stealing. It's even worse when you score well or make shitloads of money from someone else's ideas.

One of my housemates actually almost got into knee-length shit one time because the school accused him of plagiarising. He didn't plagiarise but a fellow schoolmate had borrowed his assignment and ended up submitting a copy exactly like his own. Therefore, the school had no idea who the originator of the paper was. He and the other guy were let off with a warning and both of them had to re-do the paper.

Although the schoolmate was such a jerk, it was silly of my housemate to trust that guy who wasn't even a close friend, but just a fellow Singaporean.

What I'm saying is, don't steal other people's ideas, but likewise, don't allow other people to steal yours.

Oh, I did eventually lend my paper to my schoolmate but she didn't get to use it as a reference cos' her assignment topics were different from mine. Thank god.