More on Plagiarism...

After class today, I have a newfound respect for teachers/professors. After going through what many professors go through with every assignment the give (checking for plagiarism), I have come to the conclusion that I don't have the patience necessary to do this. It's probably a good thing that I have no intentions of ever being an educator, because I would probably be the one with which students knew they could get away with this sort of thing. It could be pure laziness, however, it could also be that I wasn't very familiar with the topics I was reading. Checking for plagiarism in a paper that, to me, sounds like it's in another language, is extremely difficult. I didn't know what the language used in specific topics was like, and didn't know how to go about finding the sources that my fellow plagiarizers stole from. I have to say that unlike mine, the 2 papers I read (by Emily and Patrick), were very well thought out, as far as sources go. I couldn't find ANY passages in Patrick's paper that were plagiarized (although he said about 65% of the paper was unoriginal), and could only find a couple passages in Emily's paper (I got lucky with those). However, with my paper, my sources were discovered within minutes of searching. It just goes to show, it can be possible to get away with plagiarism even with all the new technology and resources available, it just takes a lot of hard work, more than it would just to write an original paper.

Plagiarism Experience Reflection

For this assignment, we had to plagiarize a paper (75% someone else's work, 25% our own). At first, like I think most of my classmates, I thought, "This is going to be the easiest assignment of the semester." We could write about anything that we wanted. Again, at first, I thought that would be super easy. However, it seemed to complicate things. I couldn't decide what to write about. I finally decided on a biography of Abraham Lincoln. It's something that I've wrote about before, and something that everyone has at least heard a little about throughout the course of their education. I wanted to plagiarize a biography because I figured that it would be hard to distinguish which parts were plagiarized. Because so many biographies use the same language and include many facts, I thought it was the best bet.

I found that plagiarizing a biography was more difficult than I had expected. At first, I thought it was just because I chose to write a biography, however, after discussion in class on Monday, it sounded like this assignment was just as difficult for my fellow classmates. The hardest part about this assignment was trying to decide how different parts of the sources I was using and my voice could fit together and sound like a well-flowing paper. Like the ghostwriting assignment, the plagiarism experience also helped me learn a lot about about my writing style. Just by understanding that my writing style was different and by actually having to make the paper flow, I was able to, in a way, analyze my own writing. I also believe that because it was so difficult to take different works from different authors with completely different writing styles and make them flow together as one, plagiarism can be considered an "art" (however, whether this is ethical or not is left for the individual to decide). Again, I'm referring back to Deborah Brandt's statement in class when she said that sooner or later, authorship will be in the form of plagiarism, i.e. cutting and pasting. After completing this assignment, I can see how this could be possible.

Ghostwriting Reflection

The ghostwriting project was an interesting one. Who knew I could write something for someone else and actually make it sound similar to their voice? I learned a lot about my own writing style, and also about my friend's style. I've never considered myself especially creative, or having a unique writing style, however this project changed my mind. While evaluating my friend's writing style, I was also able to evaluate my own and see how it is unique.

There were a few parts of this project that were easy for me. Because the person I chose to write for has been my friend for over 10 years, I have become accustom to both the way she talks and writes. Since grade school, we have taken the same grammer classes and writing classes, so our writing styles are pretty similar. Because our writing styles are similar, it was easier for me to pick out the differences and work with them in the writing process. I was able to put in a few sentences that you could say were my "voice", and because our "voices" are similar, when combined with her stylistic devices, it sounded like her.

However, I did run into a few problems in my ghostwriting experience... My choice to write for a close friend had positives (as I mentioned above) and a few negatives. My friend wanted her own ideas in the paper and wasn't even willing to hear any of my suggestions for an addition to the paper in order to lengthen it. Also, after I showed her the first draft and asked for her to write in any corrections she would make, she returned it to me with no revisions. She said that she wouldn't change anything and it was perfect the way it was. I'm not sure her reasoning for this, but I think it was either one of two reasons: 1. She didn't want to offend me because we're friends, or 2. She simply didn't have enough time to look over the draft. Either way, this was a frustrating moment for me because I don't feel like the paper was my best work. However, it was what she wanted, and after all, the paper would have been signed with her name (if I were a real ghostwriter).

Although this may sound a bit selfish, I think that all the difficulties I encountered during my ghostwriting experience would've been less troubling if I were getting paid for it. But, I do wonder how long I could ghostwrite (and be paid for it), before no amount of money could lessen the frustration.

Plagiarism

Well, Wednesday in class we had some pretty interesting stories about plagiarism... Stories like that are always fun to hear for some reason. I'm looking forward to doing the Plagiarism assignment because I think it's sometimes easier to plagiarize than to be original. It depends on the topic, but with all the new technology that we've seen in our lives so far, it's hard to actually be original. How do we know that what we come up with and think is our own mind's work, isn't already out there, expressed by someone else. There are only so many words, and only so many ways to put things. Sooner or later, like Deborah Brandt mentioned, we will be essentially cutting and pasting our compositions rather than actually creating them.

As far as ghostwriting goes...that's a difficult subject to interpret. I'm glad that we're studying ghostwriting and plagiarism back-to-back, because to me, they don't seem all that different, and it makes me think, "If plagiarism is so bad, then why is it happening so often in the form of ghostwriting?" I read the University's policy (short one online) on plagiarism, and while reading, I kept thinking to myself, "It sounds just like they are defining ghostwriting." I guess it's okay to plagiarize as long as the real author is being paid for it. I wonder what the University's policy on ghostwriting is...