Written by Antai 2022 Cohort
As a starter, I’ll tell a story about plagiarism, kind of a funny one. I heard this story from a friend, and it is about one of his schoolmates, let’s call him John. John was a student at the University of Southern California and majored in history; maybe, I can’t remember it clearly. In the first semester of his master’s program, he wrote a paper for one of his classes and then had to leave school for personal stuff. So he applied for a suspension. When he returned, he re-attended the same class and delivered the paper he had written the previous year. Then he got a 100% similarity rate from his report last year. Should this count as plagiarism?
At first, his professor or school system identified it as plagiarism. Still, after he explained everything to his professor, he understood it and helped him rewrite a paper on a new topic. Compared with my undergraduate university studies and here at CDM, the concept of plagiarism is about the same. And there is more plagiarism in undergraduate programs. That is because our reason for school is different.
I am not an expert on this topic, so every opinion is based on my knowledge and observation from Tianjin and Beijing areas in China. Education is essential in every country. And is only a handful of young people are fortunate enough to attend college. The good thing is, in recent years, more and more students have been able to do that. But, many students, for many reasons, need help to enrol in their most wanted major. I’m in digital media, focused on video game design. But some of my schoolmates didn’t like games; they were aiming to learn physics or computer science, not interested in game design. I love to play video games and also to study and design them. I like to do my assignment for my game design classes; I won’t copy other people’s work because I want my ideas and my own stories. If I plagiarize, I’ll waste my ideas. Some students are not as enthusiastic as me, they have other goals, and they don’t want to waste time and energy doing things that they don’t like. I totally understand them; I am pretty fortunate to have a major that I like; if I have to study physics or maybe math, it would be hell for me. But anyway, plagiarism is not advisable.