12 - Plagiarism is a crime

When we hear the word plagiarism, what usually comes into our mind? I never really took plagiarism seriously until I went to college. University of Santo Tomas was really strict with plagiarized, as in really REALLY strict. But before I get into details, what exactly is plagiarism? According to the dictionary, Plagiarism is defined as an act of imitating the language and thoughts of another author without authorization and representation of that author's work as one's one work, as by not crediting the original author. Pretty complicated right?
It simply means to not get, copy and imitate everything that you find in the internet, books, magazines, articles etc. you can, but as long as you cite the source to where you got it from. Like what I did earlier, the definition of plagiarism that i typed was from dictionary.com, i had to say dictionary.com because i got it from them, and not stating that means it came from me. Anyway, an experience of mine in my freshmen year in UST, I had a marketing professor, and somehow, I don't really know the entire story, but he was sued by UST for plagiarizing a work or thesis. so yeah, he was a really awesome professor, he told us that what they're blaming him for isn't true,


 i do hope it isnt. I never knew the college could be so strict, i mean like suing your own hired teacher is intense. also, when i was in high school, plagiarism wasnt a big deal at all, thats why people, or rather college students, do it. if the elementary and highschool teachers were strict with plagiarism, no one would dare plagiarize and they would actually use their own brains instead of googling everything. another experience I had in college was in my english class, we were asked to do some sort of book report, so we were 3 people in a group. Basically, me and my groupmates read the book, so when we got our paper back, the teacher drew a big "PLAGIARISM" on it and I was like, what the hell this is our own words. Sometimes professors can be really offending, just because the students sounded "cool", "smart" or "professional" on their essays doesn't mean that it's plagiarized. It's like making us feel like we aren't capable of saying such things. But overall, moral lesson is, do not ever copy something off the internet without citing or crediting. It is illegal and I do hope that people will stop plagiarizing, cause what if you were the author of a certain book and your work got copied, you would feel bad right? Be an informed citizen before making dumb actions.

References:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/plagiarism
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