Hopefully ORIGINAL!!!

I am sure we all have done it several times intentionally or unintentionally. It starts from the very junior school; we cram the poems, mug up the notebook answers, and copy the essay from our friends. In the exams,a slight variance of words and the teacher penalized you for not reproducing it exactly as in the notebook. Cramming power was always a boon for the toppers. Spoon feeding was at its supreme.The best you could copy from the ready made answers, the more marks you ended up with. 🙂

I remember being scolded by my dad when he noticed me learning the answers by heart, but since I dint wish to compromise with my full marks, I never took it seriously. But then this has done me no good, neither the others like me. So often we fail to think or write on our own.  🙁 The essence of originality hangs in oblivion. I feel writing skills have never been encouraged wholeheartedly in the education system. Hence we just COPY or putting in other words we get influenced so deeply that we just lap it up all in all.

I believe colleges are no better. Tutorial classes or the assignments have always been copied from top to bottom with the inappropriately placed commas and full stops. It saved so much time then but in the long run costs me so much time whenever I am asked to formulate new answers to an existing question. And not to forget the projects, they were many who purchased from outside with an utmost ownership about it. This speaks of lack of creativity and obviously new ideas.

 4 years in the editorial board and I always had a brush up with copied articles for the college magazine. The sources were never mentioned and there were more than one claiming for its copyright. 😉 I am sure we have never taken the bibliography or the reference section as importantly as it’s worth it. And now students are doing it with essays for seeking admissions in the schools. This one comes in the bad taste- ‘Indian students fail plagiarism test in US varsities’

I wish to mention about academic honesty– word acquired lately from a newspaper article. It actually means to maintain originality in all our works in institutions of knowledge. The ideas expressed in any form should solely be ours though it may not comprise of knotty jargons but should be fair and honest. It makes us ethical in conduct. When we copy, we are just being lazy and laziness is just a hindrance to free and truthful expression. There’s no shortcut to originality. It’s the easiest way in itself. One  doesn’t need to take the pains of copying.

Forget about students even Directors, authors, fashion designers, music composers etc. are under the cloud of plagiarism. In the cyberspace age, there’s no dearth of information, it becomes really difficult to draw the bar between getting influenced and copying. Except the actual facts, I believe if you like something irresistibly worth copying, just produce it in your words. I am sure everyone has their own set of thoughts and vocabulary and at the end, make sure you mention the source- it absolutely serves the purpose and saves you from hassles of plagiarism. After all, we learn from reading, writing and sharing but the originators should get the justified credit for their work.  🙂