Plagiarism

I, Ryan Nutt, promise never to plagiarize on my papers.  Why won’t I?  Well, first of all, it’s wrong ethically, and therefore will get me in a lot of trouble.  When you plagiarize, you’re in effect stealing another person’s ideas.  Stealing is against the law and it’s immoral, and so is plagiarism.  Can you go to jail for plagiarism?  I don’t believe so.  However, the consequences are quite grim and serious in the academic world, often leading to failure.  Not plagiarizing is important for reasons other than failing in an academic setting.  Personally, not plagiarizing shows that I have integrity as a learner.  Even more, not plagiarizing means that as a learner, I have an opportunity to take in information and make judgements about it and then creatively and insightfully provide it back in my writing.  This is an important part of learning – coming up with your own ideas from information you’ve come across instead of simply taking someone else’s ideas and saying they’re your own.  So in the end, while plagiarizing is ethically unacceptable, the reasons for not plagiarizing go beyond the basic ethical arguments to personal ones.