Thursday, March 23, 2006

Why Students Turn to Custom Writing Services?


Plagiarism has been condemned lately by all types of experts, including scholars, university board members and even commercial parties, such as TurnItIn, which sells plagiarism detection software righteously claiming that plagiarism should be combated through the most efficient and up to date tools. Well, if such company ever reaches its ultimate goal of eliminating plagiarism, it will go out of business, since there will be no more need for plagiarism detection.

Meanwhile, we see that everyone discussing plagiarism has certain motivation and interest to defend one point or another. Students, however, don't seem to have an interest to speak on this subject at all, or worse - they have never been asked.

I neither belong to the camp that combats plagiarism, nor to the one that defends or partially justifies it. I simply want to make the voice of college students heard with no hidden reason behind it.

My own college profile of a "straight A student" had nothing to do with any type of plagiarism that would involve direct copy/paste and serious violation of copyright law. However, now that the definition of plagiarism has evolved to such a broad extent, I can't tell for sure whether all my college assignments can be referred as 100% original and plagiarism-free.

While I was able to devote most of my time to studying (with 2 scholarships that covered almost 85% of my college expenses, and monthly checks from my parents, who had above average income and the only daughter to spend it on), I saw many of my friends struggling with their assignments, especially when it came to writing essays and developing research papers.

At that point I didn't question the meaning and purpose of my own devoted enthusiasm for education. I enjoyed the process as the end in itself, didn't have to worry about money and had all those skills and talents for being a successful student. Most of my friends, however, were different. I didn't like to hang out with the "know-it-all" crowd. I enjoyed the company of people with different backgrounds and different perspectives on life. I could learn something new from each one of them.

My friends and I were very close and we could trust each other any secret with no doubt. So, I knew they cheated on the exams occasionally and hired someone to write their term papers. However, their integrity has never been challenged in my eyes by this knowledge. I knew them well enough to tell that they had their own reasons. Were they valid enough? I can't judge that objectively, because they were my friends and I was on their side. But one thing I can tell for sure - these reasons must be heard before blaming anyone a degraded cheater.

Victim Of Social Pressure

My friend Joshua grew up in a hard-working, but relatively poor family with three other siblings, who were younger than him. [...]

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