The week will never be over

So after a long week, it is not even close to being over. It is Thursday and a lot of people are going out. I have an essay due on Tuesday and Wednesday. It doesn’t seem that bad but it is my roommates 21^st birthday on Monday. This means I have to go out Monday night and therefore should have my paper for Tuesday and Wednesday done by Monday.

Well, we all know that not much gets done on the weekends. As a result I know I have to stay in tonight and at least start one of them. Everyone is telling me that everyone is going out and that I should. I stood my ground and decided to go to the library for a few hours and get some of my paper done. When I came back, I went down the hall to say hi to my friends. 3 out of the 5 roommates were going out when I left for the library and 4 out of the 5 were going out when I got back. I was in the room and Kelly was in sweats. She then says, “I may as well just go out” and in ten minutes she had her spandex on with a cute white top and her black boots. The other roommate, Amanda has a test on Friday, but due to all of the peer pressure, she is going out. She studied for it, but that did not stop her.

The peer pressure faced everyday causes students to make decisions that may not be the right decisions. Although she is out right now having a great time, when tomorrow rolls around…is she going to be fully prepared for her test? If the answer is no, it may result in cheating on the test.

As you know, cheating for some students is not a big deal and they do it all of them time. Getting the answer to one question on a test is only going to lead to getting a whole paper off line for complete plagiarism. Students’ get too comfortable with cheating where it becomes a second nature to them.

It would be easy for me to say I will just buy papers off line so I can go out Thursday, Friday and Saturday night and not do any work. I know that this is not the right answer and would never do such a thing. On the other hand, for a student who is in the same predicament, does not think plagiarism is a big problem, and that they will get away with it, they may do it in two clicks of a button. Off course it seems like the easier thing to do which may get you the same or a better grade, but it is not beneficial to the student who will not be gaining or learning from the experience.

St. Patricks Day Adventures

This week was full of peer pressure for me. Let’s start with Tuesday night which was also Saint Patrick’s Day. Students will go to any extreme as well as any excuse to go out and party. Whether it is a birthday or a holiday there is usually something going on. I was not planning on going out on Tuesday night. I was just going to stay in and get a good night sleep because I had to get up early to go to City View Elementary School for my observation hours. I went to the gym from 6-7 and by the time I got back…all of my friends changed their minds to go out. Fifteen minutes later, I was also going out for the night. I had to wake up at 9 which did not seem bad at the time, until the next morning. I went to school then had Ethics class at 1:30. Unfortunately, I took a nap after school at 11:30 and was not up until 2:30, I had slept through my class! I am lucky that it was not an important class to miss.

If this was a class that I would have missed a lot, I would be in trouble. This happens to students all around where they miss their classes because they don’t feel like it, can’t or get peer pressured to do it. By skipping class, it only detriments your grade and sets you back in a class. If this is a recurrence, by the time a big assignment, such as a paper is assigned, the student will be lost or confused. These are only a few causes of plagiarism. When a student misses too many classes, they become lost and when they are lost or confused what makes sense to them but to plagiarize? I would never do this but students are already tight on time and when they have to sit at their computer and write on a subject they are not knowledgeable on, it is much easier to just type their subject into Google and see what papers they can find which fit their assignment.

Back to the real world

I finally caught up on some much needed sleep. Let me tell you, if there was a college in Mexico that students went to, I am sure there would be a lot of plagiarizing. It is so gorgeous down there! People are always out and about and everyone is drinking. I was not even in school and I was peer pressured to go out to the clubs and drink all of the time. Now that I am home, I only have a weekend to do all of my work and I am peer pressured by my friends at home to go out with them because I have not seen them in a long time.

Peer pressure affects students whether they think it does or it does not. Peer pressure to someone may be to go out and party all night, but to someone else it may be to just hang out and watch a movie. Which ever one it is, the students are still avoiding their work. This pressure students have from their peers leads to the avoidance of work. In this case, students will do anything to succeed, resulting in plagiarism.

Plagiarism, I think starts at a young age, and starts with cheating. Cheating in high school seems like something everyone does. When students see the good grades they get from not doing their own work, they then want to do that for everything. I was just talking to my brother, a junior in high school, when he was doing his homework. I looked and he was copying someone’s homework. Turns out, it is an older girl’s binder who has already completed the class. He refers to this binder in order to complete his homework. My brother, Joey, is a smart kid, but he also faces a lot of peer pressure. He is never home! He is always hanging out with his friends or making something out of wood in the shed. This “little” cheating seems like it is not a big deal because he still studies and understands the material, however, if he depends on this to much, it could become a larger problem at the college level.

Exhausted!

I have been in Cancun and have not had a chance to write on my blog, so here is a quick update. I got back from Cancun about an hour ago! It is gorgeous there! I was worried about going there because of all the things going on there, but it was not dangerous at all, I loved it and had a blast. Now that I am back though, I have a lot of work to do! Obviously I am exhausted and want to sleep all day, but I am not on spring break and here comes the peer pressure when I need to do work. I got about 5 hours of sleep the whole time I was there so I am going to catch up now and I will write some more tomorrow!

So it’s Sunday night and I have not had internet all weekend! I could not connect on my computer. I think something was messed up with my cord because my roommates had it. Thank god I got it back because I have a paper due tomorrow, actually the one I am writing on about plagiarism. I interviewed a girl named Jen who did plagiarize. I thought it was interesting though because she didn’t even know she plagiarized. She was not pressured from any out side forces, she was just a freshman and unsure of the rules on exactly what to put in quotation marks. She did mention however that students, including her and me are faced with pressure everyday, especially peer pressure. She has heard of students buying papers from each other and copying and pasting things from the internet. She also mentioned that students just want to go out and drink with their friends, so they will go to any extreme to get their paper written, even if it is buying one from the internet.

I was searching on you tube and found some informative clips that I put on the right side of the page. This is my first blog so I did not really know how to do. When I went to put one of them up, 4 different ones came up. The ones that are up are actually interesting so take a look at them!