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!

Just booked my trip to Cancun!

I do not have much work this week which is good because I won’t have to worry about getting my work done and socializing. I do however; have three papers due on Monday which I need to get a start on. I did just book a trip to Cancun though for spring break! My friends from home wanted to go and needed an answer because we wanted to book before the price went up. After some peer pressure and thinking, I booked it! This did however push any work I should have been working on back. I did not get much of anything done tonight! I did some interviews for my class about plagiarism. They were very interesting, one of the girls I interviewed was caught plagiarizing and had to sign a form with the dean, but as far as that no one knows about it and it will be out of her file in five years. Not a big punishment for plagiarizing huh? She didn’t copy or take somebody’s work but she unintentionally copied a few quotes from the book her class was reading. She did it unintentionally but believes students face peer pressure every day especially on the weekends when they are pressured to go out, drink and party every weekend. She also believes that students do it to ease their way out which is definitely true but it seems as if that would be involved with peer pressure in that they want to get it done as quickly and as efficiently as they can with out doing all of the work. It makes sense especially being in a college environment and if they can get away with it. I personally believe it is wrong and would never do it but I see it all of the time.

What a long day!

Today is a long day; I have been in classes since 10:00 and am just getting back to my room at 530. I had a big test at 10, which i hope i did ok on. I still have a gym class, step and strength at 6 tonight. Peer pressure in my life recently has not been too bad. I had my magazine writing class 230-345 then decided to go straight to the libarary to get some reading done. I knew if i went back to my room, my roomate would be there and people from the hall would be comming in and out of my room distracting me, as they are now. Cait just came down the hall saying what are you doing, come down to our room and hang! Ashley, my roommate knows I get out of class at 3:45. At 3:53 I get a text saying where you are, get back here and hang! That is tempting especially when I had class all day! If I had been at the library for a while I probably would have gotten out of there in a blink of an eye but I just got there so I put my phone on silent until I finished reading. The book I am reading for class is very interesting, I like it a lot it is just time consuming with all of the other work I have. If there was spark notes, I am not going to lie, I would most likely be using them. However, I also have to write a paper about this book. Hopefully there is not too much peer pressure, in about 2 weeks when it is due. If there is, I will be in deep trouble. The rest of the week is not too bad with work, but we will see who's going to peer pressure me into going out this week!

another 21st birthday!

Tonight is Thursday and the 21st birthdays are not stopping! It is Cassie's birthday tonight but I really shouldn't go out. I have a lot of homework and also am supposed to go to Rachel's Challenge tonight to support my friend Ryan who is running it. I was debating what to because Cassie and all of her friends wanted me to go. Well I decided not to go out for her birthday despite all of the pressure. I get peer pressured really easily so I am surprised and happy with my choice. Instead of getting work done however, I went to the Rachel's Challenge. It was actually a really good presentation. It was at Wachusett High School where a speaker came to discuss Rachel Joy Scott's death from Columbine High School. Ryan really wanted us to go so I went with my friends. It was a really good program and am glad that I decided to go to that and not go out. Rachel’s Challenge is very interesting and the speaker talked about all of the coincidences in her life. For example Rachel wrote in her journal that she wanted to start a chain reaction to better the community and make a better influence on everybody’s life. This is ironic because today she is doing so through the speeches her family and friends are giving today. She also had a feeling that she was going to die young and was the nicest person in the school. She somehow wanted to and knew she was going to make a difference in the world, which she is. It is a very moving presentation but definitely worth seeing! Now that I am back, I don’t want to but I know I have to do some work. It is now 11:00 and my friends have been in here all night chatting so I haven't gotten much work done. I want to get work done tonight because I know there will be a lot of peer pressure tomorrow and the rest of the weekend where I will not be able to complete my work, or at least to the best of my ability. I have a lot of work coming up next weekend between reading 162 pages in a novel and my first big test in my Education class. I hope I can sneak some work in with out being peer pressured to not do it! I am going to get some reading done before bed and hopefully some more tomorrow!

skip class?

Today is is Jenny's actual birthday. She is skipping all of her classes and the other girls do not have classes on friday besides Ashley and I. We are both in ethics from 1:30-2:20. We were starving and wanted to go to the diner. Jenny and the other girls were telling me to skip class, and that it is just one skip, no big deal. We'll I have an assignment due so i knew i had to go. Ashley was saying we should just pass in our assignment and leave but i did not really want to do that. Although they wanted us to skip, we went and were going to play it by year if we were going to leave early. We ended up sitting through the whole 50 minute of class becuase he did not collect our assignments until the end. It was very boring. If i was to skip class, i could have missed something big, such as an assignment. It could have been something as simple as write a paragraph, but if i was not in class to do the reading, plagiariasm could be a possibility where i look up a summary of the reading and write a paragraph based on that summary, mabey even take some sentences. Although I would do the reading, and write my own paragraph, plagiarism could come of this assignment If someone was not in class. So anyway, I went to class, took some notes then we went to the diner and my sandwhich was delicious!