In under a month, I have written 20,000 words of fiction. And those are original, unlike the Harvard liar who copied others' work.
A while ago, I was in a writing group, and some of the members criticized me for not reading fiction while writing fiction. I told them that I don't want to be influenced by someone else's style or words, and I still believe that. I want to get my cues from experiences and conversations and other people's lives, not what authors publish.
I'm sure I'm not alone in being disgusted that the publisher was too lazy to check that teenager's work to make sure it was truly her own. And of course, the rest of us are out here working earnestly and diligently to create original words, but the PIC (Publishing Industrial Complex) could care less.
Another example of L.I.F. (Life Isn't Fair)
2 comments:
Harvard plagiarism isn't new. In fact, it's an old sad story with plenty of chapters in it.
It's still disgusting, though. Absolutely disgusting.
You know I'm always railing about campus culture. Yep, while campuses now often produce slogan-spouting protestbots who don't really engage their brains, and campus also often produces whiny people who feel entitled to success (boy howdy, these are the folks who get a rude awakening when they show up in my class! muhahahahaha -- but I digress). In a way it's not so surprising that the desire for success without work produces plagiarism even on the most elite campuses.
And no, I am unmoved by various "explanations" about how much "stress" people face or how much "pressure" there is to succeed. Cheating is cheating. Period. I work hard and honestly. I expect other people to work hard and honestly. Is this such an old-fashioned idea?
Harvard students are supposedly the smartest in the world, so they can do their work relatively easily, so why do they plagiarize?
That's one of the reasons why I don't like teaching--the games the students play, the inherent lack of respect they have, which makes the job feel degrading.
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