My Thoughts on Plagiarism

I have recently read a couple of articles about plagiarism and thought that I could talk about what I think about said articles for my own self-interest. The first article was Jonathan Malesic’s “How Dumb Do They Think We Are?” which was about their perspective on how wrong it was for their students to plagiarize. It was somewhat interesting to read this article but I was a little appalled by how Malesic would use words such as “twerp” or “lazy” or “afraid” to describe their students. This article would go on to talk about how the way that these students were plagiarizing was to easy to notice and that they should have put in effort to cover their tracks better but also brings up the point that this effort could have been used to actually do their own writing. Then the last bits of the article brings up the idea that plagiarism should be reason enough for “punishing” students who “refuses to be educated.”

The next article that I read was Susan Blum’s “Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism: a Question of Education, not Ethics,” which talked about how plagiarism should be treated as “breaking a rule” for students. In order to prevent more students from plagiarizing, this article presents a method of enforcing a set of principle upon students to ensure that they understand how wrong it is to plagiarize. This method attempts to make plagiarism seem like something horrendous to do so that students would be more honest about their work. If this method was successful then a student would understand to appreciate their education and value doing honest work as much as their professor would be to receive it. That about sums up these two articles about plagiarism.

After reading both of these articles, I began to think that both of their approaches towards plagiarism was not something I can agree with. In Jonathan Malesic’s “How Dumb Do They Think We Are?” I couldn’t stand how the author of this article was ignoring the idea of trying to understand their students’ reasons for plagiarizing and didn’t even try to bring up the issue within them in their class. Then there is Susan Blum’s “Academic Integrity and Student Plagiarism: a Question of Education, not Ethics,” which overexaggerates the issue with plagiarism and even attempts to make it a “sin” that their students could commit. I just think that plagiarism is just a common occurrence which can’t be prevented indefinitely, the best thing anyone can do is approach the student or students who done the deed so that a solution can be brought up through communication instead of presumptions.

My Thoughts on William Zinsser's "Writing About People: The Interview"

After reading a certain chapter called “Writing About People: The Interview” from one of William Zinsser’s books, I began to look for some advice on interviewing people throughout the content of this chapter. The first piece of advice would be to “Learn to ask questions that will elicit answers about what is most interesting or vivid in their lives.” That kind of advice can be very helpful for gathering useful information for an interview that would attract the attention of people reading or watching said interview. Then there is the next tip on writing interviews which is that “Often you will be talking to people who have never been interviewed before, and they will warm to the process awkwardly, self-consciously, perhaps not giving you anything you can use.” This quote can be more useful as a tip than as a warning since it is highly likely that if you’re conducting an interview with any person then they would probably have little to no experience with being interviewed. With that said, here is the last bit of advice that I found  which is “Taking notes, however, has one big problem: the person you’re interviewing often starts talking faster than you can write.” My thoughts on this advice is that it’s true, I personally had issues with writing down notes based on what a professor was saying during one of their lectures. Throughout the entirety of this specific William Zinsser chapter, I learned that these three pieces of advice on interviewing hold some good value for conducting a successful interview.

College Assignemnt: Random Interview

1. What kind of writing do you do in your everyday life?

Response: I just write whatever school work I have.

2.What’s the best thing you’ve ever written?

Response: I wrote a essay about Pokemon once, the actual assignment was suppose to be writing about a bear and a horse, and I still got a “A”.

3.Non-Identifying Picture:

          This is the information I gathered for an in-class assignment of randomly interviewing someone from my college. It was quite the unexpected task that was given on that day but I still managed to complete it without much problem. There was some things I wanted to reflect on about this assignment. The first being that I the person I interviewed wasn’t expecting that I would asked them such a request, though this is understandable since it came up at a random time. This created a sort of awkward air of atmosphere as I interview them which felt unpleasant. Then there is the next thing I wanted to think upon which is that their responses were quite unique, I would've expected them to create some sort of bold face lie to make themselves appear better but they just told the truth. I guess that means I have a lack of trust in others to tell the truth but I am glad to know that there are people willing to share an honest answer. That’s about all I had to reflect on for this entry.

My Thoughs on "Writing Family History and Memoir" from William Zinsser's "On Writing Well"

         After reading a certain chapter of William Zinsser’s “On Writing Well,” I began to think about how bringing together ideas that seem to have little to no significance can create something great. The chapter that I read was “Writing Family History and Memoir,” which had some interesting advice written in it such as “If you still remember them it’s because they contain a universal truth that your readers will recognize from their own life.” That quote seemed pretty reasonable to me since if the writer and reader can recognize the meaning behind a certain action or event then it has to be worth writing about. Then there is this quote, “The small stories that still stuck in your memory have a resonance of their own. Trust Them.” This quote would be supporting the previously stated quote as there has to be a reason for anyone to remember certain details about their life, whether it’s obvious to see the meaning behind it or not.
         The next quote I want to talk about from this chapter is this, “my final advice is - again - think small.” What I interpret from this quote is that to “think small” is to not focus on large or extravagant pieces of writing that would capture the reader’s attention at a glance but to bring together small details to greater something with a larger meaning behind it. To trust in your own ability to put significance into the collective whole of smaller event is pretty amazing to me.

My Thoughts on Two Chapters from "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott's

After reading a few chapters of Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” I felt like I should write a reflection on the content of those chapters. The first of the two chapters I read was “Perfectionism,” which is basically about how trying to be perfect is actually harming a person’s ability to do anything such as writing since mistakes need to be made in order to improve. That chapter strongly believes that this idea of being perfect should be forgotten as it stated, “the bottom is that if you want to write, you get to, but you probably won’t be able to get very far if you don’t start trying to get over your perfectionism.” This idea represented by the chapter is something I can agree with as a person needs to learn from their failures in order to avoid making the same mistakes in the next attempt. Without that experience of failure, then no one would be able to improve themselves or even have the desire to seek improvement. There is this quote that supports this idea which states, “we need to make mistakes in order to find out who we are and why we are here - and, by extension, what we’re supposed to be writing.”

Then there is the next chapter which is titled “Looking Around,” which is about developing a more open mind when it comes to writing. From what I understand, this chapter goes into great detail about how writers should avoid being narrow minded or they run the risk of their writing lacking any interest for others to read. An example of this comes from the chapter as stated, “all the images of violence and chaos and danger that cops represent.” This quote shows how some people associate cops with the idea of being violent or dangerous, probably due to some news articles about cop violence. In any case, the chapter attempts to tell the reader that they should be stuff such as stereotypes or narrow mindedness when it comes to writing.

Both of these chapters from Anne Lamott’s “Bird by Bird,” talked about ways to improve a person’s writing ability which I believe can actually help some people improve.