I despise plagiarism in academic papers!

7,809 characters2005.11.22

There are two reasons for writing this blog post. First, someone said that I had put some papers and such on my blog, which was not very good; second, someone suggested borrowing a paper from me to read, in order to help his classmate write a paper.

I’m not afraid of plagiarism for the papers I post on my blog—if you want to plagiarize, then go ahead. If this paper is not very well written, then—obviously, my writing level a couple of years from now should still improve, and the paper you plagiarize can only ever reach my past level; if this paper is written extremely well, then I’m even less afraid of you plagiarizing it, because you won’t be able to handle it. Even if you use my paper to muddle through and get a GPA, you still won’t be able to handle my paper: if you haven’t read those books, if you haven’t thought about those questions, how can you handle my paper? … Am I flattering myself here? I don’t think so. I’m only putting down the people who plagiarize my papers. Since you are so low as to come to me looking for a paper to copy, your level can’t possibly be very high, and I’m sure you are incapable of handling my paper!

But if a friend comes to borrow a paper from me, I absolutely won’t lend it, because he’s a friend, and I don’t want to look down on my friends—so I won’t lend it. As for where he goes to borrow it afterward, I don’t care; out of sight, out of mind. If I can’t see it, then I won’t look down on it either. Let me add two clarifications: first, when I say “look down on,” I mean it seriously, not as a joke with bs, b4, and the like; second, what I look down on is the act of plagiarism, and never the person. Many of my friends plagiarize papers too; as long as it doesn’t happen to me, I’ll just turn a blind eye. It’s nothing. In fact, I myself cannot guarantee that I will never plagiarize a paper. When writing English compositions or party-mass analysis reports, I’ve also copied a few paragraphs in small print… This probably counts as a kind of plagiarism too. I still look down on it, only much less so than plagiarism in academic papers; so my self-contempt is correspondingly lighter as well. Because this is merely one of my personal scruples, not my principle. As for my principle, as far as I can count right now, there is only one, and I have said what it is.

Compared with the people around me, I put the most effort into writing papers. Even when I say, “This paper can only be muddled through!” I still end up spending at least a whole week from beginning to end writing it. In terms of writing efficiency, I am obviously at the bottom; as for paper quality, I’m probably middle of the pack; but in terms of writing attitude, I am surely worthy of first place!

（The following passage is excerpted from something I wrote earlier）We have only just entered university, so our academic level is naturally quite superficial. We certainly cannot compare with professionals in terms of paper quality, but the attitude toward writing is always firmly in our own hands! I personally have one belief I hold to firmly—my beliefs are not many): “Every piece of writing I produce is something I can put out proudly, something I will not feel ashamed to take out and look at again ten or twenty years later.” When I once chatted with friends about this sentence, I unfortunately got teased a little (it still rankles~~), but I believe that after careful reflection everyone will certainly not find it laughable. The phrase “still not ashamed when taken out years later” does not mean that what you write must be profound to some certain degree—people are not ashamed of the naïveté of childhood, but if you have a hypocritical past, that is what will make you feel ashamed for life. For us at this stage, what matters in writing papers is not seeking “depth,” but seeking “truth.” You take a bit from the east, clip a bit from the west, then splice it together seamlessly, hand it in, get a high grade, and muddle through; it looks as if you have benefited. But you have stolen someone else’s labor, toyed with the teacher, deceived yourself—that is a combination of theft, robbery, deception, insult, vanity, and so on. Your hypocrisy and shamelessness are forever stamped onto your paper in black and white. That paper will serve your whole life as evidence of your once-base conduct! Perhaps my words are a bit harsh. I also know that the phenomenon of plagiarizing and fooling around with papers is almost everywhere, and that most classmates around me may have done it more or less, intentionally or out of helplessness. But I do not want to say a single word of understanding for you because of that. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy; shamelessness is shamelessness. One must bear the consequences of what one does. If you have plagiarized and muddled through a paper, then keep it in mind as a lifelong shame—but do not add to it any further. Words spoken may still be hoped to blow away with the wind, but words written down are hard to erase. Be careful! Be cautious!

What matters in writing papers is not “technique,” but “attitude.” Don’t sigh that you can’t write papers or can’t write them well—so long as you put your heart into it, it’s a good essay!

Speaking of technique, let me end with a few off-topic remarks: I really do not want to be called some so-called technical talent anymore. In my first year, I did typesetting, fixed webpages, and did these odds-and-ends; that was only as it should be. Of course, being assigned those tasks now is also as it should be. But everyone seems only to praise me for “good technical skills” and then assign me those tasks. Do you really think my technical skills are that great? I never received any systematic training in computers; my so-called technical ability is entirely something I played my way into. As for typesetting, webpages, and so on, I only know how to use clumsy methods. Though I do play around with these things somewhat more skillfully than others, it really does not require much extra technique. As long as one is willing to do it, many people can do it better than I can. Yet I have always been treated as a technical worker, as if only I had the technical ability to do it and others could not, so I had to be assigned the job. After I finish, apart from my technical side, my other qualities—say, aesthetic sense and so on—are still ridiculed by others. So is it just because of my technical skills that I am reluctantly assigned the task? But I know myself: my technical skills really are not that great. I only know clumsy methods—laborious and thankless. So why must I go out of my way to be “thankful”? If I really wanted to fix up that website, I should be able to do it too. It wouldn’t have required much technical skill to begin with. But why should I labor for nothing and grope my way around? If I do it well, people say I have technical skill, but then they will surely ridicule me in matters of aesthetics and the like. If I do it badly, then I make even more of a fool of myself. If the hardship I paid is not recognized, that can be tolerated, but if people still think it was only because of my technical ability that I had no choice but to do it, then I did it badly but only I have the technical ability, and you are helpless, I am helpless, everyone is helpless—what is the point of that? My computer skills were entirely “played” into existence. Either play with complete freedom, or occasionally toss in a little surprise or bonus to make it fun. Since it isn’t fun—if something isn’t fun, it certainly won’t be done well. Making websites isn’t fun anymore, and laying out newspapers isn’t fun either, hehe—so why keep grinding away thanklessly while everyone remains helpless? I am not a bodhisattva. Although I probably have some Confucian and Buddhist temperament, I’d say I’m a bit like Xu Ziling, and in my bones there is even more of a Daoist flavor. There is some carefree and mischievous temperament in me, and I do not like self-sacrificing service that is laborious and unappreciated. So at the beginning of this semester I wanted to withdraw from my previous technical work, so as not to let others only remember me as “good at technical stuff” and forget the question of attitude. Indeed, I have been forgotten. My abilities apart from technology are genuinely very easy to overlook. I was the editor-in-chief of this Gongqingyuan, and I had to take the initiative to get it myself; the two sides pushed me back and forth, and still no one thought of me. If I hadn’t actively asked for it, I’m afraid I would have just faded out of the department’s organizations in some baffling automatic way. I worked hard for a year; even if there was no merit, I at least earned some hard work. And from the very beginning, I very much wanted to do Gongqingyuan. When I first came in, the first thing I applied for was the editorial department; as for the publicity department, that was only a side hook. In the end, probably no one remembers how I felt then, and of course no one ever asked me what I wanted. I say all this not to blame anyone, but because I feel that there is something wrong with my own performance: the more prominently technical strengths are displayed, the easier it is for people to overlook many other things—that is also a problem modern society faces.