Plagiarism Reflection

The plagiarism assignment was much more difficult than I had anticipated. The challenge was to write a paper on any topic and plagiarize at least 25 percent of it, but no more than 75 percent. I decided to write a plagiarized research paper on anorexia nervosa because I know a lot about the disorder and wanted to write on a topic that I was familiar with. A few of my friends and family members have struggled with anorexia and I have taken several courses in high school and college that devoted a section to eating disorders. The purpose of the paper is to inform the general audience about the prevalence, causes, health complications, and treatment of anorexia.

When our class first received the assignment, I thought that it would be easiest to plagiarize 75 percent of the essay. I found out quickly that this is not true. After I decided to write a paper on anorexia, I began to look for sources. I was frustrated to discover that several internet sites I looked at contained identical information. Then I realized that this made sense because anorexia is an illness identified by specific diagnostic criteria, symptoms, contributing factors, and health consequences. Therefore, informative sources on anorexia will contain identical and overlapping material.

I centered in on a few sources and began to write my paper. I originally thought that I would write a few paragraphs of the paper myself and then take the other 75 percent from other sources. I started copying and pasting passages from sites and placed them in my paper, but I ran into a big problem. The language that the sites used did not sound at all like my style of writing nor did the passages flow correctly in the paper. I ended up taking all of the plagiarized sections and paraphrasing them in my own words. I also wrote additional sentences inside paraphrased sections in order to emphasize points I thought were important and to make the essay more informative. I ended up removing certain plagiarized sections in my paper and wrote about the sub-topic in my own words based on knowledge I have on anorexia. This resulted in the proportion of plagiarism in my paper being a lot less than I had anticipated.


I did not feel bad ethically during this writing project because I continuously reminded myself that the assignment is to plagiarize. I know that I would never be tempted to plagiarize because the consequences are severe and I do not believe in cheating. A point that really hit home for me about plagiarism is a comment a classmate, Emily, made yesterday during class discussion. She said that she would rather stay up until 4 in the morning and write a paper in her own words then be lazy and plagiarize a paper because the 2 weeks of waiting to see if you got away with cheating would be unbearable. I could not agree more. I would number one, feel very guilty, and two, I think I would have an anxiety attack waiting to see if my professor discovered that I had plagiarized. When Scot told our class about experiences he and other colleagues have had with plagiarism, I was blown away. I cannot believe that students would really copy and paste sections in their paper without even bothering to change the font to match the rest of their paper. I also think it is outrageous that someone would take an entire essay from the internet and hand it in, does the individual really think he or she won’t get caught?

This project made me realize how difficult it is to plagiarize. This paper would have taken me a lot less time and energy if I were actually writing it rather than plagiarizing it. I spent so much time trying to make sections from sources sound like myself that it would have been much easier to just have used my knowledge on the topic and write the paper on my own.