As a high school student -and an honest one, you see :) there are times when I feel that the temptation to cheat is high: like when there's more than one exam in one day; the topic/subject is too difficult and the standard is too high; something important came up at the last minute and there's not enough time to study, etc.

Yeah, and maybe once or twice I failed to fight the urge (ie. I cheated!) and I immediately felt bad about it. Like in last year's midterm exam, I stumbled upon a very tricky physics question (I remember it being gravity and acceleration-something about Superman jumping off a tall building to save this woman which leads to how fast must he go before the woman falls down and get pumpkin-smashed). You know, as a very, very rational person, the first thing that came to mind was he must go as fast as his ass can. But since Physics does not qualify a sentence without equations or figures as an answer (or better yet-a sentence with the word "ass" in it), my perfect rationale wouldn't score me a point.

What I did that time was asking a senior of mine, who was sitting next to me, and happened to be in the Physics Olympiad team (she went as far as winning a national title). She only told me which formula to use, which is nothing in comparison with using crib-notes and electronic devices but is sure as hell enough to call it cheating. And I felt really, really, bad (haha I'm a terrible liar!).

But I have a bigger confession to make. Well, I don't know if it's a big deal or not since I don't know if it actually is a form of academic dishonesty or not. Often (and I mean really-really often, like most of the time, or like almost all the time), I use my previous research/writings as a reference piece for my other assignment paper. I did my biology term paper on Oxidative Stress in IDDM (Insulin-Dependent Diabetes Mellitus). And for my Indonesian assignment-it was about scientific writing, what I did was translating my own paper into Indonesian (bad, BAD girl!!). I've two reasons: One, I was too lazy to write a science paper for Indonesian-I mean what's the point? If all the teacher cared about was the syntax and grammar, why bother create an invention for that? and Two, I have always been interested in topics like Oxidative Stress and free radicals, and I thought this is what I'm best at, and if the teacher doubts it, I might give her a full-length presentation along with statistics and graphs and charts of melting polar ice-caps if she'd like.

And that's just one example. I've done it many times, and I most probably will keep doing it. I don't know if self-plagiarism is actually a form of plagiarism, I mean, duh, it's my work, and doesn't matter in what ways I put it, it still is mine, right?

I also believe that it's just a matter of intention . If you intend to deceive the teacher, then it's cheating. But if you consult about it first, and your teacher approves, I doubt it's an academic dishonesty. Right now I'm going to find out more about self-plagiarism (I don't even know if the word exists).

Oh, and speaking of plagiarism, as hypocritical as it sounds, I hate it when people copy me. Like, I don't know why every time someone bought the same pencil as mine, the Jessica Sanders-esque alter ego inside of me is dying to strangle them. And right now I am really pissed because this particular person just keeps following me wherever I "nest". I mean, I don't mind one or two blog sites, but 4? FOUR blog sites? Seriously? Well, what can I do, this person has the right to blog and rock wherever he/she wants, even if it means subsequently following ALL 3 of the previous blog sites I've been on. And that's how I got here, anyway-by followin around.Heh.




PS. I apologize for recently using too many "Heroes" reference in my articles. It's just too good to miss! Finally, have a good day and try not to plagiarize yourself, or you'll end up in court facing a lawsuit from you! Oh how thrilling.