(Good ol' Mr. Bean helping himself in exam hall)
- "Gonna submit the assignment on paper or in word file?"
- "Yah, I was thinking that too." I took a pause. "Remember in 1st semester only you and I got a low score..."
- "Yes, we two were the only ones to turn in our assignments as word files..."
- "Yah, not doing that this time..."
- "...Me neither"
In this doomed era of Covid, we have two ways to submit our assignments in BHU. First is actually writing the assignment in A4 papers, scanning them, making a pdf file of it (less than 3Mb mind you, someone sent a 3.2Mb file and got a warning from our professor), and then sending the pdf file to our professors via email. The second way is by just writing a word file of the assignment and sending it to the professor via email.
Now the second way is definitely easier, because of a little thing...you know...Ctrl C + Crtl V off the internet. Have to write the character sketch of Darcy from Pride or Prejudice? Uff I wonder how a fully explained summary from Cliffnotes' website will not be of my use! Crtl C Crtl V, and a little modification here and there. Changing a few things like "Mr. Darcy is a very haughty person at the start of the novel" (Cliffnotes version) to "At the start of the novel, Mr. Darcy is portrayed to be a person of very haughty nature." (My version). See! Just change the sentence a bit and change the order of information a bit and you are good to go. But as stated before, this process is lazy too, I mean even if a get full marks for some assignments like that, will it be a justified full marks? Surely not. Doing assignments this way is as good as those "the proof is trivial and hence is left to the reader" quotations found on maths textbooks. I used to look at those proofs, ('hmm yes yes surely side A of the triangle is congruent to the side B of the other triangle...yes yes...') nod my head a couple of times and then turn the page saying 'whatever, it ez what it ez ¯\_(ツ)_/¯'. I did something, understood nothing, and moved on. That's how it feels, to me, doing assignments the second way.
But do I do assignments the first way because it is the 'morally correct way'? Pfft of course not, I do it because I don't want my professor to think I am a lazy student. Is that the 'right reason' for me to do the assignment in the 'morally correct way'? Idk ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. But speaking of morally correct things, I remember one time in class 10 asking one of my social science project partners if it was being morally right to plagiarise things off the internet on our project about the Indian Constitution. I remember him turning slowly to me and saying 'Dude, the Indian Constitution itself is plagiarised from different countries' constitutions. I asked "Really?". He remarked "you haven't read anything about the project have you?" and then proceeded to explain how the Indian constitution had borrowed a ton of references from Britain, Ireland, USA, etc's constitutions. I know this is a side story, but I just get flashbacks of this incident whenever I press Crtl+C on any website's text.
I might sound ungrateful that I feel I am having to write assignments on paper than taking the easy route, but actually, that's not the case. Whenever I start writing an assignment on paper, I start thinking how lucky I am to just sit in the comfort of my own house, eat mom's prepared lunch, enjoy my own space while writing this assignment (plus I also get the pleasure of actually writing something new rather than just copying off the internet mindlessly. I like to think and write on my own too you know). I always imagined how jealous our juniors will be when college finally opens and they have to do full-day class, eat mess's tasteless food, and do assignments at night only to rush back to college the next day. But you know what? That view changed one day. I actually realized how more lucky our juniors will be.
I was thinking about all these assignments and plagiarism when one day I called one of my friends from a different college and came to know that he straight up submitted an unchecked assignment file of his senior because the senior had submitted all his assignments in the same pdf file format like we did, but was having the hard copy of the assignments, i.e. the actual assignments pages with him. So this friend of mine straight up submitted those pages. I asked him isn't he worried that he will be caught for plagiarism? His answer? "I don't even think the professor checks our assignments bro, he just gives marks based on attendance. You just have to submit a pile of paper with your name on it and it will count as an assignment to him." The dirty truth be told, this probably is true, he won't be caught for plagiarism, because for catching a thief the police at least have to start reading case files isn't it? But this also popped open another question in my mind? I too have my hard copies of my assignments with me, so will some junior the next year ask for my papers and straight up submit them? Here I am worrying about plagiarising off the internet, and someone else is straight up recycling assignments.
Strange world. Isn't it?
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