Okay, frosh (and other fine engineering students of this prestigious institution): it is time to wake up. It is your first lecture, the professor is babbling on about boring stuff, and you’re slowly falling asleep. Your midterm is worth 30% of your mark and the final is worth 60%, but there’s more: that last, seemingly insignificant 10% comes from assignments.
Upon hearing this, most students think one of two things: “why bother with the assignments when they’re worth so little?” or, more likely, “what an easy 10%! I will just steal the answers from the class genius”, (or from other sources that shall remain nameless for the purpose of this publication). The professor is still rambling on and then suddenly he or she says academic offenses will not be tolerated. Students suspected of these offenses will be dealt with in accordance with university policy… OUCH! You don’t really want to get caught now, do you?
Besides the usual I-would-really-rather-not-get-kicked-out-of-university, there are other reasons not to copy, seize or otherwise acquire the answers to these assignments illegally. For starters, 10% is just not all that much. It often happens that you will end up having more than one assignment; you may have four for example. That works out to 2.5% per assignment. It seems kind of ridiculous to risk getting booted out for 2.5%. If you really don’t have time, for your own sanity and for the sake of saving time, just don’t do it!
Allow me to rephrase that. Do the assignment so you have some sort of idea of what may (or may not) appear on the midterm or final, even if you do not make the due date. More importantly however, you will (if you have not already) realize that not understanding concepts before an evaluation puts you at quite the disadvantage come exam time. It may take some time to drill in this point, but the reality is that understanding comes from doing work. We can therefore equate understanding with doing those assignments, which then leads us to the inevitable conclusion: cheating on assignments benefits neither you, nor your mark. No matter how good you may be at math, 2.5% will never equal 60%.
So there you have it. Like it or not, cheating (or plagiarism, take your pick) is bad. It is bad for you, it is bad for your mark, and it probably has other negative side effects. You really ought to consult your physician (ie: your brain) before trying it.
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