Plagiarism and Procrastination. Are They Related?
If you happened to have stumbled upon this website and ended up on this article, you are probably a first year composition student. We know it can be a little overwhelming with transitioning from high school to college, but we promise you it’s not going to be easy. That’s if, you decide to procrastinate on your essays. Don’t worry, we’ve all been there, it’s college and you have to make mistakes in order to learn from them. Remember, there’s no time to waste. Know that if you do decide to procrastinate on your essays, then you might get the urge to plagiarize. And that my friend is some illegal business that you do not want to get involved with. So knowing this, what we wanted to know is how does procrastination lead to plagiarism?
We Choose To Procrastinate
Many of us go through certain stages of procrastination. We’re students as well, obviously, so even we’ve gone through procrastination several times. We promise ourselves we won’t procrastinate, but we end up suffering the consequences in the end. From our personal experiences we’ve come up with a list of our own stages of procrastination that we go through. Perhaps most of you fellow students may relate to these six stages.
Stages of Procrastination:
We start off the day the assignment is given. We see that the due date is a good amount of time from now, so we feel secure. We think to ourselves, “I have plenty of time! And then we decide postpone the assignment to a later time.
Next stage, is complete laziness. We see that the assignment isn't due for a while, but we’re bored one day and think, “Should I start writing my essay early?”. After not even a minute of thinking about it, what do we say to ourselves? “Nah I’ll do it later”, and take a nap or binge watch Netflix.
Then when you do decide to start writing a bit, you start making excuses. You’re either too busy, too sleepy or too bored. You will do anything to just put off working on your assignment. If you’re like us, you’ll even start doing the dishes or clean the house just to feel productive rather than thinking you were procrastinating.
After this, you enter the denial phase. You’re still telling yourself that you have time, even though the essay is due in less than four days (Give or take a few). You’re lowkey worrying, but still decide to procrastinate.
Then you realize you are completely screwed the night before it’s due. You pull an all nighter and stress to the max while you hurry to write that essay. You promise yourself you will never ever procrastinate ever again and you swear it.
You turn in whatever you finished and repeat all of the above for next essay
The thing about procrastination, it’s a vicious cycle that keeps on repeating. Unless you are a strong enough to stop it from happening. Why do we procrastinate? If we know it’s the not best decision to make, why do we still do it? Through previous investigation found in the article “I’ll Do It Tomorrow, The Logic of Procrastination”, Zarick and Stonebraker said that researchers would often consider procrastination to be more of a personality trait, but later found “that what might appear to be irrational on the surface can be a predictable behavior” (211). So yes, we procrastinate. We weren’t born procrastinators. We chose to be procrastinators. Hell, we procrastinated while writing this article.
Though we do consider ourselves to be procrastinators and stress endlessly over it, there have been cases where researchers have been trying to look at procrastinating on a more positive level. Cao describes it as a relation to “intrinsic motivation”, or the performance of a behavior because you enjoy the activity itself (41). Basically, meaning you procrastinate because you find it to be rewarding. The problem is, from both of our experiences, when we procrastinate we feel overwhelmed, overly stressed and often times anxious. We don’t know about you, but if crying yourself to sleep because you have a six page essay due tomorrow sounds satisfying, we suggest you rethink your life choices. It was reported that students became less bored and more engaged when they procrastinated and they found that they had more time for other activities (obviously), had more concentration and found it to be more challenging when they did procrastinate (Cao 41). It makes sense, right? Procrastinating does give you more time on your hands but it certainly does not make it more “challenging” nor does it make us both feel focused. In fact, we feel pressured and decide to just bullshit the hell out of it because we honestly have no hope that we will finish a somewhat decent-going-for-a-B-but-settling-for-a-C type of paper. At the end, we will surprisingly end up with that B or C when we all know we deserve a D (most of the time an F) because we all probably Googled most of it or got it straight from our sources.
Who Plagiarizes?
Many students turn to Google last minute to copy and paste any information they can find. This is called plagiarism .Why is this considered plagiarism, you may ask? Plagiarism is the act of taking another person’s work, writing, song, or even idea, stealing it and passing it off as your own (Fish and Hura 35). In other words you are basically cheating yourself out of the situation. If anyone says they have never cheated they are probably lying. We’ve all done it. Carter, an author of the University of Chicago Press in 1929, explains “that the main motive for cheating is [...] done primarily by the students who feel that in doing so they are just defending themselves against an unfair educational system” (354). It’s a thought we’ve all encountered when we are given a difficult task. We whine that it’s “too much” or that “we won’t even use this in our daily life”. Many also believe that it makes us sound more intelligent, therefore standing out to our professor and getting a good grade. Now, plagiarism isn’t a federal crime, but as mentioned before it is illegal.
We Plagiarize. Do you?
Clariana, does this research between a university in Spain where she tried to find out if procrastination and cheating, in general, go hand in hand. Her studies show that procrastination decreases as the girls transition from secondary school (In other words, high school) and cheating seems to increase. The results given are that they do go together (Clariana, 750). We’re not from Spain, nor does our school only include females. Her studies didn’t specify how procrastination led to them cheating. We want to know about how procrastination leads plagiarism specifically in FYC students’ writing. What is causing us to plagiarize?
We believe that plagiarism is somewhat caused by procrastination. We want to know if there is any real connection between the two. The reason why we believe this is because we know how difficult it is to write an essay or even start one to that matter. So we end up putting it off until the last minute. As students, with plenty of other classes to worry about, we set aside these projects and by the time we know it, it’s due tomorrow. What do we end up doing? We plagiarize, even though we don’t realize that we are doing it. In fact, many students are aware of plagiarism being a problem “and they generally attribute the high rate of incident [of plagiarism] to strangers rather than themselves” (Fish and Hura 33) It’s true, why would anyone blame themselves? No one will admit to their faults but plagiarism is still a serious issue. Procrastination is a tricky with essays, rather than other types of work because it affects you the most with writing it tends to decrease the quality of your work and it can kick you out of school.
To put our hypothesis to the test, we decided to ask two very different people to write an essay for us. Both first year composition students. Both 18 years of age. Both attending the University of Rio Grande Valley. One female and the other male. From what we know from these students, one is known to procrastinate, while the other manages time wisely. We wanted to see if the quality was affected by whether they waited last minute to complete it or not. If they showed obvious signs of plagiarism, we predict they procrastinated. We think that the person that doesn’t procrastinate will have a higher quality paper, than the person who waited until the last minute. Meaning the one who did procrastinate decided to just fill their essay with quotes directly from their sources to finish or just showed no effort whatsoever.
The Experiment
We had two of our fellow UTRGV students write a one and a half to two page essay about global warming, including two secondary sources. We were a bit behind on this assignment so we gave them a week to complete it. Unfortunately, that week was the week UTRGV had Spring Break, so we knew it would suck to complete an essay for no reason on vacation week. Although doing an essay during Spring Break seems like a drag, we had two lovely volunteers agree to help us out. We gave the essay assignment and the due date to both participants on the same day.
Participants:
Meet Berny:
Like any other college student, he loves watching some good old Netflix. Unlike most, he knows when it’s time to get back to work. He is very disciplined and doesn’t like having work pending, so he likes to finish his work as quickly as possible.
Below you will see Berny’ paper on global warming we asked him to write for us. (You guys don’t have to read it).
Meet Karla:
She’s hardworking, positive and enjoys watching the Vampire Diaries. She’s a busy bee, but can be forgetful as well. Matters aside, Karla did admit to me that writing the essay was more difficult than she thought. She had to squeeze a time to work on it which she admits wasn’t enough.
Below you will see Karla’s paper on global warming we asked her to write for us. (Again, you don’t have to read it)
After reading each essay thoroughly, we noticed very slight differences on both papers, some good and some not so great.
Citation:
Below we see Berny’s essay (You don’t have to read it), but we do want you to look at what we have highlighted. What’s highlighted shows Berny’s use of quotes and sources. He clearly gives both Mooney, Bradford and even George R. R. Martin credit and it is easily shown on his citation page, which he included.
Below we see Karla’s essay. We notice that she put quotes, but unlike Berny, she didn’t give credit to anyone nor did she put a citation page. She ended up plagiarizing, which is a big no.
The Results
The male participant, Berny, turned in his paper before the due date. He wrote about a page and a half, and like we asked used at least two sources. Karla on the other hand, our hypothesis is steadily being proven. By the looks of Berny’s paper, he included a citation page where he proved where he had found his sources. Karla’s paper does have quotes embedded in her paper but there is no credit being given. Despite minor grammar mistakes, Berny’s paper shows a significant amount of effort as to his style of writing. Karla gives some good points and shares her experience with global warming, which is something Berny didn’t include.
Below we have a chunk of Berny’s where he writes about what global warming is happening in everyday life, but unlike Karla, he doesn’t express his own experiences he has faced with global warming.
Below we have Karla’s paper where we‘ve highlighted the areas where she expresses her own experiences and gives examples as to how we can can prevent global warming.
Both essays can use something from each other, but Karla’s paper gives us a sign of plagiarism being used.
Now is procrastination linked to this? Karla did send in her paper a little past the due date. Which makes us believe that she forgot about the paper and just rushed to turn something in, causing her to forget to cite which can be looked upon as plagiarism. We all procrastinate and we all know that when we do, we do whatever it takes just to finish it. We leave minor mistakes, just like Karla did when she didn’t give credit to her sources. This little mistake could get in her in some serious trouble. And friend, it can ruin your college career. So pay attention to what you’re doing. Most importantly, don’t choose to leave it last minute.
Now What?
So what we want you guys to remember is that, you shouldn’t wait until the last minute to write your essays. The quality will not be the same, and you will probably end up plagiarizing. So to make your life procrastination/plagiarism free, we have created a list of tips to help you guys in the future.
Tips to STOP Procrastination:
Don’t lie to yourself: Stop telling yourself you’ll start your essay later, because we all know you won’t.
Take breaks and break down your work: Go ahead, treat yourself. Be sure to put an alarm to remind you to get back to work. You can do it in sections. Write the intro, take a break, write the next paragraph, take a break, and so on.
Get organized: Make an agenda or planner to make time for work. Fill in the deadlines to each assignment. We always assume we have more time than we really do, that is until we actually see it on a planner.
Don’t make it easy to procrastinate: Exit out all the distracting tabs, like Facebook, Netflix, YouTube, etc. (you know which to exit out). Turn off all social media and electronics to help you concentrate better.
Don’t overthink: Stop making everything complicated and start working on it. The more you overthink the more time you’ll waste procrastinating.
Just do it: One way or another you’re gonna have to end up doing it, so why not do it calmly with time.
Tips to Prevent Plagiarism:
Highlight quotes that are interesting or stand out the most to you.
Make sure to give credit where credit is due. Cite, paraphrase, splice, quote, pretty much anything that gives credit to the rightful people.
Cite it in as soon as you write it in your paper so you don’t forget.
If you’re not sure about your citation, you can always ask your professor to check if you are. Most professors are willing to help you out. Not all just want to fail you.
These tips have helped us out many times before. At first we thought to ourselves that there was no way we were gonna write more than 5 pages for this, let alone 16, but we stopped over thinking and having a negative attitude toward it. Before we knew it we were done right on time. We took as many breaks as we could and they really helped, because it didn’t let all the writing overwhelm us. We hope these tips can be helpful for your next college years, whether it’s an English paper or any type of essay. Like we said, minor mistakes can lead to big consequences so remember to cite correctly and don’t wait until the last minute. It’s always helpful to revise or ask a friend or professor to proofread your essay. Universities provide many helpful resources around campus to help students with any help they might need. Need help finding sources? Click here to go to the UTRGV Library Database. Depending on what it is you are looking for, there are many useful databases to chose from to find your sources. So take advantage! Better to be safe than sorry.
Works Cited
Cao, Li. “Differences in Procrastinations and Motivation Between Undergraduate And Graduate Students.” Journal of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning 12.2 (2012): 39-64. ERIC. Web. 8 Mar. 2016
Clariana, Merce, et al. “Procrastination And Cheating From Secondary School To University.” Electronic Journal Of Research In Educational Psychology 10.2 (2012): 737-754. ERIC. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
Fish, Reva, and Gerri Hura. "Students' Perceptions Of Plagiarism." Journal Of The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning 13.5 (2013): 33-45. ERIC. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
Roig, Miguel, and Lauren DeTommaso. “Are College Cheating And Plagiarism Related To Academic Procrastination?.” Psychological Reports 77.2 (1995): 691. Academic Search Complete. Web. 9 Mar. 2016.
Zarick, Lisa M., and Robert Stonebraker. "I'll Do It Tomorrow: The Logic Of Procrastination." College Teaching 57.4 (2009): 211-215. ERIC. Web. 20 Mar. 2016.
