Keeping My Own Integrity

This story is scrubbed to protect the identity of the person involved. A long time ago in a land far far away, I plagiarized a thesis paper. A 35+ page thesis paper that received an above average grade and an advanced degree with honors. I do not have an advanced degree. Not because my plagiarism was caught. But because I committed the most absurd form of academic violation. I was the one writing the paper.

I didn’t do it for money. I didn’t do it because I had to or because I was coerced in any way. I did it because I wanted to. I did it because writing on a timeline is a skill that comes naturally to me. A person I cared about needed my help, so I helped. This paper wasn’t beyond the bounds of their capabilities. The topic was one they knew implicitly. They still had to present this paper. And so I filled the skill gap they couldn’t: churning out academic jargon.

Academia loves to believe it is preserving the integrity of its student body by espousing the idea that everyone’s work is theirs and theirs alone. All this does is enable a system in which asking for help is penalized and undercuts the fact that every single one of us needs our skill gaps filled. Finding someone to help us do the things we’re bad at is always a good idea. And it’s not like anyone is holding the faculty and staff to the same standards.

The entire academic institution is built upon abusing junior lecturers and grad assistants, forcing more work and responsibility on them without proper compensation. Professors constantly take work from the students under them without due credit. Plus, administration incentivizes professors to prove the challenge of the program and having students fail. Meanwhile, millions of dollars are being spent on technology to catch cheating students to preserve this so called integrity.

We live in a world where I can take a class to learn something, the person can fail to teach me the thing they are supposed to teach me, and I’m still supposed to pay them. Oh and they will likely tell me it’s my fault I didn’t learn it, regardless of evidence presented to the contrary. I’ll take my integrity elsewhere, thanks.

It took me 2 months of being back in academia to discover that nothing has changed. Twelve years on from the Great Recession and academics are still more interested in publishing papers than actually working to improve anything, even within their own walls. As long as you simply keep arguing about it you never have to implement any solutions, right? Oh and while you’re at it, make sure you preserve space for even the most heinous of thoughts. We certainly wouldn’t want the Nazis to think we were being intolerant of them.