In my history class today I heard something I hear in just about every class, every semester ever since grade school: Plagiarism is bad.

Don't we know this by now? I mean, really? Do we really need to be told again and again?

Well apparently we do, because people still steal each other's written work.

With the advent of the Internet, it became even easier for lazy and moral-less people to steal the written work of others, whether it be from an article or this blog entry right here. Copy & Paste helped fuel this ease of steal. And part of it is the sheer fact that students in general in the good ol' U S of A are incredibly lazy.

Why work on a paper when you can just copy and paste information right into it, sprinkle a few of your own words around it, and be on your way? Who will notice? Ahhh, but teachers haven't been left completely in the dark. They have special programs that search the web and compare results to your paper. They can find exactly where the information was stolen. Sucks for you.

But what if you copied something that wasn't on the Internet? Sure, it may be harder to track, but your teachers aren't idiots. At least, most of them aren't. They can tell that you didn't write something by the use of language or basic grammar. If you talk in class "Yo homeskillet" and hand in a paper with formal "thee's and thou's", the charade will be over as soon as that teacher reads the first sentence that doesn't seem right.

So don't do it. In fact, my history professor said that you should sell hard drugs or murder someone before even daring to plagiarize. You can be forgiven for dealing drugs and get murder taken off your record, but you can't ever live down stealing someone's work

There's something that I forget sometimes, and that is the fact that we humans are inherently error-ridden. We are faulty programs. We are Darwinian losers. Somehow we ended up on the top of the food chain when we are physically, and often mentally weak.

And it's amazing how stupid we are, really. And I'm not talking the every-now-and-then we forget something or just don't get Physics.

I'm talking about how schools across the nation are teaching the exact same curriculum every year because their students can't retain the information. Because they just don't  learn, and really don't give a crap. It's all being spoonfed to them anyway.

I'm talking about how we hear a rumor or opinion from someone, and even subconciously think what they say is true.

I'm talking about how we are so easily fooled by the true masters of the world--the lords of media and therefore mind control.

'Tis a scary time we  live in chaps.

College is hard. You've heard this before, and I've heard this before. I remember only a few years ago being in high school and hearing about how much studying I was going to need to do for college and how it was going to be such a "rude awakening" when I went from the virtually easy life of a high school senior to that hectic world of a college freshman. Guidance counselors, teachers, former students, and my parents all drilled this into me.

To my surprise, my freshman year was a breeze. It was so much easier than my senior year of high school had been with all the finals and standardized tests to determine my future. It was not, you could say, anything like I expected.

For instance, I had not been expecting to have so much free time. I had so little homework for most of the semester that I needed to find other things to do. I read a lot, so that filled up some time, and it wasn't even textbooks I was reading. They were books I actually wanted to read on my own. But still there was free time. And that's when I discovered YouTube, and the Internet proceeded to devour my soul for much of the semester until I learned some restraint.

But that's not the point. The point was that classes were not as hard as they'd previously been meant to be. Even as I got to be a sophomore, then a junior, the difficulty of my college classes never surpassed that of my Advanced Placement classes in high school, and those AP classes were meant to be preparatory for the challenges of college.

Are professors being too easy on students, or is this just some educational anomaly, or maybe is it because I decided I'd go to a public university?

 

First Blog Intro

This is clearly my first blog on Blogdrive and this clearly is not my real name, but to you I am just Demosthenes DeFacto, trying to bring enlightenment to the world by ranting and rampaging against society and the "system".

Now, this was not what I was originally thinking of writing about, but I figured for my first entry, this might be a good candidate.

I literally just signed up for Blogdrive. I thought it would be really easy: pick a blog name, I already had a username picked out, and an address for the blog. Well when they show you that nifty screen where you create your blog, the folks at Blogdrive don't make it quite so easy. Sure, sure, you expect to run into problems where someone else has picked the same name (That's why I'm DemosthenesD as opposed to Demosthenes) and your password might not be good enough,etc, etc. However, most sites have been smart enough to put in a feature that either catches these things right away, literally as your typing it, or will find all problems with all the categories as soon as you submit it, creating a list of how much you messed up.

Unfortunately, this site didn't have that technology working for them. I had to do this screen 10+ times over, just because as soon as it reprimanded me about a password and I changed it, I'd suddenly have to do the form completely over again because now it's telling me my blog name isn't good. And on and on for every choice multiple times over. It's enough to drive a guy to LiveJournal.

But I'm here to stay. Despite the sign up issues, this site looks pretty user friendly, and ironically I have a lot to say for the pluses and minuses of user friendly things in todays' society.

Simplicity Vs. Difficulty

You know how everything has instructions on it, even if they're inane and completely obvious? Like juiceboxes that have an arrow pointing to the part where the straw goes in, saying "stick straw here". I see these things everywhere, including on shampoo bottles, Easy Mac containers, and much more. What amazes me is that someone actually needs these directions. Maybe nobody ever told them to rinse, lather, repeat. Maybe they need to add "stop eventually" after that too.

Not only are directions like these talking down to consumers, but consumers are becoming more and more lazy because of them. Why think when a short phrase will tell you exactly what to do? People don't think anymore. They want everything told to them, spoon fed to them, in easy to manage idiot-proof chunks.

I personally feel we could use a little more complexity in our lives. Figuring things out--that makes us smarter! Cliff Notes make us not think, and dumb down true literature into mere summarized garbage. Discovered hidden symbolism and themes for yourself helps a great deal more than the teacher talking down to you, telling you how it goes.

That's all I have to say for now (I know I could rant onward, but I'll restrain myself). Feel free to comment and let me know there are people out there still breathing and thinking for themselves.