Cheating and plagiarism for my religion class Essay

The movie we watched was very interesting. I felt like I could definitely relate to most of the situations they brought up. In particular, the point about how you felt the need to cheat nowadays to keep up with the cheaters. Their information was very accurate and it really gives you a look into what life is like as a student. When watching it I really felt like what they were saying was pro-cheater. The only problem with the movie was the give a lot of great reasons why there is such a high percentage of cheaters out there, but the never offered any ways to fix the problem. Then the movie switched to the problem of plagiarism. They addressed the issue and showed some of the difficulties of trying to detect it. They then went into the only way of detecting it and how to avoid detection. Afterward they showed an example of a class and how bad plagiarism has gotten. Still they never offered any way to solve the problem. I really enjoyed the movie we watched in class it was very interesting. Through out the movie I felt could relate to the students telling their experiences. For example, one girl talked about how she feels the need to cheat to keep up with all the other cheaters out there. From my experience, I have tried studying long hours for tests and then going in the next day, taking the test and then having the person next to me cheat and get a higher grade. I myself cheat because nowadays it is all about grades and getting into the best colleges and getting the highest grade point average (g.p.a.), and with out a good g.p.a., you cannot get into a good college. So to get into a good college and get a good paying job some people are willing to do what ever it takes and to keep up with them we have to do the same things. Through out the movie I got the sense that they were taking a pro-cheater standpoint. I noticed that they really didn’t show you anyone who got anywhere in life by not cheating and so I got the feeling that they wanted us to walk away with better knowledge and methodologies on how to cheat. By the end of the movie, I really felt like cheating was no longer a bad thing and in fact it had actually become almost necessary to succeed in life and everyone is doing it. They also gave only examples of people who cheat all the time and easily get away with it. Once again, they never offered any solution to the problem. Next, they talked about plagiarism. They did an experiment with a World History class and had the kids write a paper on their favorite explorer. Then the teacher took all the papers and used the one tool out there that can check for plagiarism, turnitin.com. She submitted all the papers to this website and got them back with all the plagiarized portion of each students paper underlined. When she got the papers back, more than half the papers were plagiarized and some only had a few original sentences. It just goes to show how big of a problem plagiarism is these days. Then they said that the website only detects plagiarism if eight of the words are an exact match so to avoid detection all you have to do is change every eighth word and to be on the safe side you could play around with that number. Even though the movie never offered any way of solving either problem, they still informed you of the problem. I really enjoyed the movie. I left wanting to cheat and plagiarize. In the movie, they talked about a person who would write papers for you for $25 a page. Though I don’t know anyone that would do that for me, if I did, after watching the movie, I probably would have enlisted for his help. However, I don’t know anyone who would so I guarantee that this paper is completely original.