How To Plagiarize In College And Get Away With It
By Terran Tout
Before you start accusing me of all sorts of horrible things, let me just say that I was a nursing major in college, and there is absolutely no way I would have graduated if I tried to pull this off. But I went to college, and I have plenty of friends who were able to do this successfully (and sometimes not so successfully). I don’t condone this behavior, but if you’re going to try and BS your way through school, you might as well not suck at it.
Get to know your professor.
There are some professors you can bullshit and others you can’t, and it’s up to you to figure that out. How many classes do they teach? Do they have children? Is this a full-time or part-time job position? All of these factors (and many more) can help you determine how thorough of a grader your professor is. Some will check the validity of every source you cite, others will just be glad you met the minimum requirement.
Be a good student.
If you want to bullshit your professor by doing half-assed work, then you have to be a good student in all other respects. Go to class, ask questions, take notes, sit near the front, and be respectful. If you’re seen as a trustworthy and kind individual, you’re far less likely to spark red flags when you turn in a bogus assignment.
Don’t plagiarize your first paper.
You have to get a feel for how your professor is going to grade your work and the other students in the class. How much effort did you put in and what grade did you receive for it? Did everyone get an A on this assignment, or a select few? Once you have an idea of how difficult the assignments are, you can gauge your bullshit meter from there.
If you can, pick a popular subject.
The more information you can find on a subject, the better. You want to make it really hard to find any incriminating evidence.
Do your research.
The people who get busted plagiarizing are the ones that copy information word for word. Don’t be that person, because you will get caught and you’ll look like an idiot (and likely fail the class). I hate to break it to you, but in order to do this right, you actually have to do some work.
Most colleges have databases for research articles, studies and journals. Get to know this database because it will become your best friend.
Find a few reputable articles within the dates required (most professors will require research that is only a few years old). We’ll call these A resources. Once you’ve found the A resources, go straight to that article’s citations. This is where you find all the research that has already been done on the subject. We’ll call these B resources. Because they’re older, these articles can usually be found with a Google search or within the database you’re already using.
Most of the time, these B resources are too old to cite for your project, but they still have information that’s relevant, otherwise they wouldn’t have been used to write the A articles.
Once you’ve located these B resources, you can pull straight from them. Just find the information you need and re-word it a little. The most important part of this process is citing the information from resource B with resource A. As long as you have a citation somewhere within the paragraph of information, you should be safe.
Use your brain.
Plagiarizing is a stupid thing to do. Reserve these tactics for classes you don’t care about to begin with, or for when you really did completely forget about the assignment and you’re totally screwed otherwise. This is a gamble, and the more often you play with fire, the more likely you are to get burned.