Wikipedia is the main source of all my essays. Teachers say I need credible sources, but if they aren’t going to check my sources, I’m not going to do the actual work that’s being asked of me. If I spend an hour on an essay as opposed to someone who puts forth the effort asked by the teacher, and the grade difference doesn’t reflect the amount of work put into each paper, then why should I put forth the effort? Thanks to easybib.com, I can whip out a bibliography page in a few minutes with the combined help of Google. But as far as teachers are concerned, the work is there, so credit is deserved, and if they can’t tell the difference from person A to person B, or if they don’t care enough, why should I jump through more hoops than I have to?


"I took the (road) less traveled by, and that has made all the difference," is the last line of a Robert Frost poem. However, whether the difference of the path taken is good or bad, that is unknown. Some people can work really hard, doing everything step by step, word for word, letter by letter. Others will take a roundabout path, ending at the same place, but by taking the path less walked upon. Along each path, though, there are various bumps along the way. These bumps are what teach us the experience we learn for whatever we do next. The funny thing is that starting point and ending points of whatever paths we take will be the same.

Are teachers aware of the decisions the students make regarding the use of websites and overall work? Shouldn’t they be trained to realize that students won’t always work the way they want them to work? What is the issue, however, is that in today’s world, there may be no way to prevent the use of internet for one’s personal gain, where one could almost plagiarize an essay and get away with it, depending on the teacher. Perhaps what needs to change is the system that positively reinforces students to work who tackle each problem step by step, careful not to cut any corners, or skip any roads.
Every technological advance makes it that much simpler to go onto google.com, search a topic, and find more than what is needed. With more power comes more responsibility and teenagers in today’s times, in today’s world, just don’t care for it. Without restrictions, we are free to roam the internet, where enforcing policies become much less potent. Part of the issue at hand is that students are rewarded for finding such information, but this should only be the case if they can prove what they did was in fact their work. Clearly, the system has flaws.
Here I am jumping through the hoops of my English class. This paper is required to be at least two through three pages long. And with each character I type, I come closer to achieving this goal. It’s not that I don’t care to write a ‘good’ paper, on the contrary, in fact, but if by typing the words I am now, I get a better grade, by all means, that’s what I’ll do. That’s not to say the page requirement is some randomized number, in the teacher’s eyes, it’s a way to guarantee a developed essay and paper. Portraying this vision onto the student’s eyes is where difference becomes foggy. This is an everyday example of how students jump through the hoops presented to them.
In life, people don’t care about the journey they take to the end destination, but instead of the final product itself. What does it matter what path they take? But these thoughts provoke the question which is more important, the journey, or the destination? I’d much rather care about what I take away from anything I do, rather than worry what someone thinks of what I’ve done. Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter what I think of the system, the process will go on no matter what.