A Personal Act of Hypocrisy - Stealing!

Ugh. I feel so disgusted in myself.

I always claim to be an honest person. I have never walked into a store and stolen an item. I can be awfully blunt when asked a question about, well, anything I know truthfully.

I also claim to dislike hypocrisy.

Unfortunately, I realize now that I have fallen into both.

I was in my masters program orientation yesterday, and the director urged us to turn to the page in our handbooks about plagiarism and other prohibited behaviors. I am accustomed to ignoring this part of introductions because I have heard it several times, all throughout each of my undergrad classes. "I don't plagiarize," I thought to myself; "I always cite my work."

However, the director than began to illustrate her point with another example: "I would guess that all of you would never walk into a store and steal a shirt off the rack. For that reason, I would also expect that none of you would download a song illegally from the Internet." She then proceeded to explain how such acts result in no money for the artists, thus discouraging the creation of any creative content in the future. She continued to explain how some of her students would write papers without citing content, some so full of the writing of others that it could hardly be called their own.

When I heard the director speaking about this, for some reason, something finally clicked. I realized that though I consider myself an honest person, there are certain things that I do that are actually rather criminal, though not violent or dangerous. I would rationalize for such actions so I would feel okay with it... "I'm too poor to afford paying for this all the time," "I don't do it all the time," "I want to try it once, that's all."

I thought about my Hubs, which I have been writing for a few years. I realized that I did the same thing with my Hubs; I would borrow a little here and there to add to my Hubs and make them better, but I actually hadn't cited them correctly. I just spent about an hour going back and fixing all of those mistakes, and I can't believe I let that go for so long.

I remember once when someone alerted me to the fact that some of my writing had been copied on someone else's blog, and I was furious! I contacted the blog's owner and demanded that they throw that person out of the system, and I left a mean comment on the page. I was particularly annoyed because the writing was a personal story of mine, and the writer had changed pronouns to make it sound like he had written it originally.

However, I see now that the case was really no different than what I had been doing to so many others. Though I would name the source, I wouldn't add a URL or any real information to indicate where exactly it came from.

I feel very disappointed in myself. From now on, I am determined to cite my work correctly (not necessarily to refrain from referencing works, because it really can add to a piece... I will just work to give them credit). I also want to work to improve myself in other areas of honesty. I am entering a Masters of Administration program, and I see that I need to step up my act and clean up my behavior. My excuse before was that I'm still young, basically a kid at 22 years old, but that doesn't mean that I shouldn't clean up my act, set an example, and be a completely good citizen.