I remember the first time I deliberately plagiarized a paper for school. In the pre-Internet 5th grade I copied word for word out of the World Book Encyclopedia and turned it in as a report on Abraham Lincoln. I did not get caught and I have felt guilty ever since.

Looking back (way back), I think the reason I copied the content instead of doing the creative work myself is because the subject was just flat out boring. I had Lincoln overload. "Teach me about something I don't already know...already," I thought.

When I did it, I KNEW it was wrong. See, "back then" we had a larger sense of social conscience. Wrong was wrong, not "if you get caught it's wrong."

My daughter is a full time college student. We spend many hours a week on the phone together "doing homework" and writing papers together. I listen and make suggestions and my daughter researches until her keyboard fingers are numb. When the paper is finished we run it through the "plagiarism checker" online.