During the class discussion on Wednesday, I was extremely afraid for my life... Or my grade. I kept thinking of how the posts that I had made could have been poorly paraphrased, and therefore plagiarized. I had watched the movie I was giving the synopsis for, and referred online to make sure I didn't miss any important things worth mentioning, but I was afraid that what I was doing could be bad looking back on it. As for the blame, of course it goes to me, but I can blame other things too. First of all, I agree with the classes discussion on improper learning of plagiarism in schools, CSU especially. Even in CO150, the extent of plagiarism discussed was, "don't do it, you'll get expelled." I had no idea that a poorly paraphrased section could be plagiarism, even if you cite the source. I knew that copy/pasting was a huge no-no, but I was definitely not doing that.
The blame can also be passed on to the inexperience with the assignment. I have never written for or about Wikipedia because most of my teachers and professors scared me away from those kinds of websites. The format was very strange, and the only real reference I had to build on was Wikipedia itself. So, of course, while looking at Wikipedia for format suggestions, I read what it had to say. Although I didn't plagiarize the page, it was still difficult, and I can see why the class struggled with this.
I am very happy, however, that the entire class is not going to fail this assignment. Although it was rough at parts, and scary on Wednesday, I enjoyed the assignment.
