Acknowledging yourself

By David Auerbach

For a few months in high school, I was deathly frightened of being caught plagiarizing--then I realized I had the wrong definition of the word. I had thought plagiarism was the act of producing something that didn't contain your own ideas, when in actuality, it was merely "the failure to provide proper acknowledgment of your use of another's work."

You can imagine how relieved I was. I had been working myself into a frenzy trying to produce something startlingly bizarre and original with every paper I wrote, and suddenly I discovered that I had been overexerting myself. The only crime was in not citing; beyond that, little was expected of me, or even desired, since the inchoate ideas of a youngster couldn't really compare to the sources I was quoting.

So my papers became obsessively documented composites of other books, so meticulously detailed that footnotes often rose up to take over entire pages. And I did get better grades. But my new approach took some of the fun out of papers. While I became adept in the art of synthesis, I didn't feel as close to my papers as I had when they were dominated by my own quirks and fixations, rather than by other works. And I felt a little guilty about putting my name on selective reproductions of other texts. But it got me into college.

One of my favorite quotes from freshman year came from the mouth of a Directed Studies professor, who spake thus to a student: "Too much emphasis is placed on originality. It would be fine if you just reiterated my lecture in your paper." So much for guilt; and so much for pride.

I imagine that this professor did not intend his comments to apply to everyone, so I'll assume he was speaking to students. It's fair to say that at our nascent collegiate state, our ideas are still ill-formed and ill-expressed. But really, is there any need to quash them in favor of skillful but mindless echolalia until we become embittered old cynics (or investment bankers)? Speaking from experience, I say no.

Of course, originality still exists. Books like Julian Jaynes' loony (but great) Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind gave me hope. This 1976 book seems to owe nothing to anyone as it spins out its bizarre theory that consciousness has only existed for 3,000 years. Whether wrong or right, sane or insane, Jaynes' book was something new.

Perhaps Jaynes, a Princeton psychology professor, earned the right to fly off the handle after a long career of scholastic orthodoxy. Perhaps you eventually earn the right to be original. But I doubt any student could have gotten away with writing Jaynes' book, especially since it doesn't have any footnotes. For another passé example, take Camille Paglia: she had to virtually beat up several people at Yale University Press to get her, uh, interesting Sexual Personae published.

Ideally, college trains the mind, but too many professors prefer imitation to innovation. The former is easier to judge, for sure. But while it may eventually foster critical thinking out of endless rephrasing, it inevitably crushes those who are alienated from the prevailing ideas, turning them away in favor of some kind of academic equivalent of yes-men.

It also degrades the students. When I was accused of plagiarism at the end of my freshman year, it wasn't because the professor had seen my ideas somewhere else--it was because the paper was too good. In other words, my paper was of too high a quality to have come from a student like myself. And since my paper lacked footnotes (being, as it was, my own ideas), it did come under the heading of plagiarism.

It's a sad state when quality is greeted with disbelief rather than encouragement, even more so when you're paying a good deal of cash for this encouragement. But I suppose it's worth it if you eventually earn the privilege to be original and to be taken seriously. I myself don't have the patience, but I wish the rest of you luck.

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