Response to Plagiarism: a Lie of the Mind by Isserman

I think it is interesting how in “Plagarism: a Lie of the Mind” Isserman discussed the fact that everyone repeats words and recycles ideas without even realizing that they are doing it.  I also agree with the Isserman that “establishing ownership of your own words… is at the heart of the learning process.”  I think that literature needs to be re-read if a person can’t rephrase what they have read.  If you can’t tell a story in your own words then you probably don’t know the story well enough to tell it.  I think that the only place where some form of plagiarism may be appropriate is when it comes to creative writing.  I had an English class once with 8 students and the teacher told us all to pick any fiction book from the library and type three paragraphs exactly word-for-word from any page in the book.  He made a list compiling the 24 paragraphs (3 paragraphs from each person) and distributed it to everyone in the class.  The assignment was to create a short story using at least one sentence from each paragraph.  Every 3 paragraphs were from entirely different types of books.  None of the words in my short story were my own but I had spent hours arranging several sentences from 24 random paragraphs into a story that I technically created even though every sentence in the story had been copied from some other book.  No one in the class had an even remotely similar story, yet everyone technically plagiarized.  I think the point of the assignment was not to show the students that plagiarizing entire sentences from texts was appropriate, but was rather to demonstrate the “big gray area” in plagiarism that Isserman referred to in his article.  I had copied the words from other authors but the idea/voice behind the compilation of the words within the short story was original and it made it my own.  I worked so hard on it that if someone had accused me of plagiarism I would have been angry.  Isserman believes that ultimately a writer should strive to develop their own “voice” when writing a paper.  I agree.  I am proud of a paper when I finish writing it because I know that I have written it using my own words and ideas.  I think that coping phrases directly from other people’s work for any purpose other than some type of creative writing is a waste of time and is only something that will hurt a person in the end.