This editorial was originally published on Feb 7, 2006.

It's amazing to me that someone can take the words from another and publish them as their own. I guess that's why sites such as essayrelief.com. And why other sites like turnitin.com have sprung up to help combat that type of behavior. Actually if you want to get a great Christmas Present for your kid's high school, get parents to raise money to subscribe to some plagiarism prevention service.

Actually a Google search on "essay help" turned up entirely too many places where you can get an essay written. Amazing how many of these tout their essays as "100% non plagiarized". I guess if you hire writers to write something, but that's a small step away from stealing someone else's work for profit or gain. It's just plain wrong to hire someone to do your work, as is starting to happen on Rent a Coder, where people are paying to get computer science assignments completed for them. There was a great Wall Street Journal article on this very topic.

And unfortunately, another article today from me on the same topic.

This is a great quote from the WSJ:

"This is a fairly simple program," wrote "Goradia" of Sammamish, Wash. "It is my homework, but since I am busy, I want someone to do this for me."

If it's so simple, just do it. It's your work, you are paying (in college) to learn, or investing in yourself in high school. Just do the work and accept the grade for your work. I cannot fathom why people do not want to earn their own accomplishments. I guess there always will be people that cheat, but it's still amazing to me.

The only things you have in life are those that you earn and the mistakes you make. Enjoy them, relish them, learn from them, accept your failures and work to do better.