BFTP: A thing not worth doing

A weekend Blue Skunk "feature" will be a revision of an old post. I'm calling this BFTP: Blast from the Past. Original post, August 4, 2007.

From "The Other Side of Plagiarism"... 

Here I am! Lil’ Debbie, a senior at Big Kahuna High. I may be a little over-committed. I’m taking a full load of college-prep courses; I’m on the varsity surfing team; I’m president of the Future Teachers of America Club; I’m class treasurer; and I do volunteer work on the weekends, including teaching Sunday school to little blind children in their native Hmong language. Oh yeah, I work at Mickey D’s a few hours a week because I have these unreasonable parents who expect me to pay for my car insurance, save for college, and even buy my own tongue studs. Plus there is this really cute guy in my AP Trig class on whom I’d sure like to get a better angle.

So I come home Thursday night at seven, tired from a rugged surfing practice session and I’ve got about 4 hours before I need to crash. I have some choices about how to use this time. Let’s see I can…

• Spend hours researching and paraphrasing to write this paper assigned by Mr. Fuddy-Duddy on the causes of the Crimean War. (Wasn’t this like way back with Vietnam and Desert Storm?)
• Work on the assignments in my other 5 classes which are way more interesting and valuable.
• Revise my lesson for FTA on “How to Say the Pledge of Allegiance in a Really, Really Heartfelt Way.”
• Give that cute guy in Trig a call to see if he can explain the difference between a sine and cosine to me.
• Fill in at work for my best friend who needs the night of to help her mother who is just came home from the hospital.

One time at lunch, my g-friends and I were discussing some websites that let a person just download term papers. Log on, search, download and reformat. On some sites I can even say how good a writer I am so the paper doesn’t look too good for my writing abilities. I’m thinking this “short cut” on Fuddy-Duddy’s paper would allow me to do some things that actually, like, have meaning and value?

I know I do a better job on things that have relevance and when I know why they are important.