I am not a good writer, I have to admit the reality. How my colleagues pen stories stretching from some five to fifteen pages surprises me. I at times think that though I invested some four decades in writing profession yet I remained duffer and became a matter of joke amongst my own colleagues.

But one intimate friend of mine gave me recently some tips on how to become a good writer. He also provided me with some important clues on how to stretch my articles and force the readers to highly rate my stories.

Upon listening to his mysterious clues, I jumped practically from my seat for the clues were hilarious ones. For a modest person like me, his clues or say tips were both dangerous and frightening for me. I concluded that his tips were of no use to me. But the friend since was an intimate one encouraged me to go by his theory which were tentatively a sort of plagiarism which I have had heard but never practiced.

But since I was told to write a paper on “Globalization and Nepal-The media Perspective” by a close friend who has tentatively become now a seminarian and thus I have had to go by the suggestions made by my first friend who had provided me some tips on how to pen articles and prepare seminar paper within no time.

In effect the tips he provided me was just to pick up one or two paragraph authored by Mr. A and then add some ten fifteen lines from the article penned by Mr. B and conclude with the addition of some twenty five lines from what had been written by Mr. C.

Thus the paper, according to my tip-providing friend, was ready and all that it awaited for smart reading on the fateful day of the seminar on the said topic.

By this time, I had acquired the miracles of the Google search engine. So what I did was to search articles on the topic on which I was told to compile a seminar paper.

I entered the Google. Searched globalization and luckily a nice article by one world class scholar were in my front on the computer.

I very cleverly copied the third and the fourth paragraph from this world class scholar. How clever I am? Picked not the first paragraph for fear of being exposed?

Later, I found yet another interesting article authored by some one called Mr. Healthy. His article was so appealing that I even did not care as to on what topic he had penned this particular article? Since the piece was interesting, so I picked up some good five paragraphs.

With two such different paragraphs in my possession, I felt bit consoled hoping that my presentation at the seminar venue will shake and thrill the very intelligent brains of Kathmandu valley. The attending participants will applaud my paper and the very presentation skill as well.

Thus all that I have had to do, finally, was to find such a similar topic on the Google engine. Luckily, I found one and needless to say I copied few more paragraphs from Mr. Unhealthy’s article. The article was so interesting that I even did not see on which Mr. Unhealthy’s write up was based. It was perhaps this article that exposed me on the seminar day, I presume.

This is my habit that whenever I am very happy, I forget every thing. I even forget that there were some do’s and don’ts in the domain of my profession to which I must remain ever sincere.

Thus the seminar paper was ready. The seminar date approached. I checked and rechecked. I found nothing wrong in my paper and expected that the participants will encourage me to further write papers on different topics time permitting.

The seminar day was 1st of April. I presented my paper. However, contrary to my expectations, some questioned me, well Mr. Upadhyaya! Your article is on globalization or privatization? I was flabbergasted. I easily conclude that I was wrong. One energetic youth even told me that I had copied the entire paper from Google search engine. Yet another college going student that I had talked on “decentralization” but not on the topic “globalization”.

So what went wrong with my paper?

Later I found that while copying, I was having some paragraphs for privatization instead of globalization-the given topic of the seminar. In the process, I even copied some paragraphs from the article on decentralization. Fortunately, I did not copy some paragraphs on “nuclearisation”.

My excessive smartness instantly branded me as a brilliant copier. I am told that some top-class university professors and the ones who prefer being taken as more than scholars too have a habit of copying articles from some search engines to which they add few lines from their own part and thus present themselves as number one academics.

Comments (2)

Well,I think it is more effective for our leatest political leaders who is cutting his/her charecter and paste other ideas from foriegn eagles to themseves.

Commented by sahadev chaudhary - November 4, 2009 @ 1:54 AM

Though the google matters are pretty tempting to copy and we have developed a habit in doing so but some of the contents provide fresh points to dig in. I am too preparing to write a seminar paper. Can u suggest me the better way so that i dont end up a joker and a hardisk :-)

Commented by Sanjeev Psaini - September 27, 2009 @ 8:21 AM

Post Your Comment

* Name
* E-Mail
*
* Security code
* Comment