Business 101

Ever since we began learning about professional responsibility in class, I have begun to realize how often we have to understand and stick to our values. We deal with professional responsibility dilemmas everyday, some are meaningless but some change your ideas and opinions of people and rules. This past week I had an experience like this, with a friend of mine from high school.

Last weekend, my friend who I went to high school but was a year younger than me, came over to my house when I went home. Since I hadn’t seen him in about a month I was excited to hang out with him. As we were talking about how our semesters had been going, he asked if I could give him a paper I wrote last year for the same class he is taking this year. When he asked, two core values of mine immediately came into play: integrity and loyalty. I didn’t want to let my friend down, or let him get a bad grade. But I didn’t want to cheat or have him cheat either. I was torn between my two main values. The rules that were in play were plagiarism, obviously the rule where cheating is illegal, and he could be suspended from his sport until his grade improves.

The conversation sounded like this:

My friend: “Did you write a literary criticism paper last year for Mrs. XX?”

Me: “Yeah I did, why?”

My friend: “Could I please, please print a copy of it? I had two midterms this week and the AP History essay that was 20% of our grade.”

Me: “Um, I don’t know. I don’t think I should. We will get caught for plagiarism.”

My friend: “But we don’t even have to turn it into Turnitin.com and if I don’t get a good grade on this I will be failing the class and can’t play in the final home game of the year this weekend!”

Me: “I’ll let you look over mine and see how I set it all up but you can’t copy it straight, because she held onto everyone’s hardcopy last year so she may be able to compare them and see you cheated. Then you will be out for the rest of the season if you get caught...