Chowrangi

While I was pursing my degree in Pakistan I was perplexed at people’s thought of going abroad and acquiring education there. I had a certain degree of comfort about sense of security and recognition that one’s home country could give a person. So hence thought about leaving one’s country never occurred to me despite constant turmoil and disorder that was prevalent. Maybe at that instance my thoughts and visions were a manifestation of my unbounded love and patriotism for the country which had given me my identity. However once I ventured outside the country by means of an opportunity to study I came to realize merits and value of foreign education.

Whilst I was studying in Pakistan I had a continuous realization that our country was gripped and plagued with little deficiencies that were sort of ruining and derailing the bigger picture. I was saddened by nature of academic studies within colleges. The criteria to measure and gauge student performance were not significantly viable and effective in terms of global quality benchmarks. The notion which persisted around various circle of students was about obtaining a degree rather than learning and knowledge, which are key attributes and in fact prerequisites, which determine why student intend to acquire a degree. A great deal of stress and emphasis was devoted to copy and pasting material which was grabbed from the internet. So as a result papers and reports which were formed didn’t reveal quality and knowledge of the student rather it was fabrication if one has to put it more bluntly. Moreover even teachers in implicitly recognizing prevalence of such practices ignored it completely and took no steps to adhere to the problem. This thus gave leeway to students and encouraged them to pursue with unfair practices.

When I went to study abroad I was astounded by amount of emphasis that collages there give towards acts of plagiarism. Unfair practices are widely ridiculed and students are encouraged to adopt stringent and comprehensive methods to avoid plagiarism. I vividly remember level of stress which was placed on acts of plagiarism in my induction sessions where booklets were distributed regarding means to avoid plagiarism. On the surface it seemed easy to do task but when we got down to writing papers I realized the degree of attention and devotion it required. However going through such a tedious and tiresome job tuned me towards seeking out different materials with respect to a particular paper. This consequently enhanced and substantiated quality of papers I wrote. Apart from that with each paper scope of my knowledge and learning was raised considerably. Moreover my motivation and inspiration to indulge in such minute intricacies was significantly boosted by value and feedback which I got with each paper I wrote. This allowed me to understand value of a thoroughly researched and fully referenced paper hence, I came to realize how fallible and weak our system is which discourages learning and reduces scope of challenges that could inspire and motivate students to achieve higher standards. What we require today is some cleansing of these practices which, persists in our academic system so that podium of knowledge and learning is revived.

Other posts by Ahmed Hasan

• Gaza - January 16th, 2009
• Fighter Planes and Media Plotters - December 24th, 2008
• Obama: A Messiah ? - November 12th, 2008
• Pathway of Light called Noori - June 13th, 2006
• Tears - May 31st, 2006
• Mystery Ball called Doosra - May 3rd, 2006
• Frozen - May 3rd, 2006
• Plea of your Soul - April 30th, 2006
• Thirst - April 30th, 2006
• Quantified world - April 28th, 2006