I graduated from college in 2003 and my last two or three years were pretty easy. Once I decided to major in English, the only homework I ever had to do was read. The only questions I had to answer were in essay form. This might sound like a nightmare to some people but not me. I love to read and saw nothing wrong with spending my evening perusing the greatest works of American literature (even though the majority of it sucked). As for essays, I loved essays. I'm a bullshitter--I could easily squeeze four or five hundred words out of nothing (which any of my readers could testify to). Hell, I'm much rather answer one question in essay form than take a 100-question, multiple-choice test. With a multiple-choice test, I have a one-in-four chance of getting it right--that's a 75 percent failure rate. Multiply that by a hundred questions and it's a no-brainer: I'll take my chances on conning someone into believe I knew what I was talking about with an essay question.

That being said, I haven't had to answer many fill-in-the-blank homework assignments since probably around the year 2000. Like I said--English majors only dealt with essay questions. I didn't have to do any "name five widgets" or "list three reasons why the sun rises" questions. When you study English, you deal with theory: there is no clear right or wrong answer. Besides, once you got the hang of it and learned to incorporate buzz phrases like "it represents the loss of innocence" and "passage into womanhood" it wasn't that hard to sound like you knew what you were writing about.

This semester I've decided to better myself and take a computer class. There's only so far an English degree will take you in the IT field (nowhere) so I'm hoping to get a few certificates and convince my boss to give me a raise (and hopefully this newfound knowledge will prevent me from making the crucial mistakes I subject my coworkers to on a daily basis). So here I am--some five years after graduation--back to school. I feel like Rodney Dangerfield only without the millions...or Kurt Vonnegut to write my term papers.

One of the tools I've been using to help me with my homework is the internet. Sure, the internet was around when I went to college. But now that I'm older, I've become a much better researcher (hello Wikipedia!). When I can't find an answer for the homework assignment in my textbook, I Google the question and find the answer--all thanks to the power of the internet.

I've been working on an assignment for the better part of the weekend now and I've noticed when I type the question exactly as my teacher wrote it (word-for-word, character-for-character), quite often I find a direct match (usually on wiki.answers.com). I even managed to find some sites that have the entire homework assignment--with answers--on one single, simple page.

Since I'm taking this class for knowledge and not a letter grade, I find these sites to be useless: I'm only searching for answers if I'm stumped. But if it was five years ago and I was a college student, I'd be copying and pasting like there's no tomorrow. Why take the time to research when the answers are all right there, easy to find? College students don't have time to study--not with work, class, and drunken keggers that all warrant attention.

It must be hard to be an educator in today's information age. Cheating is so easy it's practically impossible not to cheat. Is using the internet for research cheating? What if students are finding the same exact questions their teachers are giving them (the easy way around this would have been for the teacher to devise his own assignments instead of taking questions directly out of the book...but who am I to judge)? Where is the line? What is cheating and what is research? I once wrote a term paper with entirely made up sources. That's cheating. It's also not relevant to this topic. I just felt like sharing.

It's no wonder people are dumber. Kids don't want to work hard any more in school because it's easier to not work hard. Standardize tests are dumbing down children. Teachers are teaching students how to pass the tests instead of teaching knowledge. Why take the time to research a term paper when you can copy information directly off Wikipedia? I feel for teachers--I really do. I don't know how they can combat kids who lie and cheat--especially when the answers are right there. I left college just a few years ago but the education landscape has completely changed. If I knew what I know now--if the information was out there like it is today--I might've graduated in four years instead of seven.

That statement does not reflect positively upon me.

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