Photo: Morguefile
Yes. We should collaborate. I’ll help you out. We should have an academic discussion about the assignment in in groups. You glance through your group members and evaluate each of them as to how well they normally do in academic contexts. Are they A+? C’s?
And then comes the filtering of your best bets. Give a little, take a lot. Put out a point that they would most likely figure out themselves anyway, and then hope to get something from them that you hadn’t thought of.
You should give most to the A’s and not as much to the C’s, cause they can’t give the same back. The A’s are most likely to give you a point, you hadn’t thought of yourself.
But don’t say it out loud.
We know we all do it. If we found the jackpot answer, we don’t tell. We don’t share. We give away some other points. We just don’t say it, because it seems incredibly selfish in a way that is tabooed in today’s society.
We care about our fellow students or coworkers, and of course we want to share so we can all do well, cause that’ll give the best result for everybody in the end. But deep down we have this fear, that they will steal our thunder. Who doesn’t want to be the one dropping the gold at the meeting with the boss? Or getting and extra plus on the A for finding the crucial point in an academic assignment?
In school we learn that it s a mortal sin to cheat, so we have to guard our good work and not let others copy from it. We carry a heritage from the school system of trying to be the best individual. Even if we’re helping another student, we’re evaluated on what we produce, and only that.
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of sharing and discussing and getting everybody to the best results. But I’m not a fan of people who don’t bring anything to the table, but instead walk home with a full notepad and almost get to copy whatever you had in mind to do. And it’s a taboo to wanna do better than others. It’s a mortal sin to be selfish.
We’ll have to move from an information hoarding culture to an information sharing culture.
Listen: It’s mine.
tabooyah 