Getting Recognized

I realized as I was sitting in class that to be recognized in this society is very hard. Being recognized as in having a group of friends, or even a general group as far as I'm concerned. I'm not saying that everybody has to be recognized to some great degree, I'm just saying that everyone ought to have their fair share of attention.

Through my experience with blogging, I have worked hard to gain the followers that I have today. Although my numbers are modest compared to some other blogs that I have come across, I believe that for the past year and a half that I have truly come to blogging, the writing world is not as gentle as meets the eye.

There was this one incident that I found out that my work was being copied. This discovery pissed me off more than you can imagine. This other writer, who I will not name, said that this English assignment was all his. I was infuriated at this gross injustice. What angered me even more was how petty this fight was.

I was doing a research paper on the differences in philosophies between Locke and Hobbes. These two philosophers have always captured my imagination. Their works, their ideas, my political science future in college would be all about them. Back in freshman year in my World History class, we had this research project where we chose a philosopher and wrote a paper about them. I was so excited about this project that I very nearly went nuts. I mean, the very idea of having this for a research project was.. I have no word for it.

But to make things simple, I was writing pretty much from light to dark. It was a project that I was extremely passionate about. But this college student ruined it all for me. I received an e-mail from his professor saying that he was caught pretty much in the act. When I read "his" paper, it was pretty much word for word what I wrote.

From what I saw, he was a law student, in college, and in his late 20's. He was supposed to be mature and all that, but what he did was too base to even contemplate. Why is there a college student copying work from someone in high school?

But something that I learned from this: I was at least recognized enough for someone to get my work. Although this is totally not the way that I wanted my work to be admired, it was at least a start. It had at least shown up in a web search. I guess that really got me going to a writing career, because that was a start. Now I have my work copyrighted, which really is a reassurance to me.