To future incoming ECE student,
Electrical and Computer Engineering is one of the challenging major. Throughout the college career, you will stand at the crossroads of unethical and ethical situation in your education career life. I have been there and done that, and I could give you guys some advises when you facing that situation. Before I start, I want you know the brief definition of Purdue’s academic dishonesty. Purdue prohibits "dishonesty in connection with any University activity. Cheating, plagiarism, or knowingly furnishing false information to the University are examples of dishonesty." Keep this in mind throughout the college career life.
When subjects get hard and you have many things to do on time, you will be tempting to copy one of your friend’s homework or find solution online because you can’t finish all of them on time. This is one of unethical action. And please justify yourself that is ok for one time. Copying someone’s work could help you just for the grade, but your life is not just for the grade. You may feel safe that you submitted whatever you copied from other student but this is just short-term solution not for your long term career. Most of the Purdue ECE courses are offering Professor/TA office hour and you will take advantages of these help session. The most important thing in the Purdue career is you need to learn and must understand the subject you are taking. When you get to the upper level classes like Senior design course, you will be assign to team project based on what you have been learning. If you keep copying from someone or online and did not fully understand the subjects, then I guarantee you won’t be able to do your project. This could result not just bad grade, it affects your teammates and they also get bad result because of you. Team project is working as team. If you can’t contribute, you are not part of the team and it is also considered as unethical. You must do your own work with amount of time and fully understand what you are doing.
In conclusion, when students choose to unethical action, they won’t get better result in the future. When you have your job interview, company will ask some technical question to know how much you understand your career. If you can’t answer it, your chance will be blow off. And every company will ask you same question. I know it is hard and takes many hours to do ECE career. But if you suffer these difficulties now so that you can understand and learn, then your future will be much better and easier. Please manage your time well and be ethical to be successful ECE student!
