Plagiarism and academic integrity are fundamental issues as a college student. I distinctly remember the night after freshman orientation in college waking from a nightmare that I had accidentally mis-cited a source and was banned from every school in the country. While the drama of my dream was a bit extreme, the value of writing with academic integrity is of the utmost importance. When we write, we are using tools that have been learned through other author’s countless hours of research, study and hard work. We must always give credit where it is due for the facts and opinions of others. I have always felt that my greatest accomplishment as a student would be creating unique and original work that would reflect my heart as a writer and would impart wisdom to others. The research we use every week to develop our own research topics were written by those who feel the same and to steal the ideas of another person makes our own contribution cheap and false. Give credit where it is due, cite sources, even just one sentence from one article, if it was written by someone else, it belongs to someone else and they deserve that credit. In doing so, you stay authentic and honest, and your writing will display your own character.