Who Wants To Be A Lazy Bum Essay, Research Paper

From New York City, its Who Wants to be a Millionaire. On tonight s show, we have ten contestants from around America who are trying to get rich quick. They don t care about hard work and strong values — they just want to become America s newest success story, with as little effort as is possible.

Admittedly, if Regis Philbin started the show out like this, it could lose it s effect, but it s true, people do not want to do work in order to achieve success.

The way of life today should be called Who Wants to be a Lazy Bum.

It seems that people today just don t want to put forth the effort necessary to earn their own success. As the Sheryl Crow once said, All [they] want to do is have some fun.

In today s increasingly competitive business and social climate, almost everyone has been tempted at one time or another to cut a corner here or there in order to speed things up or make a greater profit. So really,

what s the harm? I mean, everyone wants some spare time and who wouldn t want a little more money for a little less work? Well, by trying to continually cut corners or get rich quick, we, as a society, have begun to hurt

ourselves. Let s take a look at how our shortcuts affect everyone. First, how taking the fast track can compromise our integrity through cheating or lying. Then we need to look at how we have forgotten work ethics, and third how taking shortcuts can hurt or even inhibit our creativity and originality.

First, in the world today, emphasis is placed on a person s net worth rather than moral values. One survey found that people when people were asked who they would like to be, they were more likely to choose Bill Gates over the Pope. Now we can t blame it on the fact that some people just look bad in big white hats. In actualiy, many want to have success at whatever the cost, including lying and cheating.

Let s look at this scenario:

Suppose you were rambling around the Internet and stumbled across a web site devoted to the works of William Shakespeare. Maybe you d think this was the obscure hangout of professors exchanging ideas.

Well you d be wrong. You would find typical yet tightly wound college students — burdened with homework, pressed for time — cheating their hearts out with ingenious amorality on schoolsucks.com.

SAVE MY LIFE!!!! one student screams across the yawning void of cyberspace, his pathetic plea posted on an electronic bulletin board. Send me a 2,000 word essay on character analysis in Shakespeare s Hamlet now!!! I WILL DO ANYTHING FOR IT.

And somebody does respond, offering a report on Hamlet that they assembled a semester earlier. The students dissappear into the privacy of e-mail, leaving onlookers only to wonder what sort of transaction was

taking place in the name of a passing grade.

Obviously Shakespeare s sentiment to thine ownself be true just doesn t apply to the college student. According to Michael Josephson, founder of an institute for teaching ethics, 63% of college-goers cheat on tests

or term papers.

Using the internet to conjure up the evening s homework isn t a novel thing to do anymore. To some students, it isn t even cheating. With sites like schoolsucks.com it has simply evolved into an institution, a pillar

of education, and an endless archive of cut and paste essay components. You could call it cooperative learning – students trying to WWW dot their way out of an assignment.

One student named Mike Holmes, who attended Clarkson University, says the key to passing off a pieced- together term paper is concocting a bogus but authoritative-sounding bibliography. He said, The Romans copied from the Greeks, so why shouldn t we copy from the geeks? Everybody does it . . . A couple of clicks and that was it.

Sacrificing one s integrity for a grade is hardly worth it. Sadly, in our society people decide that what matters is that I get ahead, that I win, or that I get an A+. What we forget is the rules that we live by are what

constitute as a society. These rules are what enable us to live together. If winning is all that matters, whether in politics, business, or education, then we begin to lost that glue.

We live in a country where values are placed not on how hard we work but how quickly we get it done. In the words of one-time president Ronald Reagan, It s true hard work never killed anybody, but I figure why take the chance?

Which brings me to my next point, our work ethics.

Every now and then the newspaper has happy headlines about the story of a man who walks into a 711, buys a winning lottery ticket, and collects $100 million. It s a story people will talk about all day long, imagining

aloud how it would feel to be in that lucky guy s Nikes. I ve actually worn out the dazzling daydream myself — buying red Mercedes, jetting off to Spain for the holiday. Never mind I ve never bought a single lottery ticket.

Statistically, my chances of winning are almost as good without actually playing.

Still, getting rich quick is the new American dream. Not getting by, or being solvent, or making a sufficient living. Not going to work day after day at a job with good benefits for a company that will stay until you retire. But getting rich quickly.

Years ago there was in fact a certain taint to quick money, a belief that no good could come from something you hadn t earned. We heard our parents say: If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is. And though at times, we certainly hope there is a way around the long haul, deep down we need to realize making a decent living was accomplished on the daily installment plan.

And while you were chowing down the Cheetos, watching an episode of Oprah, Cliff Notes in one hand, remote in the other, you may have felt pretty luck. You actually may have been hurting yourself.

If we aren t taking the time to do our own work, we aren t experiencing going through the stages of planning, brainstorming, and revision. That means that we aren t experiencing creative thought or putting original ideas into use.

Creativity, like learning, is a natural process. To learn is to change and to change is to create. All these three concepts are inter-related and inter-linked. So if you think that you can go through life being a lazy bum,

living your dream life in your parents house, you won t be learning too much. And if you aren t learning, you aren t changing. And if you re not changing, you re not creating.

Being creative doesn t necessarily mean being on par with Picasso or Mozart or that tactful extemper when he or she pulls the topic – Bioengineering DNA and how it affects Elian Gonzalez. The ability to improvise

and adapt to change is really all creativity is. And that is something we all need. In a world in which jobs, home lives, social conditions and even the physical environment are rapidly changing, being able to adapt and find

creative solutions is becoming a vital survival skill.

It seems that at times people see only the finish as what is important. When really the finish is only part of the whole journey — and it is the voyage that makes the person.

So who wants to be a lazy bum? We don t need a lifeline for this one. Ethics, perseverance, and integrity are all we need for true happiness and success. And that is my final answer.