Citations
Something that I have not had to do for many years is provide references. Nor citations. Nor footnotes. No need to explain where I have read something before. I admit most people avoid that sort of situation if only because they do not realize how important it can be in the world of academics. I was watching a video earlier where they were talking about plagiarism. And the first goal of preventing such activity is to provide references for where you got the material. The kind of thing that keeps libraries alive. I was a person who read all the time and so anytime that I was required to finish that activity in writing in paper was always a head scratcher. Where have they come across that particular nugget. The gold that makes suck up academia. Not always easy. You learn to put down your references as you go because to do them after the fact is painful. And have parity you do not always realize that what you are presenting as a fact was given to you in proper form by an author. In school we are trained to do citations and then avoid the activity as much as possible until we are forced into a corner. Think about it. When was the last time you had to take a book off the shelf and write down all the information that would allow someone else to find the book for their research. We get away from that sort of thing as quickly as we can. The number of teachers who stand in front of a class and give out hours and hours of information with no requirement to tell the students where originally came from is mind blowing. We still require the discipline from those who rise up the chain but for the average educator is one of those skills that they also learned to ignore.
