Plagiarism was a severe offense in all universities. Any student who was caught with plagiarized work had to be put on immediate suspension pending investigation. It was almost as if we were getting trained to become perfectionists in academic work. This placed pressure on us, and most of us looked for various ways to deal with it. Some students spent money buying alcohol and other drugs to numb their pains. Others indulged in compulsive social events, whereby every weekend would find them attending one party or the other. The suspensions made us take our paper writing process seriously.
In my case, I liked to spend my time in solitude listening to music and reading novels. I avoided being caught up in the hullabaloo of peer pressure. I did not want to lose the primary focus that brought me to campus-my academics. I hoped that other students could find positive ways to deal with the academic pressure that we faced. I felt sad when I watched students losing their lives to drugs and alcohol over the news. One could only imagine what their parents and families felt when they were told that their children were dead from issues such as drug overdose.