I am not a bee fan, in fact, the only knowledge I had of bees before yesterday was that they were yellow and black striped and that they had the ability to sting. That is knowledge I had from experience, an experience I had with bees while in high school. I remember it very vividly like it was yesterday.
I was on my way back from school on that afternoon. For some reason which I cannot now recall, school had closed earlier and I decided to walk some of the distance home with some of my classmates. We were walking and chatting gleefully when, all of a sudden, I noted that everyone had left me on the right side of the road and crossed to the other side.
I was wondering why all of them would suddenly cross the road without any warning. So, being the stubborn guy I was, I decided to keep walking on the right side of the road. Then, it happened. Like a flash I felt the most pain I had ever felt in my live(except for my father's slap though). It was on my right cheek, just below my eye. I had been stung by a bee.
I was immediately in a frenzy. I started shouting and running. Unfortunately, my shouts agitated the bees in their nest and soon enough, I was running like a mad man, trying to ward off the bees from me with both hands beating the air aggressively, but the bees continued following me behind. Thankfully, I was able to get away from them and not suffer a second sting.
My classmates were extremely mischievous folks, if they had warned me of the bee hive that we were approaching, I would have crossed the road with them. When I recovered, all I could hear from my classmates were their voices raised in hearty laughter at my childish demonstration. I went home with large swelling under my right eye and had to put some cold water on it to numb the pain.
That was my first and only experience with bees. I have avoided them like Covid-19 ever since.
I got to work yesterday and I began work as usual. Seeing patients and helping them get better. Then something struck my eyes on the #announcement channel of the #hive learners discord channel. It was a challenge and this was how it read...
Today is World Bee Day ! 🐝
We challenge each Hive community member to learn about the problems bees are facing and to write a post about them and how we can help,
It was a challenge, and I didn't want to loose out on the challenge. And World bee day was only going to last for one day. To make things worse, the day was already more than half spent. So I decided to do some search and come up with something in my free time. That was my first mistake.
I went online and found some really beautiful and interesting facts about bees. For example, do you know that there are more than 20 thousand species of bees? And the one I was aware of, not even remotely familiar with was the honeybee. Until yesterday, I didn't know that the honeybee was important for the proper cross pollination of blueberries( I guess it is because I have never seen blueberries, or maybe I have and didn't recognize it).
I got a few facts here and there, and strung them into a post with little attention to proofreading. That was my second mistake. I published the post and went back to work. Soon after, I got a notification that read...
@galenkp replied your post(___...)
I had to check it.
He had pointed me to the blunder I had made. In my haste, I had strung up facts and figures from sites that I didn't source. Something, I would have realized if I took some time to proofread the text. I was really ashamed of myself. I mean, as a doctor, I should know better. The medical community frowns very much at this kind of practice. Articles, journals, etc... that are used in generating a content must be properly referenced.
I quickly adjusted my mistake. But I learnt an important and invaluable lesson yesterday.
Being original is expensive, it's tasking, it's a lot of hard work. But it is hard work that is ultimately rewarding... in the long run. Using other people's information or work without proper referencing is like stealing, it takes away the dignity in content creation. Even if you were never called out for your wrong, it doesn't absolve you of the guilt of your error.
Avoiding originality may seem to be the most rewarding means of getting things done because it is fast and "?efficient". But here on hive, where the goal is to be a value creator on the long term and not just some "flash content creator", originality is a more rewarding virtue.
If you found this post educative, pls leave and upvote and rehive.
PS.
All pictures are mine, unless otherwise stated