Pumpkin Eater

The issue of using one's own information has been on my mind a lot lately. I recently had to rewrite a 10-page paper because I didn't explicitly cite all of my sources. At first I saw this as the injustice of the universe, but as I thought further about the schpeals I've heard about cheating over the years and conversely how I can concretely practice integrity in my own life, it became important to me to rewrite the paper for my own sake. Yes, words are universal, and we all use the same words, so we can't "own" them, but the ideas the words present are valuable. I know I count my ideas valuable, more than a large number of my possessions. Readily available information on the internet and Ctrl + C, Ctrl + V make "using" other people's ideas incredibly easy. The biggest issue with the whole plagiarism bit for me is the fact that meticulous citation, in-text bibliographical is held to such a strict standard.
We are nominally a Christian university, but in my experience there is a lot more "borrowing" of information than should take place in such an institution. We live in the age of information. The majority of my thoughts, ideas, and conclusions are comprised of the host of information I have encountered during my lifetime. I use the same phrases as my friends, I share (some) ideology with my parents, I sometimes quote movies, music lyrics, and TV shows. Almost nothing in our thought processes are completely our own. I think quoting word for word is a cop-out on your own education, but I think it's impossible to be able to cite every source I've used in writing a paper, mostly because I don't know what year my grandpa in copyrighted.