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William Kiefer: his life and his wierd outlook. Follow me on Twitter @jsbachop1 want to comment? Contact me at jsbachop1@aol.com
My core ideology is to faithfully love and serve God, my family, my country and ease the suffering of others through selfless compassion and charity.
Values that I believe are most important are:
  • Trust
  • Fidelity
  • Contrition
  • Duty
  • Dignity
  • Idealism
  • Humor
  • Teamwork
  • Individual Responsibility

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My ethical dilemma

My college years were a time of new ethical growth.  Many new opportunities and choices are made during the time between school and the working world.  To my regret, my choices in some situations do not demonstrate integrity of character.  I will reflect on one situation in particular.

                During my senior year, I was a tutor for freshmen taking intro to programming C++ course at my college.  One of my friends new I tutored programming and he was attending the community college on the other side of town and taking a C programming course.  He asked me to tutor him in exchange for payment each week for a couple hours. Unlike the students at my college whom I tutored for free and earned credits for, this was some easy money.

After a couple weeks he was frustrated with the material and offered to pay me twice the amount if I would just do the homework for him.  I am not proud to say that I didn’t hesitate long over the decision.  I needed the money, I was interested in the material and he needed credit for the course.  The programming course did not relate directly with his major so he wasn’t interested in to toil to learn a topic he wasn’t very good at.    These rationalizations for (using logic/reason to fool yourself that your indecent actions are acceptable) were justified by the use of utilitarian philosophy. 

This was justified using a utilitarian thought pattern because it benefitted the most people.  My friend got what he wanted, I got what I wanted, and no one was injured in this situation.  It could be argued that my friend was injured because he didn’t struggle with the course material.  But he was still able to get his degree without it.