What is Excellence?

Many people believe that excellence means trying your best and never giving up. Giving it your all in everything you do is a great way to achieve excellence. But some people strive for excellence only to reach their goal of perfection. When you give it your all and try your best what else is there to offer. Your best is never going to be perfect, thats why perfection is out of reach to humanity. But never giving up is what defines excellence from perfection. Perfection is unattainable, but excellence is achievable thats why people do their best to accomplish excellence. People who believe that the true meaning of excellence is perfection set their standards to high. They try their best and give it their all but ultimately never reaching perfection, which can sometimes result in cheating.
Plagiarism is the common result of setting standards to high, and not being able to achieve those standards. 'Plagiarism is the practice of claiming or implying original authorship of (or incorporating material from) someone else's written or creative work, in whole or in part, into one's own without adequate acknowledgment.' (Wikipedia) Plagiarizing is not only unfair to other students but to those who the ideas were stolen from. Plagiarizing is started to become more and more common as information is more easy to obtain. When you cheat you are only hurting yourself. Yeah you got your homework done but thats not the point. The point is, education is not to just to get your homework done and handed in on time but to learn and by cheating you are not learning anything. Plagiarizing is a high offense in college and could result in automatic failure. So if you plan to plagiarize think about the consequences and do the right thing.
In the story 'The Crooked Tree' by Benjamin Hoff a man does not know what to do with his useless tree. Another man replied "It is useless to you only because you want to make it into something else and do not use it in its proper way." To me excellence is trying your best, giving it your all and using an idea or item in it's proper way. When you use an idea in its proper way your are taking advantage of what the idea has to offer. Of course your not going to find the proper use of an item right away, but thats why you never give up and keep trying. In doing so your are achieving excellence.
So excellence, to me, means to never give up, and using things in its proper way. But be careful not confuse perfection with excellence. Excellence is obtainable, perfection is not. But strive to be the best you can be and also be careful not to take things out of hand and resort to cheating or plagiarism. You are not learning anything by cheating, in fact cheating is the exact opposite of excellence in my mind. "I am careful not to confuse excellence with perfection. Excellence, I can reach for; perfection is God's business." (Michael J. Fox)