Tuesday, March 29, 2005

to the plagarists

Four years of undergrad tuition: $25, 000 times 4
Four years of classwork tuition: $18, 000 x 4
several years beyond that while I write: $800+ per semester

That's not figuring what I spend on books, photocopies, diet coke, etc.

In my entire academic career, I have lied exactly once: I fudged a footnote on my undergraduate honors thesis, but I corrected it before the thesis went to the archives.

I read all of my own books and write my own papers, however silly the assignment. I've fought to bring excellence to the classroom. I assign books that are worthwhile, the best on the topic. I burn midnight oil to give students the most helpful advice I can. Though I may grade 50 or more lessons in a day, I read each with care and concern.

You say you're busy? I worked my way through college and my way through grad school. I passed or failed on my own merits. In short, I have worked my ass off to earn the titles needed to teach undergraduates, and incurred massive debt in the process.

Write your own damn papers.

Words Written: one hundred and eighty-six
Lessons Graded: irrelevant - I've failed far too many for plagarism today

4 comments:

Greg said...

I've never understood what drives people to plagiarism. Do they just not know they're doing it? Are they lazy? Do they actually think they'll get away with it?

TeacherRefPoet said...

Hear, hear!

I've only caught one plagiarist so far this year. I think I scared the hell out of my dear sophomores early on. Good thing, too.

(Of course, now I've jinxed it. Macbeth is next...easy to plagiarize, I'm afraid. But I don't want to do another in-class...they need the experience of taking it home. Hello, Turnitin.com.)

Joe said...

What a slap in the face - to you and everybody else in the class who did the work. I'm sorry for you, but stick to your guns.

Greg, some people really don't know that they're plagarizing. Many (most?) of our grade and high schools are doing a poor job of teaching how to write a research paper. (Arguably because they're overcrowded and have to teach to standardized tests... but I digress.)

And a lot of them are lazy once, under pressure.

But yeah - all of them think there's no consequence.

Drewster said...

Shoot! Forget the people who don't know how to properly quote or reference material. Stick to the people who write other peoples' papers.

As a TA, I picked up on the same misspelling of lie. Lye. This oddment, just a couple of papers apart, peeked my interest and I soon discovered I was reading the same paper, just rearranged a bit.

I let the prof. decide what to do. Sports players were involved, so I think it was just an F on the paper and a slap on the wrist.