A Little Teacher Venting At The End Of The Semester
I spent three damned hours last night tracking down sources used by a plagiarist. Three hours. Gone. Down the drain. Hours I could've spent grading other people's essays.
But NOOOOOOO. This moron decided to be clever and not use the internet to plagiarize, assuming, no doubt, that I would easily find that. Instead, the student plagiarized from academic articles.
As if I'm not going to notice the difference between a 19 year-old freshman's writing and a tenured professor of English from Cal Berkeley. Or that I'm not going to recognize famous phrases from SCOTUS decisions. That assumption, I've come to realize (after catching on average 2-3 plagiarists a semester for nearly 10 years now), is far more insulting than the actual academic theft itself, since it is an assumption that I'm an idiot.
Now, while I'm actually trained to do this kind of thing (hunt down references, pour over databases, etc), telling the student not to come to the final exam (today was the last day of classes) and to expect an F for the course does not give me back those friggin' hours I spent.
So. A few general words of warning to anyone considering plagiarizing an essay:
1) We know how you write. We know how professional writers write. You don't sound like them. At all. Seriously. And if it's for an English professor, you might want to keep in mind that we're $$$$ing trained to detect these kinds of things. You might also want to keep in mind that we're trained to read things and remember them. And we tend to read a lot.
2) Many of us, if we suspect plagiarism, will ruthlessly hunt you down like a dog. I'm actually going to spend the weekend hunting down the remaining bits I didn't find last night JUST FOR FUN.
3) Your professors have access to the internet just like you.
4) Plagiarism is an insult to your professors (especially English profs), and that, in and of itself, makes them less likely to take pity on you. Peronally, I just fail the bastards for the course. No deals. Hang'em all.
Ugh.
Ok. Rant over. Back to grading.
Cheers
Scott
PS
5) Most of the essays from those paper mills suck. I've gotten several in my time, and most were in the D range.
But NOOOOOOO. This moron decided to be clever and not use the internet to plagiarize, assuming, no doubt, that I would easily find that. Instead, the student plagiarized from academic articles.
As if I'm not going to notice the difference between a 19 year-old freshman's writing and a tenured professor of English from Cal Berkeley. Or that I'm not going to recognize famous phrases from SCOTUS decisions. That assumption, I've come to realize (after catching on average 2-3 plagiarists a semester for nearly 10 years now), is far more insulting than the actual academic theft itself, since it is an assumption that I'm an idiot.
Now, while I'm actually trained to do this kind of thing (hunt down references, pour over databases, etc), telling the student not to come to the final exam (today was the last day of classes) and to expect an F for the course does not give me back those friggin' hours I spent.
So. A few general words of warning to anyone considering plagiarizing an essay:
1) We know how you write. We know how professional writers write. You don't sound like them. At all. Seriously. And if it's for an English professor, you might want to keep in mind that we're $$$$ing trained to detect these kinds of things. You might also want to keep in mind that we're trained to read things and remember them. And we tend to read a lot.
2) Many of us, if we suspect plagiarism, will ruthlessly hunt you down like a dog. I'm actually going to spend the weekend hunting down the remaining bits I didn't find last night JUST FOR FUN.
3) Your professors have access to the internet just like you.
4) Plagiarism is an insult to your professors (especially English profs), and that, in and of itself, makes them less likely to take pity on you. Peronally, I just fail the bastards for the course. No deals. Hang'em all.
Ugh.
Ok. Rant over. Back to grading.
Cheers
Scott
PS
5) Most of the essays from those paper mills suck. I've gotten several in my time, and most were in the D range.
Comments
throw the book at him. but you should have him/her take the final exam. only upon turning it in should you tell them they automatically failed anyway.
Physics is phun. It's practically impossible to cheat on my exams and I don't have any homework or other such nonsense they have to hand in.
I had a friend who worked religiously on her term paper for our Film Class... she was a A to A+ student... brilliant... but an art student...
dressed like an art student (big Cure fan)... all of it... this is 1987 mind you... no internet (as we know it).Her paper was so good the professor claimed it was plagarised. He just couldn't believe she wrote it.
She was devastated... they finally had a conference and in the end.
He had no proof. He just didn't believe she wrote it.
But I do think plagarists should be punished and publicly embarassed.
Originally posted by chu_bakka
wow he won't know what hit him.
I had a friend who worked religiously on her term paper for our Film Class... she was a A to A+ student... brilliant... but an art student...
dressed like an art student (big Cure fan)... all of it... this is 1987 mind you... no internet (as we know it).Her paper was so good the professor claimed it was plagarised. He just couldn't believe she wrote it.
She was devastated... they finally had a conference and in the end.
He had no proof. He just didn't believe she wrote it.
But I do think plagarists should be punished and publicly embarassed.
I never level charges unless I have proof.
I think 5 academic essays with cross-referenced highlighting was enough in this case.
My father got into trouble in a class in the way you've described, he tells me.
Cheers
Scott
"How could you not know you were cutting and pasting 90% of your essay from other sources? You even retained spelling errors from the originals! How could you not know that you didn't write most of this?"
Cheers
Scott
Jus give those repeat offenders an F. tats wat I do. 8)
On the funny side On our campus we just got enti-plagiarism software available. At UCSD I saw a guy present a study of the software. In the end, when he tested his own presentation using the app, it showed up to be almost in the plagiarism category itself...
I am sure you'll know the character who mouths' these famous words. May you draw strength from his methodology.
" you know my method, it is based on the observation of trifles "
" I am an omnivorous reader with a strangely retentive memory for trifles "
" There is nothing more deceptive than an obvious fact "
" We must look for consistency. Where there is want of it we must suspect deception "
Cheers from Aqua
God I hated college.
Originally posted by HOM
I have been accused of plagiarism by and English Prof. It was not fun. I was called into his office and asked how I was able to churn out an "A" essay after handing in "drivel" all year. I did not plagiarize anything, but actually spent time researching my topic. I properly noted all my sources and properly quoted. But noooooo, he didn't believe me. I had to go in front of an academic integrity board to prove that I had in fact written it. I brought all my hand written notes, the time stamped printouts from the library, ect. Made the prof look like an idiot.
God I hated college.
Good. You did the right thing. This is a serious charge, and one that should not EVER be made simply on a hunch. Professors who do so should be taken to task.
As I said earlier, I never level charges unless I have the actual sources in front of me.
Cheers
Scott
A day or two later, she e-mailed me, with a CC: to a law firm, saying that she was going to sue me for checking to see if her paper was plagiarized. She said it was discriminatory for me to have thought she might be plagiarizing and to check on it.
Originally posted by alcimedes
Haha, glad I'm not a engrish professor.
I didn't know you were Japanese, alcimedes.
Originally posted by BRussell
I caught one particularly dumb student who plagiarized about 50% of a paper directly from the internet. In defending herself, she said it wasn't plagiarized, and that in fact, she had turned in the same paper for another class! I asked her which class it was, and she told me.
A day or two later, she e-mailed me, with a CC: to a law firm, saying that she was going to sue me for checking to see if her paper was plagiarized. She said it was discriminatory for me to have thought she might be plagiarizing and to check on it.
heh. I had something similar happen a couple of years ago. I brought a student in to charge her, laid out the sources for her "work" in front of her, and asked her why she'd plagiarized.
She said that she hadn't. The person who wrote the essay for her had. And so she shouldn't be punished.
She wasn't happy when I pointed out that her defense against the charge of plagiarism was, well, that she had plagiarized.
Cheers
Scott
I ran hot and cold as a student. Not a lot of discipline, so I either wrote really average papers, because it's just impossible to write a failing paper if you have a pulse, or I wrote some real crackers -- Original, unformulaic, adventurous essays. A prof once politely suggested to me that I may have missed a reference, but he dropped it after talking to another prof.
One area which has remained unclear to me regards how we might establish whether two people working independently might each arrive at a similar formulation with no knowledge of each other -- which is cool if we're working in different places a the same time and at about the same level -- think Darwin, Origin of a Species, and that other guy...
But what about a poor student who can't possibly know every obscure reference but who genuinely thinks through an issue? It is not impossible for this student (to exist, or is it?) to turn a phrase that sounds familiar, but is nonetheless original to him. If research doesn't uncover it, though the prof knows of it, what then? How much research is really adequate for a junior paper, or an honours paper? I don't know. The good thing about politics is that now I plagerize everything and nobody cares.
The most recent one was quite dramatic. The guy had no proof, but he "smelled it". I'm not kidding you, he literally said "I smelled it."
A quick meeting with the ombudsman fixed it right up.
English professors suck balls.
Originally posted by groverat
I have been falsely accused of plagiarism twice in my career as a student.
The most recent one was quite dramatic. The guy had no proof, but he "smelled it". I'm not kidding you, he literally said "I smelled it."
A quick meeting with the ombudsman fixed it right up.
English professors suck balls.
I was accused once as well. It seems like this is a pretty common thing based off the replies to these forums.
The worst part of it was that mine was at the beginning of this whole computers in universities thing. Most of the professors had not encountered students who did all their drafts on the computer. Computers were still sort of rare and something you often had to go to the lab to use. Now I save my drafts but back then I just had one file. Of course there was no internet back then.
Nick