If you're going to plagiarize....

[Maddy McCall]

PLEASE remove the background color from the text after you copy and paste it to your own paper.

:rofl:

[LynzM]

1. OMG, are you kidding??

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

Fucking brilliant!

[Maddy McCall]

2. Wish I were.

I could pull my hair out tonight.

:grr:

[LynzM]

7. Wish you were, too, Maddy.

That's just sad. I'm sorry. :hug:

Wanna trade? I'll grade your papers and you can write mine, about moral obligations towards friends v. family :) (I'm betting you'd get the better end of that deal, huh?)

[Maddy McCall]

9. Eeep! No!

I'll stick to my moral and occupational obiligation of grading these papers.

Good luck on your paper! :hug:

[uppityperson]

3. too funny.

make sure the font is the same also.

[Maddy McCall]

10. Font is the same.

But the "author" went from plain double spacing between paragraphs to quadruple spacing. It kinda jumped out at me. :D

[ScreamingMeemie]

4. Ohhh, my goodness.

:rofl: At least it makes your job a heck of a lot easier, eh? ;)

[Maddy McCall]

11. Yeah, tis true...

Good papers are easy to grade. Bad papers are easy to grade. It's the mediocre ones that are the most difficult--because you know there's at least a little hope for them and you want to help the student to write better.

But some of these....did I mention that out of seven papers I've graded, four are plagiarized?

:hi:

[ScreamingMeemie]

13. That has got to be the worst feeling in the world.

To work your butt off trying to make an impact and getting disrespect in return. I think plagarism is the highest form of disrespect a student can offer. I hope the three were stellar! :hug:

[Maddy McCall]

17. One was stellar.

It was about genocide throughout history. Actually a very interesting paper...which I expected, because it came from a student who is on top of everything in class. Very intelligent student.

[deadparrot]

5. Wow.

Sorry Maddy.

I swear, not all of us college students are that stupid. :hi:

[Maddy McCall]

12. LOL.

I know you're right. And I've got some good papers in this batch. But this one....oh, lord!

So far 4 of 7 plagiarized--and that's after a stern warning that no one had ever plagiarized in my classes and gotten away with it. I guess they saw that as a challenge instead of an admonishment. :shrug:

:hi:

[ZombieNixon]

6. Uhh...sorry?

:hide:

[Maddy McCall]

14. No, hon, it's not yours.

I certainly would expect more from you, the fabulous peep demolisher.

:D

[ZombieNixon]

16. Yeah, well I spent so much time destroying peeps,

I forgot to write my paper. :silly:

[Maddy McCall]

18. Perhaps you should write on the history of delectable confections....

through history. :D

[ZombieNixon]

19. How about fantasy fiction about the secret war

between humanity and peeposity going on in our streets right now? :silly:

[Maddy McCall]

20. Can you provide 300 years of historical context?

I think that'd be a good paper...better than what I'm reading tonight! :D

[ZombieNixon]

21. Yeah, probably.

Someone posted a picture of an army of Peep Crusaders in my thread last night...if I fit in the Crusades, would work? :shrug:

:P

[Maddy McCall]

25. Absolutely!

:thumbsup:

[EstimatedProphet]

8. TheProphetess could tell you stories about the papers she gets...

What is up these days? If I turned in a paper like some she's gotten I would have failed the class!

[Maddy McCall]

15. What I've found...

in all of the classes I've taught is that the ones who make the best grades write the best papers--they're all around conscientious students.

The ones who just don't give a crap are the ones who fail tests, exams, and make no attempt on papers.

I'm just amazed that I've caught so many plagiarized papers so soon in this bunch. 4 or 7, and I have about sixty more to go. :grr: I'm going to bed in a minute. No way can I grade all of these tonight anyway.

How's TheProphetess doing? Have been wondering how her back is feeling.

:hi:

[EstimatedProphet]

22. She's been getting better, slowly

She taught today, and it wiped her out.

[tigereye]

23. I wondered if she was on a break from teaching

or had to go back soon. Send her some healing vibes for me!

As for the plagiarism, I have trained my son to avoid any semblance of that, as he begins his paper-writing journey. I have friends who are professors and I am always shocked when I hear their stories about this. Some people fail classes for this, or worse, don't they? I sometimes wonder if it is that they just don't know the rules, or don't care. When I started college we had to peruse Elements of Style and other texts about writing.... Don't these people know about citations, etc?

My hat is off to all of you grading the great mass of college papers!

[TheProphetess]

29. Thanks!

My recovery is going slowly but I'm letting my body take the time it needs. I couldn't do it without EP here to be my support. Every day I tell him "thank you" about a thousand times. :)

And, by the way, it is strange to me that college students don't at least know the basics. I have students turn in papers that aren't stapled (or paper-clipped, etc.), that are printed on recycled paper with crap on the other side (and I'm all for recycling paper, but not for a paper assignment in college), that aren't proofread (and I mean obviously are not proofread), and that do not follow the basic instructions.

One assignment was an advertisement analysis concerning how gender is portrayed in magazine ads. The assignment called for students to randomly find 5 ads (from 4 different magazines) that had at least one person in it. Then, they had to analyze patterns they saw concerning how men versus women were portrayed in the ads. Some papers were brilliant, but I got one student who turned in his paper and every one of his ads contained NO PEOPLE! There's no way to do that assignment without people in the ads! I was floored. (As an aside, this particular student ended up cheating on my final exam - in a very obvious way - big huge cheat sheet taped to a sweatshirt he laid on the floor at his feet and continually shifted around every time I walked around the room. I saw it (it was hard NOT to see it), said "hand it over, turn in your final exam, and you fail this course." What a waste of tuition - I teach at a private college that is NOT cheap). Oy, oy, oy!

[Maddy McCall]

34. That is my NUMBER ONE pet peeve.

When I receive an unstapled paper, I don't grade it. It goes to the ungraded-papers-in-limbo box, where it sits until the student asks for it back. On the paper or assignment, I write, "As I told you in the syllabus, I won't grade unstapled papers."

My other peeve is EMAILED papers, when I tell them in the syllabus NEVER to email a paper to me. That infuriates me. Under NO circumstances will I grade an emailed paper, and I really wish I could find a way to deduct points for even asking me to do so.

Question for you: How do you handle papers that include absolutely no in-text citations (no footnotes or backnotes), and only a vague reference list attached to the paper? Or, how about when you tell them to NEVER use wikipedia, yet they base their whole paper on a wikipedia article?

Again, I just refuse to grade the paper, and a zero goes into the grade book, unless they ask for the paper and agree to return it with citations included, one of which better NOT BE WIKIPEDIA! LOL.

[tigereye]

36. the idea of cheating in college

(or at any time!) is so foreign to me. You are usually paying for it yourself. It's voluntary. What is the point of going to college if you don't actually do the work? Or having someone write papers for you, or using those Cliff Notes things? (well, that'a little unfair, but those Cliff's things seemed heinous to this English Lit major at the time.) How else will you learn? Is it not really about learning anymore?

[Maddy McCall]

27. I bet!

Give her my best wishes. :hug:

[TheProphetess]

28. I failed a student for plagiarizing TWICE - after a second-chance redo

She needed this writing course to graduate and it was the semester she was supposed to graduate. I spent 15 weeks going over the process of how to write a good research paper in psychology, how to use citations, APA style, avoiding plagiarism (by reading the article, walking away from it, then summarizing the main points with the article nowhere in sight just to avoid the temptation of restating every other word using the thesaurus).

She turned in her first draft (two weeks before the end of the semester) which was riddled with plagiarized writing (one big clue: she was not the sharpest tack in the shed but used the sentence "these data show that..." - very few undergrads know that the word "data" is plural). So, I did some investigation and her entire 15-page paper was plagiarized.

So, when we meet to go over the first draft (which was designed to be as complete as the final draft so that the students would have to make only minor changes and be done with it), I go over the plagiarism issue with her and how serious it is. I stress to her that she CANNOT graduate without redoing this paper and eliminating all evidence of plagiarism. I even had underlined every line that was problematic and helped go over examples of how to include the important information in her own words (even if her words weren't brilliantly expressed). My literal sentence to her was, "you must go through this paper with a fine-tooth comb and get rid of all of this plagiarism - I am giving you a second chance at correcting this very serious problem, but if your final draft is plagiarized, I will be forced to fail you from this course." By the way, I had spent time reminding her of what plagiarism is exactly (once again), and offered to meet with her to help if she needed it.

Cut to the end of the semester - two weeks later she turns in almost the same exact plagiarized paper. I failed her, she cried about how she would not be able to graduate the following week. She pleaded with the chair of my department, who had the evidence in front of him and was not impressed by her lack of understanding what a "second chance redo" meant. And she did not graduate. This writing class was not offered in summer, so she had to wait until the fall to retake the course. I have a sneaking suspicion that she tried to get by the same way with her next instructor. OY!

Off topic: I'm doing a little better each day although I get worn out extremely easily. After my two 50-minute classes today (back-to-back) I had to come home and sleep for 3 hours. It's been slow but this is our last week of classes, so I'm hopeful to finish up. Thanks for asking! :hi:

[Maddy McCall]

33. I'm expecting some unhappy students tomorrow.

I caught eight cases of plagiarism in 35 papers. Almost a record for me. My best is 12 of 40. That was a grueling semester--this one has been worse.

I'm glad you are feeling better. Good that this is your last week of classes! :hi:

[TheProphetess]

30. Here's another funny one

Now that I'm on a roll...
I offered an extra credit paper assignment in which students had to analyze two TV commercials and the tactics used to sell their products. One of my young male students analyzed the Jessica Simpson Pizza Hut commercial.

His first 2 sentences were, "Jessica Simpson is my ideal woman. She has really got it going on." At the bottom of his paper I wrote, "You did the assignment as described so you are getting full credit. But, your statements about Jessica Simpson made me weep profusely. Seek professional help!" Then I added a smiley face to lessen the blow. I hope he was joking or that, if not, he does seek professional help. :)

[Maddy McCall]

35. Don't you hate it when...

they draw smiley faces and little doodles on exams, expecting to be cutesy to get a better grade? Or what about when they write some personal note to you like "You are the greatest teacher ever and I hope you have a marvelous spring break," and the note is longer than the essay they wrote?

[rockymountaindem]

24. Hey, makes your job easier

What I don't understand (this is coming from a 3rd year undergrad) are the people who do the research but just don't cite. I mean, citations aren't that hard, but they're very important. If you've done all the reading and research, you might as well do the frikkin' citations. In 1st year I think some people in my classes turned in papers with no footnotes. What were they thinking?

[Maddy McCall]

26. Yep. That happens often and makes no sense.

I don't know what they're thinking. :shrug:

[petronius]

31. That definitely tops anything I've seen...

My favorite this year was the paper that had more numerical cites in the text than it had citations in the endnotes. Either they forgot to remove the cites when they cut/pasted, or they just threw in a bunch of random numbers to make it look like they cited...

[Maddy McCall]

32. Hahaha!

Well, I'm finished grading for the night. I've graded 35 papers. Of the 35, 8 were plagiarized. Of those 8, two had been caught plagiarizing on their first papers and I had warned them NOT to try it again, or they'd be booted from my class.

I've got about 20 more to go. Anyone want to place bets on how many of those will be plagiarized?

Petronius, at least your student made an attempt, albeit feeble, to cite while he plagiarized :rofl: . These plagiarists haven't a clue--even though I spent two full classes discussing how to avoid plagiarism.

[sasquatch]

37. Don't you get to paddle them for that?

:spank:
You know on the grounds of just plain ol' stupidity.