And yet they do it all the time. My SO teaches writing classes for college freshmen, and it’s remarkable how easy it is to tell which paragraphs aren’t theirs. When you have one section of a paper which is clear, coherent, well-structured, and (oh my dear god can you believe it?) makes a relevant point, and this is surrounded by six pages of double spaced, misspelled, poorly phrased and pointless nonsense, you can almost guarantee that this student has lifted it from somewhere.
What, are we supposed to believe that you, who can’t normally string together a subject and correctly conjugated verb in the same sentence, had a sudden stroke of pure, lucid genius, which you spent furiously typing page three of your paper before lapsing back into your usual stupor?
I once had four students who turned in the same exact lab report. Here’s the kicker, though. All the students submitted their reports on yellow pad paper – except them. Theirs were computer-printed on glossy paper using the same elaborate fonts and the same exact graphics. Ugh.
I also had four students who submitted the same exact essay, word for word, as a homework assignment. Their excuse? “We… we were working together!” Look kids, you can work together if you want, but use your own words. Don’t submit exactly the same work and expect to get full credit for it.
At the high school my son used to attend, students quite regularly printed out text from Encarta and handed it in as their own work - what a shame they didn’t have the brains to remove the Copyright Microsoft symbol from the pages…
A college astronomy professor of mine had to be constantly on the lookout for plagiarism, usually by kids who thought they had enrolled in an Astrology course (no shit) or figured that Astronomy would be a far easier pass than Chem.
In one term, he had three cases that stuck in my mind. (This predates the Web by nearly fifteen years.)
In one, the student copied verbatim from a Sky & Telescope magazine. He even included the article’s reference to “see Graph 1a.” Problem is, he forgot to include Graph 1a. Professor’s internal alarms sound. His suspicions are confirmed when the paper makes reference to five or six more graphs and three or four photos.
In another example, the plagiariser included the real author’s name–instead of his own–under the title. The prof found out whose paper it was by process of elimination.
In the third, the kid was slick; he edited out any pictoral references–plus the author’s name and bibliography. The prof was fooled to the point he was so impressed with the writing that he passed it around to a few other profs. Halfway through the paper, one of the profs stopped and said, “I read this article just yesterday.” It was in the latest copy of Astronomy magazine, so new that my prof hadn’t yet touched his own copy in his office mail.
In two of the three cases, the violators were Kuwaiti kids. Their alibi was a brazen, “In our country this is permitted.” My prof’s reply? “Welcome to America.”
The American third? When busted, he had the nerve to ask if he was still getting full credit for the report. He did, after all, read the article.
Poor Fretful Porpentine,, I really ironel for you. Maybe you could confront these students, and see if they ofironr to re-do the assignments. If they don’t, put the ironar of G-d in them and send them straight to the Dean.
I have no respect for anyone who plagarizes anything. It’s one of those “boy who cried wolf” things, where if you manage to pass something by plagarizing (which is doubtful, considering the stupidity of a lot of the people mentioned here) you won’t know what the hell you’re doing in a situation where you actually have to recall some facts.
Also, let me add that “ironar” and “irontus” would make good names, if I was trying to make up a name for some kind of place/Alien (or I could use the spiffy random word generator program that I made.)
Reminds me of when i was in college, a frat-buddy of my roommate tried to turn in a paper from the paper file in his frat house. Since the paper had previously been turned in to that same professor (and received an “A”), this guy decided to change it a little - there was a picture of a whale in the paper, and he took it out, figuring that the picture was really memorable.
Anyway, the paper came back with a “C,” and a note from the professor saying “I liked it better with the whale.”
You know what? This same exact thing happened to me too! I think I will now tell this person exactly what I think of them:
Yes, you. The brazen-haired teenage hussy in the front row, who just turned in three pages from the bloody MERCK MANUAL, as if I wouldn’t notice it wasn’t your own work. And had the balls to ask if it was “too technical.” Yes, I think if you don’t fucking UNDERSTAND IT WELL ENOUGH TO PUT IT INTO YOUR OWN WORDS, it’s bloody well too technical.
Oh … I see; you DID put it into your own words – by using your word processor’s search and replace function to change “Fe” to “iron.” Well, here’s a tip – next time, search for WHOLE WORDS ONLY. It’s pretty fucking obvious that something is wrong with your paper when it contains words like “deironctive” and “irontus.”
And you, the boy who just transferred to UNC this semester. I don’t know what the instructors did at Podunk Secretary’s School or wherever the hell it is you come from, but here we generally READ the papers when we grade them. That means you CANNOT cut and paste the entire text of your second paper into your third paper. Do you think I’m too stupid to notice that I’ve SEEN IT BEFORE? Or that it was obviously written in response to a DIFFERENT FUCKING ASSIGNMENT?
My site supervisor at my first student teaching position warned her students up front that she subscribed to http://www.plagiarism.org, which tracks “cheat” sites and keeps a searchable database. She also informed them that the previous year, she had done random checks of student papers. With this, she managed to keep the vast majority of them honest. The couple that did try to pull something got a “0” on their term paper, which means that they flunk the Fall semester and must retake it. This is along with a referral to the assistant principal and a call home.
When I was senior in high school, I had a paper due in
english class. My girl friend, who was a junior, completely wrote the paper for me. Every word. I wrote it out in my handwriting and turned it in. I got a “C” on it. The next year, when she was in the same class, she wrote out the same exact paper in her handwriting and turned it in. She got it back with a grade of “B”. There was a note attached to it. The note said, “it was pretty good last year when cheezit turned it in to”.
Here at school, my friend Brian’s roomie got busted for pulling a paper off the internet.
Can’t say that he’s missed. We turned his room into a lounge.
Besides, when you’re that dumb… you get what you ask. <shrug> Apparantly, he begged for a break because he was one of the stars of the football team, and that didn’t go over well. (For some reason, I bet it must have in his high school.)
