Thursday, April 27, 2006

What a Waste

I just spent an hour collecting online sources from which a woman in my class plagiarized her research essay (which accounts for 30% of her final grade) before happening on the free essay that she copied and pretended to revise through two workshops. And I like her. She's nice.

Why do I allow this to take up so much of my time and mental energy? I'm going to have to get over that if I ever want to teach more than one class at a time.

5 Comments:

Blogger Loralee Choate said...

Oh, DEAR.

Every class in college I took they basically said, "It would be better to withdraw from this class than to be caught cheating".

They made it clear that they would do everything in the world they could BEFORE getting so entangled but then they would basically show no mercy and report every incident to the dean. SCARED THE SHIT out of me.

Made sense though...it just wastes time and money and lessens the integrety of the department.

Toughie. What do you do now?

4/28/2006 1:31 AM  
Blogger Amber said...

She gets a zero on the paper, which, since it's such a huge part of her grade, probably means an F in the class. And I'll submit the paper to a file they keep here; if she gets caught plagiarizing again, the university holds disciplinary hearings, and she can be expelled.

4/28/2006 8:59 AM  
Blogger Jessie said...

bummer amber. but i understand why you waste so much time with it...because you care and that is what makes you a better teacher. your students aren't just numbers to you. it's disappointing, yes...but i wouldn't consider it wasting time.

4/28/2006 11:36 AM  
Blogger Amber said...

Thanks, Jessie. I was upset last night partly because I don't have time to spare right now, so in that sense I think it was a waste. But I also think it's a waste on her part. She's not stupid (even if this was a stupid decision), and I think she could do well if she did the work.

4/28/2006 12:41 PM  
Blogger POLiTiCk said...

This is what scares me about teaching. I just can't comprehend it, let alone think about dealing with it.

But I agree with Jessie... And better for her to learn that lesson now.

4/28/2006 2:56 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home