Dispatches from Laboring Graduate Student at a Large State University
Dispatch #1
An Introduction…
Good day. Welcome to the start of an “every-so-often” column. I need an outlet. Some of the stuff I am encountering is just too good for me to keep to myself. Honestly, I do share my exploits, but only with fellow colleagues. I thought it would be cathartic for me to share with an audience who is not in the biz, so to speak. You can laugh and cry with me, offer advice or your own stories. Feel free to comment here or send me an email at rustedjesus@nonpretentious.com. Or you can even leave me a voicemail! Here’s my number: 866.798.4406 x705
So let me explain who and what I am. My name is RustedJesus. I write for this here site. Check out my other column, 23 Reasons to Love RustedJesus (its self-serving and demeaning at the same time, yay!). I am a “young American,” was college-educated at large, midwestern state school, an intern at aforementioned state school university press, an intern at SKI Magazine, a self-proclaimed ski bum for a year, an associate editor for a year, and a Master’s student (English Lit.) at a large New England state school for three years. During that time, I was largely unemployed and accumulating a large amount of debt. However, for one summer I was a whitewater rafting guide. I didn’t really make any money, but I got to pretend I was an outdoorsman. Someday I’ll tell you about the time I nearly died on the river.
That brings us to now. Currently, I am a Ph.D student (English Lit.) and Graduate Assistant at a large, southern state school. So now I am employed and accumulating a large amount of debt. Read this for a brief introduction to my introduction to the South. Heee-haaww! I teach a introductory composition class called “Argument and Persuasion.” There are 19 students in my class, the max limit, mostly freshman. This is their story…
This is my second semester teaching. For the most part I don’t know what I’m doing. I am a good writer and it is now my task to teach this class of mostly freshman how to write good (yes, I know). One of the hardest things I had to get over during my first semester teaching was that most of them will not learn how to write good. And while my lack of teaching experience may play a significant role, I must also resign myself to the fact that most of them just don’t care. My class is a required class for most majors. It fulfills a state writing requirement (We’ll call it the Friedman rule–writing for the sake of writing, devoid of any meaning. Unintentionally.).
Last semester, I had a couple gems. J.Z. was an excellent writer who was able to think on a fairly abstract level and yet not lose himself in circular-type arguments that often characterize young minds grappling with abstract concepts. He had a real desire to learn things not for a better paycheck, but for the sake of learning, to know what others thought and how they came to create those thoughts. He would stop by the office just to chit chat about life in college and life out of college. I wanted to tell him to change his major to English Literature, but his thirst for knowledge in and of itself had its limits and he wanted a good paying job upon graduation; something I could not begrudge him.
T.C. was also genuinely interested in improving her writing. Not as good as J.Z., but good enough. Unfortunately, she plagiarized one assignment and I was forced to give her a failing grade for that assignment. She cried, I felt bad, mostly because it appeared that she did not do it on purpose, but also because I found her charmingly cute. However, she worked hard for the rest of the semester and made up some points and left the class with a satisfactory grade.
Oh, but this semester is different. Oh, so different. My freshman are no longer wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. They have trod the halls of supposedly higher-learning for 5 months now, and they look tired. Not lacking in sleep, but lacking in enthusiasm. They long to return to their high school homes and high school friends and high schools lovers and high school jobs. They eye me with suspicion, take too many notes, and ask too few questions. I look out at them nervously, feeling their prying eyes, as if they can see right through my necktie of bullshit. But what I dish out to them is not bullshit, it’s genuine knowledge. Sometimes it just happens to be knowledge I either don’t really believe in or I’m not too well-versed in, or worse, both.
I have 5 confirmed Jesus-freaks in my class this semester (imagine trying to teach those who rely on faith to get them through the day to analyze life critically and objectively). One has already started preaching in his papers. About 65% of them voted for McCain and think Palin was a good move for women in this country. One keeps claiming that her dream is be an oral surgeon and that she wants nothing else in world, so much so that she has yet to “go out” during her 5 month tenure as an undergrad and has quit exercising in order spend more time hitting the books. Another wants to be an English major, but is afraid of disappointing her parents who want her to go to medical school. One has never checked out a book from a library before, he’s a Junior.
It’s going to be a long semester.
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i think this is great. i hope you smack your students with vengeance, and get them crying or yelling or something else that makes them question themselves.
i think that j.z. is unfortunate to share his name with a member of nsync. the curly haired one who was always too tall and too eastern-european looking to be in a sensational boyband.
i don’t need you to reveal all your trade secrets but how do college professors know that someone plagiarized?
is it just that obvious or are there systems?
also, do you tell the student first or your supervisor?
Good question proust. First, yes, there are systems. In fact there are web-based applications for which you can buy subscriptions to, that will check student papers for plagiarism. They will check the paper against their own database of papers (I’ll get back to this in a sec) and will run a basic web search for identical phrasing. The university at which I teach provides its teachers with a free account to one such company called, Turn-It-In.com. The problem with this company is that once I submit a student paper to the site, the paper becomes the intellectual property of Turn-It-In. I whole-heartedly disagree with this. I refuse to hand over ownership of my student’s papers to a 3rd party, it’s weird, it’s wrong.
So how do I go about it? Well, for the first few weeks of the semester, my students do in-class writing and some short assignments that are so unique as they can’t be plagiarized. From this I usually develop a pretty good sense of their writing styles and language. So once their first paper is turned in, it becomes relatively easy to notice if a part of or their whole paper isn’t their writing. Now, this does not mean I’m able to penalize each case that comes across my desk. If I suspect a student of plagiarism, I have to be able to prove it. So I do web searches for verbatim phrasing. The dumbest students usually get caught because they have plagiarized from one of the first 10 search results that come up. The smarter ones cut and paste from a number of sources that make it difficult to acquire beyond-a-reasonable-doubt-type proof of plagiarism. It’s fun and frustrating catching the dumb ones. Fun because we teachers usually gossip about our dumb students and the dumb attempts they made at plagiarism. It’s frustrating, because no matter how cynical I pretend to be, it ultimately disappoints me because I do care about my students. Even the dumb ones.
In the case of T.C. last semester, she plagiarized her annotated bibliography by cutting pasting a section of the abstract of one her sources. A no-no and easily detectable.
So, at my university, as teachers, we have full authority to assess whatever type of punishment we deem appropriate for plagiarism. The department recommends at the very least, failing the assignment and reporting the student to the Dean’s office. If we do so, he or she will have an official statement on their record. If they receive one more plagiarism infraction, they are expelled. The student may appeal, but most cases that go as far as that are pretty clear cut.
My policy is that if a student is caught plagiarizing, they fail the assignment automatically, no ifs ands or buts. Depending on the severity of the infraction (how much they plagiarized, whether or not they appeared remorseful, etc.) I may or may not fail them for the course. If I just fail the assignment, there’s no need to tell my supervisor.
Regardless, I usually talk to the student before I even accuse them of anything. I ask them to tell me about their paper. If plagiarized, the student usually has a difficult time talking about the paper without reading it first. If it’s apparent, I’ll then say to them I that I found sections of their paper verbatim from other sources and then ask them what went wrong. If they apologize, appear remorseful, I give them a failing grade for the assignment and tell them not to worry too much, that my opinion of them has not lowered, and that they just need to buck up and work hard for the rest of the semester. This usually works pretty well. If not, their grade at the end of the semester will reflect it.
If they have no excuse, don’t seem to care that they’ve been caught, etc., I tell them that I need to speak with my supervisor and that I’ll call them back in when the matter is resolved. Then I tell my supervisor that I want to fail the student from the class. Supervisor either agrees or disagrees and things progress from there. If I fail them from the class, then I also report them to the Dean.
That’s how I go about it. But at this university, all teachers are pretty free to do as they please. Most are pretty lenient, which I think is kind of a problem. Sure, its difficult to potentially end a student’s academic career or significantly lower their G.P.A., but I think about my other students who haven’t plagiarized and how hard they are working and it only seems fair to them.
But really, yeah, it’s usually just that obvious. It’s usually the dumb ones who plagiarize. And they usually aren’t even good at that. Idiots.
whoa! this comment is informative and awesome.
let me give you my first reactions and then digest (only to, most likely, come back for seconds)
i agree with you that extreme leniency seems like a teacher just doesn’t care. (to all extremely lenient teachers, don’t keep your students in the dark! teach them!)
on the other hand, extreme punishment seems like a masochistic way to ruin a life and prevent students from taking risks, asking questions, and making mistakes.
your “punishment” sounds fair and balanced – you taught a valuable lesson and showed you cared by noticing and preventing it from happening again.
it seems like T.C. may have not known what an annotated bibliography is (or, i may simply be projecting…). assuming that is the case, it seems like she is a good example of how students can avoid plagiarism or other potentially lethal academic offenses by asking questions (“hey teacher, what is an annotated bibliography?”) or reviewing their work (“did i forget any quotations?”).
Second point.
In light of the recent news about Facebook’s Terms of Service (evidence), I’m surprised that more students don’t protest their university’s use of those plagiarism programs. creepy.
I follow the same policies, broadly speaking. I seem to be in your shoes as well — large southern state university, composition classes of 19 students each, the whole shebang.
What kills me is when I confront students about their plagiarised papers _with proof in hand_ , showing them exactly from where they copied it, and have them deny the charges to my face. One guy copied about 90% of a major technical writing assignment, and had the gall to tell me that I was unfairly condemning him. The scale of the plagiarism is also something I take into consideration. And I usually report them when they show no signs of remorse, but try and argue their way out of a failing grade, and/or when they seem more concerned with calculating the effect of the failed paper on their grade rather than seeming to understand that what they did was far from right.
So yes, the whole process is subjective and sickening, but I try and consider them on a case-by-case basis.