Monday, November 2, 2009

Plagiarism

Altogether, I am the most tolerant teacher you will ever meet. I don't mind student absences or tardiness. I allow them to hand in assignments late, or sometimes very late. I give them a chance to redo the exams that they failed. I'm always nice, welcoming, and understanding.

There is one thing, however, that awakens the monster in me. And that is plagiarism. Yesterday, I discovered two separate groups of plagiarists in one single course. I don't know what they were thinking handing in 5 identical assignments in a Spanish course. They could not have possibly thought that I wouldn't notice. Or did they? The thing that annoys me the most in the whole world is when people take me for a fool.

So now I'm off to class and I will dedicate a large portion of it to a conversation about plagiarism.

P.S. The point of the entire post was to vent. Urrrghhh, I'm so angry.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

I scare my poor univeristy students about my profound intolerance towards plagiarism in the very first class session. They are scared for real.

In high school, I made students cry after i found out they were plagiarists.

Guess it's time for a sharp lecture on plagiarism. GO!

Ol

Clarissa said...

I gave them THE TALK. The annoying part is that one of the students kept crying and whining about it. As if SHE were the victim here.

Clarissa said...

So one of the students who cheated came to cry and tell me she wasn't cheating. "I just dictated the answers to other people," she said. And was very shocked to learn that that is CHEATING.

Amanda said...

One of the pluses to law school: If any of my classmates get caught cheating, they get kicked out.

i can understand when people don't realize what plagiarism is, but I am SO GLAD to be past the stage where I have to attend class with those people.