Sunday, 26 April 2009

• Plagiarism

  Last week I had to threaten all 60 of my Advanced Placement students with course failure. I came very close to following through with my threat, too. What would bring me, an otherwise fair and forgiving teacher, to set my wrath upon these poor over-achieving wannabe's?
  
  Plagiarism.
  
  Let me be perfectly clear. The more time passes, the more internet-savvy teachers come along, the EASIER IT IS FOR YOU TO GET CAUGHT! Don't plagiarize, you lazy moron. Do the work and take some pride in yourself.
  
  So, in an effort to avoid further failures, allow me to present a few tips.
  
  1) If you didn't wake up knowing it, cite it.
  Did you put in your paper that basketball is the most popular sport? Unless you personally conducted a survey of every sports fan in the universe, I want to see where you found that out at.
  
  2) Buy a good reference book.
  I use Writing Research Papers by Lester & Lester. I was forced to buy it in 11th grade and it has become my research Bible. Seriously, guys. No one expects you to memorize this stuff. Get yourself a good reference source and keep it on hand.
  
  3) Yes, you have to cite that .jpeg
  This was shocking to my students. They did not know that images must be cited. Consider this a warning to any and all students reading my blog: cite your freaking pictures! Most teachers will overlook this faux pas, but when you get that ONE teacher who cares, tough luck.
  
  4) Just because you can do it online, doesn't make it okay for a report
  Obviously, I don't cite everything in every blog I write. In fact, I'm pretty sure almost every blogger has committed plagiarism, whether knowingly or not. Still, I do my best to give credit when credit is due. This lax viewpoint is NOT okay when turning in a thesis, research paper, dissertation, research proposal, etc. Don't even think about it.
  
  5) Don't try to fool the teacher
  Okay, first of all we teachers are not idiots. We're TEACHERS. We are the ones responsible for making sure that you enter this world with at least an iota of sense in that skull of yours. So do NOT think that you can pull a fast one on us! We are very familiar with the tricks of the trade. We probably used most of them ourselves when we were younger and more naive. Consider two papers: one in which someone copies and pastes from Sparknotes without citing, the other where one copies and pastes key phrases from Sparknotes but cites it properly. Which one do you think receives a pass and which becomes epic fail? Yeah, exactly. You actually sound SMARTER when you tell me you "cheated" and used Sparknotes for help. Weird how that works, huh?
  
  6) Don't fight it. Learn it.
  I know it's ridiculous that the period HAS to go behind the parenthesis and the ellipsis MUST go inside brackets. I know it sucks that if your quotation marks are misplaced you are "technically" plagiarizing. Do yourself a favor and double check your work with that wonderful reference book (#2) before you turn work in. That way, when you have Mr. MLA-Anal for a professor, your ass is covered.
  
  On the same note, you can whine and complain about how "pointless" citations are, but that is not going to make them disappear. Shut up and deal with it.
  
  7) Don't wait unti the last minute
  Seriously, guys. If you're writing your paper an hour before its due odds are some of it will be wrong. Odds are even higher that what is wrong is your citations. Just saying.
  
  8) Consider the consequences
  I always hate to focus on punishment, but this is actually pretty serious. Especially in college, and especially if you have a turd of a professor who considers a misplaced comma a capitol offence. So here's what can happen if you are caught plagiarizing at the college level:
  

  • You fail the course.
  • You are promptly asked to leave the university, with no refund.
  • You are forced to move back to your parents basement.
  • You will be blacklisted, which means that you will be denied admission to all public institutions in the U.S.
    
  • If the university publishes your material before it is caught, you can potentially be sued.
  • Your boy/girlfriend will break up with you and you will die alone.

  Okay, maybe not the last one. Still, guys, this is serious stuff! Check this out from plagiarism.org:
  

  "Most cases of plagiarism are considered misdemeanors, punishable by fines of anywhere between $100 and $50,000 -- and up to one year in jail.

  Plagiarism can also be considered a felony under certain state and federal laws. For example, if a plagiarist copies and earns more than $2,500 from copyrighted material, he or she may face up to $250,000 in fines and up to ten years in jail" ("Legal Punishments").

  For more information on plagiarism check it out here: http://www.plagiarism.org/index.html
  
  Have you ever plagiarized, whether on accident or on purpose? What happened?
  
  

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