Another one, dammit

Yet another plagiarist in 229. Hell and hell and damnation. This one is a good student, too; she's not brilliant, but she's earnest and works hard. (She also says she's an English major; it frightens me how often students who say they are English majors are not very good at either reading or writing--it rather makes me wonder why they want to major in the subject. Actually, we don't have majors of that sort at NCC, so she's expressing an intention for her education at another institution, but I worry about her choice.) In any event, she got The Letter--and she couldn't stand to wait the stipulated 24 hours before contacting me: she e-mailed me right away to say she wants to cry, feels ashamed, never ever ever meant to plagiarize. And honestly, I believe her: in this instance, I do think she just messed up and wasn't careful enough to ensure she'd cited everything she used. I've asked her to meet with me to discuss the problem; the shock she's already been through is probably enough of a learning experience, so I'll let her revise the paper to show me she knows how to do it right. But I want to talk to her face to face first.

The plagiarist I found last night seems more obviously deliberate in her intention to cheat--probably out of panic: I looked back at previous grades and this young woman got a 48 on her first paper (out of 100), and that was probably generous. An example of her typical sentence structures: "This gives the understanding of the awareness of breathe in which is a connection when we speak, we let in breathe to let spirit in." (Huh??) This is why I'm annoyed with myself for taking so long to pick up on the plagiarism. I grant you, the sources she stole from are not wildly erudite, but still. I'm very much on the fence about whether to let her revise. My inclination is not to; a lot will depend on how she responds when she gets her paper back. (Of course she missed class today, so her paper is sitting on the office door, waiting for her to pick it up.)

On a tangential topic, I realize that at this stage in the semester, I tend to let a lot of my rules slip--at least for the students who are genuinely making an effort. I'll bend over backward to give students chances to pull out some kind of success--even though I know that often the ones I give the most rope to end up hanging themselves (and pissing me off, the little ingrates; I hate when I give them chance after chance and they abuse my generosity). But my shattering of my own rules isn't really any sort of altruism; I'm just too tired to put my foot down. I can still do it, if I'm pressed, but most of the time I don't want to fuss. "Yes, sure, OK, whatever--can we just get this over with?"

And more broadly on the topic of students dropping the ball, I'm also dealing with a group in KC in which one group member has screwed everyone else: she said she'd handle a significant portion of their proposal and didn't, so now they're scrambling to do the work she said she'd do. This happens all too often; it's one thing when they don't come through for me but even worse when they don't come through for each other. For that reason, I'm letting a lot of students stay in class who probably should know they're certain to fail: I don't want them to abandon their groups and leave everyone else in the lurch. I have yet to figure out how to time it so I am absolutely sure who is going to fail before I assign the groups, so we don't end up in this bind, but there's always an awkward time when some are teetering on the brink and I don't know for sure which way they'll fall until it's too late. This particular problem--keeping students in a class they're failing just so they don't mess up a group--is merely one more thing for me to try to find a magic bullet to fix. (Awkward sentence but I'm entitled to a few here and there, dammit.)

So I'm crabby and dehydrated (crabby from lack of sleep; dehydrated because the heat is cranked up all over campus so it's Sahara-dry), and despite my earlier determination to get all homework cleared off my desk before the weekend, I steadfastly refuse to do any more work tonight. I'll get done what I can tomorrow before my 11:30 meeting and between classes; the rest I may not even take home with me but may leave to work on here in the office next week. I'm improvising every step of the way.

It's wildly early, in terms of my usual work schedule, but I'm going to stagger off home, have an early dinner and (as Szilvia would say) "deluxe." I hope I'm not forgetting something of vital importance that I need to tend to, but if I am, well, I'll just have another "oh shit" moment. And life will go on, regardless. Funny how that happens.