Ah, hell

Didn't get the last four papers done for today's 102. The reason? Tracking down proof of plagiarism in two papers. In one case, at first I though the student just had not revised (which he hadn't: duh), and I was annoyed enough about that. But then when I was looking for the sources used by the other student, whose work was more obviously plagiarized, I ran across Student One's entire paper on ECheat.com (tag line: "It's not plagiarizing; it's collaborating"--which demonstrates a snarky, smirking attitude that infuriates me beyond what I can describe). I feel rather an idiot that I didn't pick up on Student One's plagiarism in the first version, but not having any examples of his writing--and since he's generally pretty good in class discussion--here weren't any warning flags. The most maddening part is, if he can write even as well as he can talk, he'd get at least a C. Instead? Zero--and I'm giving him a zero for both versions (retroactively for the first one). I didn't have time to find and personalize the letter about plagiarism that I've stolen (OK, plagiarized) from Paul (I have his permission to use it: I tell myself that makes it OK), so I just confronted the student about it after class and left it at that.

My only concern is that I didn't copy his paper for my records. At first, of course, he acted shocked (shocked, I tell you! How can this possibly be??) Then, when I said there was absolutely no way he could have taken what he did without knowing, he muttered something about "my mother." I said, "Your mother wrote your paper??" No, he said, she "helped" him. I didn't even get into the whole "then your mother plagiarized, and you plagiarized twice, by using her plagiarism" thing. I just told him that it was plagiarism, that I had attached the source I found, but even if he'd found it on some other site, the point was that he had simply copied and pasted the entire thing. He kept trying to get out of it: you mean even the works cited isn't mine? Even the page numbers in the source notes? Puh-leez. I said, "You got caught. You knew what you were doing." Finally, finally, he had the good grace to apologize. I said, "Thank you. That's a more mature response. But apologize to yourself, too. And next time have the courage to succeed or fail on your own merits."

Pretty ironic that we were going over the lesson on accidental plagiarism today (the kind where students just make sloppy mistakes)....

Student Two's paper did have red flags. Her first version was weak on all fronts, but in revision, suddenly she was introducing new ideas--that didn't relate to anything she'd said in her first version (or each other) but that were surprisingly insightful and well written. I went straight to Google. I found one sentence that she raided from elsewhere, but I know there's more and I want to find it. I spent a maddening amount of time trying to download/use free plagiarism detection software here at the office, to no avail--after taking the time to type her paper into a Word file so I could check it. I wish to hell plagiarism detection software was more easily accessible here on campus--and was more than Turnitin.com, which I find doesn't catch a lot of the most common sources from which students raid. In any event, I've e-mailed the paper to myself and will run it through Plagiarism Detector, which I have at home. I wasn't going to return her paper to her today anyway, as I want to catch as much as I can before I do--but I didn't have to explain (or prevaricate about) why I wasn't giving her paper back, as she wasn't in class.

The other three students who did not get papers back today didn't seem to much mind--and I'm hoping like hell their work is actually theirs. After the plagiarism debacle, I now won't be quite as annoyed if they haven't bothered to revise: small peanuts in comparison. But I don't have to think about them for a while. Whew.

Still, having begun to look at some of the plagiarized sources online, I'm now afraid I missed other plagiarists, as much of it looks frighteningly familiar. What this says is that it's time for me to assign new stories, stranger ones that are harder to cheat with. ("Sonny's Blues" and "The Red Convertible" I took from a relatively common textbook, so the "market" is ripe for comparison essays--but "Dance Me Outside" and "Ile Forest" are pretty unusual, thank god, so that pairing is damned near impossible for students to cheat on.) I'll be checking the papers on the Anne Sexton poem pretty carefully: I already know a number of the sources for cheating on that topic (and, again, I think it's about time to pick something more obscure--like the Native poems and critical essay that makes up the other poetry topic--to reduce the availability of plagiarizable sources).

Shit. I truly, utterly hate it when students resort to cheating.

In any event, I am taking home a small wodge of work that I will need to do before the end of break--but I'll do it at the end of the break. After some sleep (which I need so desperately I feel like I've been punched repeatedly in the face), I intend to spend the next days enjoying time with Ed. Not only is tomorrow another day, it's set to be a delightful one. Can't wait.

But sleep first. OK, food, then sleep. Turning off my brains now.