Paranoid

I detected two more instances of plagiarism today (one from a student who had already been confronted with plagiarism on an earlier paper: I'm not sure whether that's sheer, blazing stupidity or a complete disregard for my intelligence--or both). In the wake of that, I realize I've gotten wildly gun-shy. It's awful: if I run across a relatively intelligent thought or a sophisticated phrasing, I rush to the computer to check it for plagiarism. This is awful on several levels, one of which is purely pragmatic: it takes a long time and a lot of concentration to hunt around for plagiarized sources--or to type in the paper (the red-flagged bits anyway) and then run it through the software at home. But the more significant awfulness of the suspicion is that I have stopped trusting my students to have intelligent thoughts or to be capable of sophisticated phrasing. And I want to be able to trust them in those ways. It truly sucks to feel this way--for them and for me. Very heavy sigh.

I was interested to note the two different reactions from the plagiarists today. Unfortunately, a lot of students were hanging around after class, so the one who had plagiarized twice--who has now failed the class, won't graduate, and has been reported to the dean--was hovering; I gave him back his paper and said "we can talk later" (code: go away), but he took that to mean he should hang out. He needs to reread the letter I wrote, in which I said that no further conversation would take place between us, and if he wants to argue his case, he needs to take it to the dean. I'm not sure he understands, and I worry a bit that he'll show up for class on Wednesday (late, as always): I just ran a scenario by Paul about that, and if he does show up, I'll just stop him as he comes in and nicely tell him he doesn't need to be there. (I do, however, hope he realizes that he's utterly hosed and stays away.)

The other plagiarist had to hang out after everyone else was gone anyway: he'd missed a bunch of classes because he had the "flu" (I didn't know the flu caused sunburn...) but he wanted to know what to do about missed assignments. He's actually a very bright, very hard-working student in general, so I am willing to give him the chance to get caught up if he can. However, after I talked to him about his proposal and whatever else he might need to submit to get back on track, I pulled out the plagiarized paper (tore off the boilerplate letter and the sources I'd found, having decided to talk to him about it instead) and said, "You plagiarized...." I was about to launch into the "I don't know if you did this accidentally" bit when he said, "I know. You're right: I did. I ran out of time; I was too busy at work and I just took the easy way out." He was relieved not to be failed for the course right that moment, and said I had probably wanted to kick him out. No, I said, I just wanted to understand why. Did he think I wouldn't notice? He was very honest and said that in the moment, that's not what any student is thinking; all he was thinking was that he needed to turn something in and didn't have time. I said, "I wish you'd come to me to talk to me about that time crunch. We could have worked something out. You're man enough to admit you cheated; I wish you'd been man enough to admit that you were having a problem." I acknowledged that he won't always get a professor to accommodate his work crunch--some will say (and rightly) that if one is in college, one needs to make room and time for classwork--but that it doesn't hurt to ask, and certainly doesn't hurt as badly as that zero will. It breaks my heart--and I told him so--because he could have gotten a very good grade and now he'll have to struggle to pass. Shit.

In any event, I don't want to churn through more proposals for 102, but I really must: I have to get them back by Wednesday so students can revise (and almost everyone will need to, to a greater or lesser extent), and I will have zero time to work on them tomorrow--unless I blow off my 8:45 a.m. meeting, which I might do. The committee meeting I have at 11:30 I cannot miss: I've blown that one off too many times already. Then I have P&B (Personnel and Budget, for those of you who have been wondering and missed an earlier identification), then my two classes. The classes will be pretty simple: in 101, I'll evaluate their proposals on the spot (only two groups), go over the reading for the in-class final with them, and then turn them loose. In 102, I'll open the floor for questions, collect their proposals and turn them loose. So I can chip away a little bit in those interstices, but I can't count on a big wodge of time in which to crank through what I need to have ready for Wednesday. And their revisions are still unmarked. Not even looked at. Ah well, soon, soon.

One way or another, it will all be over in seventeen days. That roller-coaster is on the downslope big time now: fling your hands in the air and scream!