Off to the funny farm

The reason I was conspicuously absent yesterday, and did not pen a single word about that dismal world cup final, was because I am once again up to my ears in student papers. We have finally arrived at (cue joyous music) at the last week of the summer semester, which means it's final-paper-time. And whenever it's final-paper-time, as my loyal readers know, Dr. D tends to lose her mind just a little. And not because each year I have more and more students in my classes and thus more and more papers, which I think is partly because I don't mind failing a student or two, or three, or six, but also because of the academic honesty issues I run into every single year.

Really, it's all my own fault. It is. I have fellow professors who -never- have academic honesty issues. They never complain about citation issues, the lifting of entire paragraphs from wikipedia, or the blatant recycling of one's lecture notes. They also don't use turnit.com, and definitely don't run suspicious phrases through Google.

And I do.

Every semester I start off, telling myself I will not be as fixated on plagiarism as I was previous semesters. Mainly because it's a lot of work, it is incredibly frustrating, I have to face a lot of angry students, and it just really gets me down. I mean, wouldn't you feel just a teeny bit depressed if you spend over an hour explaining, discussing, and elaborating on academic honesty, proper citation, and APA, only to have 25% of your students turn in blatantly plagiarized work?

But then every semester one sentence in a paper will stick out. It will remind of a book I read, a website I checked out, or even better, my own online lecture notes. And it will not mention a source. And I'll try to ignore it. I might even grade the paper and move on to the next. But that sentence will stick in my mind, calling out for me to check it. To -at least- run it through Google. And I always give in. And then before you know it, I've decided that out of the spirit of fairness I then have to check all papers. And since running 5-page papers through Google is a lot of work, I sign into my Turnitin account. And there it is: Pandemonium.

Today's winner is a student who decided to copy her entire literature section from my lecture notes. With references to Dutch and German books and all. Whenever a student does that, it really drives home how much plagiarism really is like stealing. I spent hours finetuning my notes, and with two clicks, someone just conveniently "borrows" it.

I wonder at those people who claim that in today's social networking media age, students no longer understand the difference between mine and thine. Are they correct? Is that why there is so much plagiarism compared to ten years ago? And is that an excuse? Is all knowledge equal, and does it therefore not matter where you got it from anymore?

The bottom line is, I don't know. And in all honesty, I don't care. If you want to graduate, you have to know how to write an academic paper. And that includes knowing how to cite your sources. And if lectures, powerpoint slides, workshops, recommended literature, and comments on one's homework assignments don't do the trick, then perhaps you are doomed to redo Dr. D's class another two, or three times. And it doesn't matter how much of a millennial you are.

But at the end of the day, I am stuck grading papers where every odd-looking sentence sends me to the internet. Where every statement without a source makes my stomach sink in fear that I have yet caught someone else not adhering to the rules. Where I can't just grade a paper for its content, but have to constantly be on the lookout for signs of plagiarism, because who knows where that content came from.

So there is no joyous music just yet. In fact, the soundtrack to my life sounds a little more like this.