cheaters caught!

[dancingkittycat]

Grading the last paper of the quarter did not start out too well today. After my mistake in the course schedule, I needed to bust a move on these papers today, but instead of doing that, I spent the afternoon hunting down plagiarism! I was always told that it would be obvious when a student plagiarized. I've had suspicions before, but never found anything. Well, today was a different story... TWO students in a row today had plagiarism in their papers. The first one just did not use quotations around things that he should have. He was "paraphrasing" I think, but did not really change much, and that doesn't work for me. The other... oh my... His paper... well, lets just say I found it on at least 5 websites. Several were those official paper websites where you had to pay $30 to get the paper in full text. Somebody wasted their money. Now he's failed the paper, and failed the class. But what really gauls me about all this, which I didn't realize would be so gauling indeed, was that he was lying to me. I almost wanted to cry! He lied to me and tried to cheat right under my nose. And this was a student that I've tried to help out! Sigh... To boot, he wrote his paper on legalization of marijuana, which has some good arguments, but after his plagiarized paper, he proceeded to explain the process of rolling a doobie. Good grief. I felt like he was mocking me... of course he was really just trying to get by. But it didnt work. Anyways, that was an interesting experience. It stinks for someone to have gone all the way through the quarter to get black flagged on the last lap. Although, he was failing the class anyways I guess. Ah the joys of being a teacher. This time of the quarter always stresses me out because I have to fail people. I do not like doing that. I'm not real good at those confrontational moments.

Well, break time is over, I'd best get back to work.