Plagerism...why are people so lazy?!

[xfilesmaniac1]

It is amazing how may students plagerise. I agree, that for the most part, students are able to get away with it because in several cases it is so difficult to catch. However, in the course that I am TAing, there have already been several cases of copying complete assignments! Just this morning I found three assignments that were completely identical! When there are only 20 some odd assignments to mark that are primarily math and figures/graphs, it is very very easy to catch when people copy each other. I also found one person who obviously photocopied another person's assignment and didn't make corrections to it like the original person did. They also forgot to copy one page of the assignment that ended up being work half of the grade. Needless to say, this person did so horribly on the assignment that I didn't penalize him, however, I did write in both assignments that if I caught them doing this again, I would take them to the Dean. I also wrote on the copier's assignment that he did a really poor and sloppy job of copying. Honestly, some of the copied pages were upside down and had those streaks on it that photocopiers make sometimes...it was just horrible.

So in short, TAs aren't as stupid as most undergrads think them to be and pissing off a TA in the middle of a semester is not the best idea when they still hold a large chunk of your grade in their hands. No...I'm not vindictive at all...lol :p