I can't believe it has been almost a whole month since I last blogged. Wow. Time sure flies when you aren't having fun. Actually, I should take that back. Last week I attended the RT conference and that was fun a majority of the time. Speaking of which, if I talked to any of you at the conference and was crabby, rude, or seemed in dire need of medication/therapy/shock treatments, I apologize. Something truly ugly happened right before I left for the conference and unfortunately it put me in a funk. A funk that got worse the closer I got to flying home from the conference and having to deal with the ugly situation.
Normally this is something I would be hesitant to talk about on this blog, but since I'm no longer going to be teaching I'm not really worried about any backlash from this post. Actually, that's not true. It's not that I am not worried, I just no longer care. That's how beat down I feel right now. I no longer care what happens, I just want out. But I'm getting ahead of myself. First I need to set the scene. Picture it: Thursday, May 18. It was the day after my final Reader Advisory class and my last day of work before my vacation. I was heading home to Iowa for a quick Mother's Day celebration before I flew out for my conference. I was happy and excited. It had been a long semester, and I had definitely earned a break. I only had two more assignments to grade, and then I was done. That's when it happened.
While grading the second to the last assignment something seemed off to me. It was a student project about Regency Romance. Each student selected a subgenre to study for their final assignment, and they had to create a guide of sorts for the subgenre. In the section for appeal factors this sentence caught my eye: One of the main reasons that the readers find Regency Romances so appealing is because they provide such a lovely framework for the standard romance formula. The phrase struck me as odd for some reason. So I Googled the whole sentence and found it on a page at author Susannah Carleton's website. Take a look if you don't believe me. It is the second sentence in the second paragraph under the heading The Appeal of Regency Romances.
Any guesses as to what I did next? I started Googling everything (and I mean everything) in the student's assignment, and was disgusted to find that everything single motherfracking word in the assignment had been lifted from one website or another. The student's definition of a Regency Romance was taken from a Wikipedia article. The student's "original" booktalks were cobbled together from Amazon reader reviews. It went on and on and on. The more I Googled the more plagiarism I discovered (and the angrier I got).
Just when I thought it couldn't get any worse a thought hit me. I wonder how long this student has been doing this? So I pulled up the student's past assignments (I save everything until a class is finished) and started Googling. At this point I'm sure it won't shock you that I discovered that every single assignment since day one had been lifted from somewhere on the web, but this is moment where something inside me snapped. If you asked someone I work with they would probably tell you that my head starting spinning around and I was speaking in tongues (that's how freaking scary I was).
Not sure exactly what to do since I had been allowing the student to cheat the entire semester and only just caught it (because I am a dumbass), I called my boss at the college. While my boss was shocked and outraged, I got the feeling that she isn't going to be 100% on my side. My first clue was when she asked me if I thought the student did what she did "maliciously." I still have no idea what she meant by asking me that, but it can't be good for me.
As with all things in academia there is a process to be followed when it comes to dealing with a student who plagiarizes. I initiated step one by contacting the student and letting her know that I had discovered her plagiarism and that unless she could prove to me that she didn't plagiarize that I would be left with no recourse but to fail her for the class. She responded back a couple of days later denying any wrong doing on her part and requested a meeting with me. Because I now don't trust this person at all and won't meet with her alone, the meeting is on hold until the first full week in June when my boss will be available to meet with us. Depending on how that meeting goes I may find myself spending a portion of my summer mounting a case against her to prove to the school that she plagiarized. I actually had to do some of this work before I left for my conference.
Here's the thing though: I have a feeling that no matter what evidence I produce she is going to get away with it. When the student emailed me back and responded to my allegations she made sure to note that English was not her native language and that my class had been very difficult for her requiring hours of work at both the college's library and her local public library. While I will point out in our meeting that we had two other non-native speakers in class as well and they didn't plagiarize, I just know that this comment along with "Was it done maliciously?" is going to result in her getting away with it.
Regardless, I am done. Done. Done with students and done with teaching. While I enjoyed the six years I taught for the program I just can't do it anymore. I no longer trust the students. Part of me wants to go back and Google every single thing my other students wrote, but I'm scared to death of what I might find. So I'm taking the cowards way out and giving up.
So that is my tale of woe for today. I promise I will be back tomorrow with a cheerier topic.
posted by Kelly @ 8:51 AM
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