When it comes to academics and me, I have kept a positive attitude in the face of warning signs. I somehow achieved a minor in psychology despite a terrible track record because I kept telling myself not to create a self-fulfilling prophecy by admitting the truth: that I suck at it. After finishing the last requirement in the program, I finally admitted to myself what was so overwelming obvious for so long, and it felt good, warm, and safe. Like when you come back from the restaurant washroom and your food is waiting for you: everything seems right.
There have been so many times in the course of my "studies" where I wondered if I was in the right place: bad grades, blank stares from profs at questions and comments, bad grades, awful luck with university "technology," and bad grades. Today, the final hint came that I simply do not belong in academics, and I will heed this warning with no more optimistic denial.
I was accused of plagarizing my latest essay. Short paper, five pages, did Iraq have weapons of mass destruction or not. I was asked into my prof's office where he told me that he had given me zero on the paper but was going to be lenient and not file a report that, were he to do so, would go on my permanent record and could be grounds for immediate dismissal. So what did I do? Did I steal an essay off the internet? Did I steal information from someone smarter and pass it off as my own? Did I not give proper citations and mislead the reader? This is what I did: On three occasions I quoted a source, cited it in line with the Chicago Manual of Style, put the source in my Works Cited list at the end, but failed to put those quotes in quotation marks. The reason I didn't was because I had to tweak the wording to fit it into the sentence, the way I had been taught in numerous other classes.
By doing that, I gave the reader reason to believe that the ideas were my own when they were not. That's plagarism, fair enough. Yet I would have thought that my clever little ruse would seem not so clever when I LISTED THE SOURCE AND PAGE NUMBER FROM WHERE THE INFORMATION CAME FROM. Stupidly I thought that by giving credit to the source I was actually giving credit to the source. After this final semester is done, I'll never go back.
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2 comments:
That happened to me in Anthropology but I believe I included the quotation marks. If the Prof doesnt like you boom you are fucked simple as that. You need to get finished with school and move on. Dont like get stuck in a shitty job cause some bitch teacher was on the rag dude.
Some students would look upon this and say to themselves, "I'll show you, I'll write the BEST ESSAY YOU'VE EVER SEEN!!!" To those students, I say fuck off.
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