(no subject)

[tahnan]

Still working on the naming paper, though mostly I'm grading. Along those lines, a question.

Have you ever plagiarized for a class? If so, why? Were you caught? If not, do you have any guesses why not?

(Answer anonymously if you're worried about self-incrimination.)

Comments

[kirbyk.livejournal.com]

Yes, in the sixth grade. A few times, actually, that I got away with because the teacher was lazier than I was. But then I did get caught, and felt truly terrible from the shame, and never did it again.

I think I was just trying to be more clever than the teachers, mostly, and save myself a ton of work. In the end, copying stuff was more tedious than expected, and I really did have a crisis of conscience by the end, so it was so not worth it, but I guess we have to make some of these mistakes when young. Saved me from doing it later in life.

I think I cheated on two tests in High School, one out of disrespect for the teacher and another just because I was curious if it'd be that easy to do (it was, but it was foolish since I was getting an easy A in that course anyway), and never in college.

[marith.livejournal.com]

Nope. I suppose I might have shared assignment answers with classmates, but don't really remember it (and I think I would have if I'd done so when it was specifically forbidden). Did all my flunking straightforwardly.

[tablesaw]

I never did any copying, though in high school, I'm sure that I must have used sources without appropriate credit. I think it takes a while to really comprehend the concept that not everything in a book is general knowledge, or that citations need to be given to paraphrases in addition to actual quotations. On the other hand, it takes a while, at the high school level, for papers to be treated as a representation of one's ideas, as opposed to proof of writing and researching ability.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

This is a really big problem for me as a librarian. I'm trying to teach high school and middle school kids the fine art of when something needs to be cited, how to paraphrase, etc. But the truth is that most of their papers - especially at the middle school level - should probably be one big citation, because nothing they're saying is their own idea! But that looks silly, and makes them feel like they haven't accomplished anything of their own, like they're just quilting other people's words together (even though that's exactly what they're doing).

[lunacow]

This was definitely not expressed to me in middle school, at least not in such a way that it stuck. I wrote a paper on Adolf Hitler in seventh grade that was based entirely on the contents of the entry in the encyclopedia my family owned, and was most likely just a summary of that entry. I was writing the paper the night before it was due, I'm sure, so didn't have time for any additional research. I think I was aware at the time that it was a lame paper, but it wasn't until later that I learned that what I had done actually counted as plagiarism. I didn't get into any sort of trouble, but later I felt guilty about it.

[avon.livejournal.com]

I think I cheated on a take home test in college. We were not supposed to used the book and I did. I didn't get caught.

That said...I have caught enough cheating kids. For example, if one is going to cut and paste from a WEB SITE, you probably should at least CHANGE THE FONT to match the rest of your paper in size, typeface and, mindbogglingly, color.

[saxikath]

I don't think I ever intentionally plagiarized. I know I rather consciously aped the style of a story I'd read for a story I wrote for a high school English class; looking back, it might have been too close for comfort.

I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere along the line I didn't cite properly, though.

And you know my saga of dealing with professional plagiarism, right?

[siderea]

No. Never. I probably have failed to cite properly for an idea, but I have never knowingly copied someone else's words[*] and claimed them as my own. I'm simply too vain -- and have been since I was about 8! -- about my skill as a writing stylist.

[* Nor melody, wrt music composition. Nor code. I've become something of a hard-ass about appropriate attribution.]

No, if I'm gonna rip of someone's intellectual property, I make sure to make it clear whose it was. :D

[toonhead-npl.livejournal.com]

Nope, never did. I worked in the library all through high school so I was absolutely obsessive about citation. Although I did witness a dorm floormate get nailed for it. He pled ignorance/innocence, but I'm sure he knew exactly what he was doing.

[touchstone.livejournal.com]

I don't remember /actually/ doing. I do vividly remember being accused of it, in high school. Sophomore year, and my first creative assignment for that teacher. Took me to the principal and put me on report because the poem I'd turned in was 'clearly too good to be my own work'.

Yeah.

[qaqaq.livejournal.com]

In college, I was once accused of plagiarism. In my senior year, I was taking an intro-level Religion course on the Bible, just because I thought it might be a good idea to have more of a working knowledge of it as a work of literature. (By then I had already finished all of my English major requirements and was just killing time, basically.)

Anyway, I had written a paper for the course, and the grad student who was teaching the course accused me of plagiarizing parts of my paper. I carefully explained to the imbecile that plagiarizing involves taking without credit, and that it is standard practice in papers to quote paragraphs from your sources with proper attribution; I also reminded her that this was a very serious accusation she was making and that she shouldn't throw it around so carelessly. She never did fully wrap her brain around this concept, which made me wonder what kind of papers they were writing in the Religion department. She told me that I could either rewrite the paper for a better grade or take a middling grade on the paper as it was. Since I was taking the class with one of my free pass-fails, I basically told her to bite me.

In retrospect, I probably should have gone to the head of the department and reported her, but that didn't occur to me. I probably should have done that on day one, actually, since her first question to the class was "Are there any non-Christians in here?" and I'm sure that's not legal. (I didn't raise my hand because I was still a year or two away from giving up on Christianity.)

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

I surely paraphrased extensively from the World Book Encyclopedia without citation in elementary school. I hated research papers, and wanted them done with. Why, I thought, should I have to write about what other people think?

My most impressive misdeed was actually something like the opposite of plagiarism: once, around 6th grade, I entirely fabricated a book for an oral book report (I still remember the nonexistent title and plot). To this day I have no idea whether the teacher was fooled or merely indulgent.