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Please … I beg of you … do not let this moment of power, this fleeting experience of being the arbiters of history, all the promises, bribes, and back room deals, the notoriety and reporters hounding your steps … do not let these things distract you from your appointed job: enforce the rules. Not: rewrite the rules. Not: adjust the rules ever so slightly. Not: suspend the rules just this once due to unique and unforeseen circumstances. Try to maintain your grip on reality — remember you will be going home on Monday to your ordinary and unremarkable lives — and act with some degree of responsibility.
And, to all those undeclared super-delegates: If I had a supersonic airplane, I would fly to each of your houses and give you a solid kick in the ass, you over-inflated, power-hungry, and selfish squibs! Declare already!
In addition to tracking down recalcitrant plagiarists and watching bad television over the past few weeks, I’ve also been teaching what is known at my university as the “minimester” — a horrific bastardization of mini-semester. Here at State U., the minimester is two weeks long — an entire semester in two weeks. Needless to say, it’s a joke. But, I teach it because I need the money but I also need to publish — which is why I try not to teach during the actual summer semesters. I strive to keep my summers free for writing but the price I pay is my complicity with this academic scam.
I know going into it that the students have signed up for the class because they’re trying to get away with doing less work for the same course credit as a normal semester class. This makes me bitter but I also recognize that I’m guilty of the same cutting of corners (getting the same pay for teaching fewer weeks) so I can’t really pass judgement. Of course, they’re also taking this class because they hate literature or have contempt for it as a discipline (100% of the students are non-English majors, and most are science, math, or engineering majors).
I see my work during this crazy class to be 1) teach them something and 2) get them to read. Not particularly lofty goals. I have to suspend any other pedagogical priorities: teaching them to write, conduct research, revise, think critically, read extensively … Nope. Not gonna happen.
Strangely enough, my experience with these kinds of classes has been pretty positive. Because we’re together for many hours every day, a camaraderie develops amongst the students. They offer each other a great deal of support and view themselves as survivors of some terrible “boot camp” that I’ve put them through. If I wasn’t so completely exhausted and burnt out, I could almost come to enjoy the class.
I’ve developed a couple of strategies to cope with the marathon structure of the minimester (which I offer as an addendum to the fine set of advice KFluff has already crafted):
1) Break up the class by the hour so that every hour you move to a new and different activity. This helps remedy the monotony of the class but also reminds the students that each hour represents one class period from the normal semester.
2) Have one long break in the middle of class but also several short breaks throughout (as you transition between activities).
3) Clearly spell out reading assignments so that students know exactly how much reading they need to be doing every night and so that they can be reading far ahead of what’s actually discussed in class. This is the only way I’m able to require them to read novels — I have them start a novel immediately but we don’t talk about it until several days in.
4) Show movies. Thank god for movies!
5) Have an absolutely unforgiving attendance policy. I fail any student who misses an entire class day (or equivalent number of class hours) — even those students who show up on day 2 and act like they’re amazed that something happened the previous day. My thinking is that, while I can’t require them to complete the same amount of reading or writing as students from a normal semester, I can require them to have their asses in their seats for the designated number of hours. Plus, if they’re actually in class, I might be able to teach them that little bit of something that passes for course credit.
WTF?
The season finale of your show, Bones, was an absolute schizophrenic mess. Yours is a television series that I watch haphazardly while I’m waiting for better shows like The Closer to come back on. But, I was lured in by David Boreanaz (yes, I’m a Buffy fan — you were counting on that, right?) and occasionally checked back to see what the “Bones” character was up to. She’s a refreshing change from the bimbo-heads on most television and I’ll take my quasi-feminist characters* wherever I can find them.
But, what was that mess you put on TV on Monday? It was as if the episode was written by several individuals who were locked in separate rooms, unable to communicate with each other, and unaware of what the others were doing.
Writer #1 was commissioned to compose the first part of this two part masterpiece — the episode from last week about an obsessive fat woman who shoots Sealy in a fit of jealousy over the beautiful (and thin!) Bones. Not a great episode — too many hi-larious American Idol references for my taste — but not completely terrible, especially when compared to this week’s offering.
Writer #2 had the task of trying to dig the show out of the damn hole you got yourselves in when you allowed Sealy to get shot. This author’s genius plan included teasing the viewer in a completely half-hearted way about whether he was really dead (the suspense was killing me!), a laughable faux funeral — and the whole thing explained away by the umbrella term “state secrets.” I think this author is also guilty of the bathtub scene that was intended to play out the consequences of the faked death through some really uncomfortable and totally un-sexy nudity humor.
Writer #3 was tasked with the job of somehow extricating the psychiatrist character, Sweets, from his intended role as the bad guy who’s infiltrated the lab. I don’t know why you changed your minds about Sweets — he was the one of the most conspicuous “red uniform” patsys of all time — but a little mindless banter, another convenient bad guy, and suddenly he’s a show regular. What happened? Did you take a poll of adolescent boys, discover that they really relate to this toothy psychiatrist and decide to keep him on?
Writer #4 was ordered to somehow take two long-time and solid characters and make them seem like possible murder suspects. Good grief. Did your acting directions say simply: look ominious, even if you’re just scratching your butt? The choice to make Zack the bad guy who’s infilatrated the lab was just so badly handled — and his assertations that his master’s logic was infalible thus his murderous actions were justified just so goddamn absurd — you really blew that one.
Writer #5 had the unenviable job of wrapping up the agonizingly stupid Gormogon evil-genius-mastermind-nemisis storyline — and apparently told to do so in under five minutes. So, even if your viewers had suffered through this endless, convoluted, and confusing story, you gave them absolutely nothing for their trouble. Who was Gormogon? No one important. What were his motives? Completely logical, but we won’t bother burdening you with that logic. How quickly can this plot be disposed of? Very quickly indeed!
I suspect that it has taken me longer to write this blog post than it took you, dear writers, to compose the entirety of that atrocious episode.
Thanks a lot.
* I don’t actually think Bones qualifies as a feminist. Despite all her hyperrational commentary on the absurdity of marriage, reproduction, and romantic love (which, yes, I do enjoy), she’s a too committed to conventional beauty to be a feminist. Plus, she really, really needs a cheeseburger.
Earlier this semester, I caught a student who had plagiarized an essay. Yesterday, I caught two additional students plagiarizing in their essays. This would be upsetting in any event but there’s an added layer to this story: they are the three African American students in a class. The only three.
I am torn between my usual righteous anger towards cheaters — particularly those who cheat in the most obvious and insulting ways: cutting and pasting from free paper sites online — and a sense of complicity in a system that fails to adequately prepare students of color for the rigors of college life. Okay, maybe it’s my liberal white guilt speaking, but it just seems wrong that these three students would be the ones to cheat and the ones I have to punish.
I like to think I’m sensitive to the ways that race impacts the classroom — just as I am attentive to gender, class, and sexuality issues in the classroom. I know that the statistics show that students of color are less likely participate in class discussion, to seek assistance from their professors or other support services, or even to graduate. I do what I can to address these realities and to provide support to all of my students. It is agonizing to think that somehow the way I structured and ran this class might have contributed to these students feeling either so disenfranchised or so disconnected that they thought plagiarism was their best or only option.
I’m also worried about how it might appear to an outside observer. In a relatively small class, I will have accused three African American students of cheating and it’s likely that they will all fail the class as a result. At least so far, no other students have plagiarized — although there’s still time, since I’m not finished with my grading. But, how does that look? I’ll tell you: it looks like I’m a racist grader, who expects non-white students to be incapable of producing sophisticated writing.
I’ve actually toyed with the possibility of altering my usual policy — which is to accept no excuses and automatically fail any plagiarized essay — and give these students a chance to rewrite their essays. But I cannot decide whether that would make me more guilty of treating the students differently — like they’re a special case.
It’s a messy, messy business. Any suggestions?
UPDATE: I recovered from my temporary pang of disquiet over this situation after I was informed by one of the plagiarists that he had hired someone to write his paper for him. Apparently, he responded to a flyer posted on campus for a “typing” service. He handed over his notes from the class and the individual was paid to “type” up the paper from these notes — the radical divide between typing and composition apparently not troubling his conscience at all. Now, my feelings are redirected as outrage towards professional plagiarists.
