Picture of Me

You took a picture of me the last time I saw you.

I put up a small fuss.  Insecurity, bashfulness, and a touch of coy.  But when you said, "I've got a lot of long, lonely, cold nights ahead of me," I nodded and you clicked.

I got back on the train.

It was a cool, damp morning.

All the way back I looked into people's backyards.  I fantasized about life under all those beautiful, majestic trees.

Once I was home again I thought about that picture a lot.  I didn't want to see.  But I wondered if it helped keep you company.  Or warm.

Your letters were my companion and cover.

The loveliest letters.

The only love letters I've kept after the love fell out.

The hardest part of my job.

I teach a fairly large fine arts course at a mid-sized state university in Texas.

I used to teach it at a really big state university in Texas.

And by midterm I've already forgotten that whisperers, late comers, and text messaging aren't the absolute worst thing about being an educator.  But then the end of the semester rolls around and suddenly your students change a little.

I know they're tired.  I know every semester is a long semester when you're an undergrad.  I know it's so easy to get lazy.  And stupid.  And I know it's not a reflection of me as a person or professor.  But.

Plagiarism is really the very worst thing about what I do.  It absolutely ruins my day, and no matter how hard I try to remain objective it always changes how I see the student.

Some of them don't get it.  They copy a whole paragraph verbatim from a website with no quotation marks and no internal citation and so long as that website is listed on their Works Cited page it's okay, right? 

They wrote the paper with their room mate, not for their room mate.  That's just working together, isn't it?

Can't they at least get credit for the 50% that is in their own words?

Then there are the ones, and these are worst, that just thought they could get away with it.  They are the ones that never answer your e-mail and never show up in your office to discuss it.  They won't contest it, either.  They know they messed up, and they're not even going to answer for it or try to explain.

Today I did talk to a student who fessed up, and we both discovered much to his chagrin that he plagiarized on what unbeknownst to him was extra credit.  And he didn't now it was extra credit because, "I just wasn't paying attention in class."

And so what do you do with that? How do you get that to affect their grade?  Deduct what the extra credit would have added?  Maybe? Worse? Less?

Out of 280, so far there are 13 instances and 11 students.  Yeah, two of the "wrote it with my friend, it's okay, right?" students did it twice.

By the end of the week I bet I'll hit 20 instances.

Ready for a new semester and a new hope of integrity.

That Time of Year Again...

As soon as I post this, I'm heading over to Holidailies to register the new-to-this-year blog.

I've been writing online in some form or fashion since 1996. I started with Estrogen, then moved on to...lots of little blogs I mostly don't remember the names of. Namelos and To Be of Use were around for a good while, though.

Nowadays, it seems I mostly just pop up once a year. Just in time for Holidailies. And every year I think that this will be the year I start writing regularly again. Writing regularly in this format, that is. But then I either stop posting or suddenly want a bit more privacy or something.

So. No expectations this year. We're just gonna sit back and see what happens. This year, from the other side of the state (that'd be Texas for those of you playing along.)