S/O of plagiarism... funny student responses

[penguingrrl]

It seems like a few of us have great grading stores, so share! I went to grad school at what I thought was a fairly decent University (UMass-Amherst) and saw some of the my horrifying yet funny things in a few papers and exams.

- I had a student write "Dr. Martin Luther King Jr posted his 'I Have a Dream' speech to the door of a church."

Same semester, another class, US and the Cold War, this was written to start the final paper:

"The Bolshevik Revolution, which happened approximately twenty five years before the American Revolution" :-| His paper continued into a rant about why can't we all just get along and communists have the right idea. It was clearly written while stoned the night before. When I got to that one I asked DH to read and make sure I had read correctly and hadn't just been drinking too much wine while grading...

[aurora]

Funny!

As for this one:

Nov 27, 2012 12:41:13 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

...When I got to that one I asked DH to read and make sure I had read correctly and hadn't just been drinking too much wine while grading...

at least the wine-drinking makes the grading a little less painful.

(I would share stories, but most of mine are related to esoteric math and really aren't all that amusing.)

[penguingrrl]

SBP I'm dying at the word banks!!!! And oh noes, a radical feminist? I'm sure your mother was very hurt lol!

Aurora, DH has a few of those (he's a postdoc in Chemical Engineering who has taught in a few departments through his grad school years) that he sometimes posts to facebook and his engineering/grad school friends laugh a lot!

[emilyj]

A couple of years ago, I was teaching a media history class. That yielded one of my all-time favorite exam responses:

"Thomas Jefferson was pivotal in inventing the radio, and that is why the United States won World War II".

[basilosaurus]

My kind of teaching didn't involve me grading, but I was evaluated by every class. I rarely looked at comments b/c they could sometimes really sting, even if they were ridiculous. Plus I was emailed my weekly average, so I knew where I stood.

But one sticks out in my mind. I looked b/c this lady was an asshole to everyone in the office, and my manager looked up what she said. Then she told me I should, but probably after the weekend, so I wouldn't be hurt by it. She didn't hold it against me, but thought I should know anyway.

This was for beginning windows. As in, people who look at a mouse funny and can't figure out what to do with it. The woman claimed she was the president of a college. So, my first lesson is usually getting them into solitaire, letting them play, single click, double click, click and drag, basically learn some terms and familiarity, while letting the coffee get to work.

She bitched and moaned on the comments about how she was too smart for this, that she wanted games for people who knew how to read, the instructor insulted her intelligence with solitaire, the instructor was so dumb, didn't know what she was doing, rant rant etc.

The best part? I teach them a little prank at the end of the day to reinforce skills. She followed all the instructions correctly but totally didn't get the point as she managed to prank herself. Yet I'm the dumb one. I literally taught that classes dozens of times, and she was the only one to have this problem.

[smock]

My two recent favorites:

On the Peloponnesian war: "Sparta invaded Peloponnesians because the trees were too rich." Uhhh . . .

On the medieval code of chivalry: "knights were specifically similar to robots of the king." WTF?

[basilosaurus]

Another (quicker) story. I was teaching an html class. Toward the end of the 1 day class, a woman asked me if she could check her email. Of course, I said that at the beginning. But then she asked me how. She'd been programming all day, so I'm all, what do you mean, how do you check email?

She thought the class she signed up for was hotmail, and she was wondering when we would get to that point. Don't you think you'd ask that at 830 when I go through the agenda and a brief lesson on what html stands for? Not at 4, when the class ends at 430?

[penguingrrl]

Nov 27, 2012 15:53:11 GMT -5 emilyj said:

A couple of years ago, I was teaching a media history class. That yielded one of my all-time favorite exam responses:

"Thomas Jefferson was pivotal in inventing the radio, and that is why the United States won World War II".

Nooo!! That's hilarious!!

[basilosaurus]

Are you sure it wasn't decolashin cake?

I can totally hear it in my head.

Also, hamburger = hamBAHgah. If you don't order it like that, they have no idea what you're talking about.

[emilyj]

When I was getting my PhD, I was the instructor of record for public speaking classes (as we all were), and one of my students gave a persuasive speech titled:

"Wrap it B 4 U Tap It"

Spelled out exactly like that. He also passed out condoms at the end of his speech to the guys in the class.

[penguingrrl]

OMG, you guys have me rolling at this point! And yum, cake

[basilosaurus]

Nov 27, 2012 16:16:01 GMT -5 emilyj said:

When I was getting my PhD, I was the instructor of record for public speaking classes (as we all were), and one of my students gave a persuasive speech titled:

"Wrap it B 4 U Tap It"

Spelled out exactly like that. He also passed out condoms at the end of his speech to the guys in the class.

Our freshman college mandatory sex talk was entitled "Chlamydia is not a flower."

The booklet had a lovely picture of a magnolia.

I met a guy who said his dad was a doc at our student clinic and asked if I'd met him. I didn't recognize the name. Then he said chlamydia is not a flower. Oooooh, yeah, I know that guy. He's my gyn, too. BTW, this conversation happened at a church picnic.

[aurora]

Nov 27, 2012 15:58:49 GMT -5 basilosaurus said:

Another (quicker) story. I was teaching an html class. Toward the end of the 1 day class, a woman asked me if she could check her email. Of course, I said that at the beginning. But then she asked me how. She'd been programming all day, so I'm all, what do you mean, how do you check email?

She thought the class she signed up for was hotmail, and she was wondering when we would get to that point. Don't you think you'd ask that at 830 when I go through the agenda and a brief lesson on what html stands for? Not at 4, when the class ends at 430?

I love this one.

[cattledogkisses]

The assignment was to write an essay on global climate change, and not only did the student plagiarize, they plagiarized from the Greenpeace website. Obviously a good unbiased source.

I wish I could remember some of the other ones. There were times when I would read and reread a sentence and think, "Is that even English?"

[cattledogkisses]

Oh, and this is not grading related but still a good WTF moment: I had a mom call her daughter in sick to class (this was a lecture class of ~300 students). Her college-aged daughter. I told her that the daughter should email or call me herself, and see me for her makeup assignments when she was feeling better. :-|

[emilyj]

Here's another good WTF one, directly related to plagiarism. This is an actual email I got from a student:

"I uploaded my paper to turnitin.com and it shows a high level of similarity to other sources, But it’s okay because the other source is a paper I wrote for another class. The person I am plagiarizing is myself.”

Um… no. NO.

[penguingrrl]

Nov 27, 2012 18:32:46 GMT -5 emilyj said:

Here's another good WTF one, directly related to plagiarism. This is an actual email I got from a student:

"I uploaded my paper to turnitin.com and it shows a high level of similarity to other sources, But it’s okay because the other source is a paper I wrote for another class. The person I am plagiarizing is myself.”

Um… no. NO.

Since when is it okay to tell your professor that you're not actually going to work for their class?

My favorite professor in undergrad talked about a young woman she had who had been a great student all semester. Then she showed up 2 hours late to the 3 hour final exam. The prof had actually been very worried about her since it was out of character, so took her in the hall when she arrived to see if everything was okay. The student explained that her mother forgot to wake her up for the exam so she overslept. The prof asked if she lived at home and, no, she lived in the dorm, but her mom still woke her up when she needed to be up. Ummm, not being able to be responsible for your own schedule is not an excuse to essentially miss the exam. The prof had been going over the schedule in her head to figure out when to offer this woman a make up exam until she heard that excuse.

[emilyj]

If we're spinning off into other things...here's an email I saved, also from when I was teaching while getting my PhD. I saved it because, well...damn.

"Hi (instructor),

So I thought our final was on Friday night, so I showed up on Friday and of course no one was around. I went back and looked at the syllabus and saw that the final was actually this past Monday. I don’t know if it’s too late for me to take it, but I do have a medical excuse because I had to get an abortion on Monday. Just let me know, thanks!"

I printed it out and took it to the department head because I had no idea how the hell to respond to that.

[UMaineTeach]

Nov 27, 2012 19:56:17 GMT -5 penguingrrl said:

Nov 27, 2012 18:32:46 GMT -5 emilyj said:

Here's another good WTF one, directly related to plagiarism. This is an actual email I got from a student:

"I uploaded my paper to turnitin.com and it shows a high level of similarity to other sources, But it’s okay because the other source is a paper I wrote for another class. The person I am plagiarizing is myself.”

Um… no. NO.

Since when is it okay to tell your professor that you're not actually going to work for their class?

I had professors encourage not doing double work if you could tie two courses together.

adding: I am on a scholarship committee that reads HS seniors essays to a prompt. Every year they are consistently terrible, and if I wasn't forced to pass 4 people on for statewide consideration none of them would go. The elementary school has started a 'how to write to a prompt' curriculum (Better Answers Protocol, www.stenhouse.com/shop/pc/viewprd.asp?idProduct=9134 ) even down to 1st grade, so I am hoping in about 7 years to have some decent essays to read.

[ChillyMcFreeze]

Nov 27, 2012 22:37:40 GMT -5 emilyj said:

If we're spinning off into other things...here's an email I saved, also from when I was teaching while getting my PhD. I saved it because, well...damn.

"Hi (instructor),

So I thought our final was on Friday night, so I showed up on Friday and of course no one was around. I went back and looked at the syllabus and saw that the final was actually this past Monday. I don’t know if it’s too late for me to take it, but I do have a medical excuse because I had to get an abortion on Monday. Just let me know, thanks!"

I printed it out and took it to the department head because I had no idea how the hell to respond to that.

BWAHAHAHA. That is awesome. Having an abortion, brb!