Sarah Palin, who coined the term "Drill, Baby, Drill", felt emboldened to accuse Obama this week of being in thrall to the oil industry.
Meanwhile, some Top Tips for students (I know I've said this before, but you're clearly not listening):
1. If you're going to plagiarise and you're functionally illiterate, try to mess up the stuff you're stealing. We can, somehow and with the aid of microscopes and computers, spot the difference between high-level professorial prose and your verbiage.
2. If you take the other route, and plagiarise from any old internet site, consider some quality control. School-level sites just don't cut it. Ask yourself this: if a site is called 'askkids.com', is it likely to contain university level material which will convince a lecturer? If you think the answer is yes, then feel free to use your exhaust pipe as a bong.
3. If you've spent hours stitching stolen material together from a bewildering array of websites, why not consider using those hours for reading books and thinking about what to write? After all, you've proved that you can concentrate and put the work in. Now all you need to do is add a dash of honesty, get out of bed and go to the library. It's the shiny place with all the books and people loudly using their mobile phones.
4 comments:
Vole! I’ve gathered that you’re a man of excessive book-buying tendencies. How do you tackle dust build-up? Short of buying a 24/7 butler-giraffe with the ability to operate Mr. Sheen with its teeth, I’m not sure what to do. Help.
LOL Angry Vole. What is the point in going to Uni if your only going to steal someone else's work!?
The dust conundrum weighs on my mind - I live in a very dusty flat. I occasionally go round with a feather duster. I'd quite like doors on my bookcases.
However, if you'd rather not, there is good news. I read recently that some conservationists recommend leaving dust where it is, as it's often harmless and even protective in some way (against ultraviolet, perhaps). So don't worry too much!
As to the plagiarism: we've educated several generations now to expect qualifications, rather than to educate themselves with our help. If you have a consumerist mindset, then the means of acquiring the grade doesn't matter. It bespeaks a culture of acquisition rather than one of discovery and enjoyment. The plagiarist is skilled at finding information without reflection or development. The honest student learns something by synthesizing, considering, weighing and writing.
The losers are the plagiarists in the wider sense - they don't end up educated, merely qualified - and their honest colleagues whose degrees are devalued by cheating, unless we catch these people.
Of course, in some walks of life (advertising, Conservative Party, capitalism in general), theft and dishonesty are positive values because the key principle is that individuals should get ahead by any means necessary, regardless of the social or moral cost, hence the spectacle of the 1980s 'buccaneers' being praised to the skies, and unqualified bank chairmen 'earning' multimillion pound salaries while their banks destroyed the world economy. In narrow terms, these gentlemen were a success: they turned limited talents into enormous personal profits.
It's only old-fashioned whingers like me who care about probity, honesty and the sheer joy of learning… Let's be clear. If you go to university and successfully cheat, you've managed to borrow a lot of money cheaply, acquire the qualifications to get a good job, and learned that the system can be cheated. Crime does pay. It's a shame, but it's true.
That said, I am the best plagiarism hunter in the institution. I can smell it as soon as the essay is removed from its plastic folder.
I emitted an involuntary noise when I read 'feel free to use your exhaust pipe as a bong.' Most humorous.
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