On Academic Dishonesty and Other Fun Things

While I've been away, the semester ended. I got all of my grading done, turned in all of my assignments, saw my students' final grades, saw my own final grades, and have been relaxing since in Memphis with Jordan  and his family. 

I also had my very first experience with catching academic dishonesty as a teaching assistant, prompting me to look back on my own academic history and experiences with plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty.

Cheating (at school) is not uncommon. I once had a student come to me in the writing center with a "research paper" composed entirely of un-cited quotes strung together one after the other, with minimal discussion or original thought. When I asked the student (an adult student in the business masters program at my undergraduate institution) what she was thinking in crafting such an obviously plagiarized document, she simply responded by giving me a confused look. "Isn't this how you do a research paper?"

Extreme example that this is, the nature of academic dishonesty still seems to be misunderstood. Students think that they can get away with passing off another's thoughts for his or her own on a minor assignment. Parents think it's okay to write their teenager's papers for him or her. Friends in study groups have little to no qualms about copying each other's answers. I know. In my academic career, I've been confronted with all of these situations. 

Academic dishonesty is still dishonest. While I understand that many don't consider school to be "the real world," no one can argue that school isn't, at the least, a foundation for students who will one day, as adults, enter the real world. Dishonesty is dishonesty, whether you're stealing supplies from work, fudging the numbers so that you can line your own pockets, or googling "thomas jefferson" to save time on an assignment.

That student in the master's program was a businessperson, taking someone else's ideas, not giving credit and offering them as her own! In the corporate world, stealing a coworker's project and pretending that it's yours may have more concrete and disastrous results, but it's no less ethical than stealing someone else's paper. Besides, it's bad practice - if you can't do your own research paper in school, how can you trust yourself with your own work and projects in your career? 

This may come off as preachy, but it's born from years as a student, as a writing center tutor, as a teaching assistant, and, perhaps most importantly, good strong Catholic guilt. 

Happy Christmas break to students everywhere!