Yesterday I went to the gym. I came home and did a blog post. I went up and taught my class — they are having a really hard time with the concept of plagiarism. Many of them claim to believe that there are very few ways to say anything, and that copying is a natural and reasonable thing to do. We practiced explaining things in our own words. I told them I hoped that gradually they would begin to feel bad when they copied things, but that right now fear of expulsion should discourage them.
Next was a meeting with a new client. He contacted me, having been on the search for a web designer. “Now you’re officially a web designer,” said The Computer Guy.
“Is that all it takes? Rumor?” said I.
I’m taking him up today to meet The Computer Guy, since he actually does need a web designer. I’ll be doing the content. Right after meeting with him, we’ll be meeting with another new person for whom we’re doing a shared website with SEO followup. If the new fellow signs the contract, his will be our tenth joint website.
My initial meeting with this gentleman took place in a coffee house with his laptop. This was excellent. I meet people at my house sometimes, or at their places of business, but I’m thinking that a laptop would be a good investment once it’ll fit the budget. I had printed sheets out from his website, but having the computer there is better.
Then I came on home and finished another blog post before going to the American Association of University Women meeting.
There we had a speaker who told us about women’s political power. She did this by reading statistics to us. 6% of governors are women, 17% of both the house and the senate are women, though only 2% of congresspeople have been female if we count from the beginning…. It went on for an hour.
She was dressed in black and charcoal gray from head to foot, not even the relief of bright red shoes that so many of the women wore, and she did the twist occasionally.
Yep. She stood there like an elegant sort of wraith in black and gray, reading long long lists of numbers to us, and when she came to one she liked, she’d bend her arms and legs and do the twist.
I found it interesting, but I like numbers. And dancing
Onward to Tuesday class. We were exhorted to speak up when we saw wrong being done.
I saw another prospective client there. I’ve already met with her, and she’s deciding between having me fix up her current site and starting over with a new one with The Computer Guy. Her current website is with the phone company, and they are charging her $100 a month for hosting. This is four times what The Computer Guy charges, so I’d like to rescue her. Last night she told me that she’d called the phone company and been told that she had just renewed for a year.
“Do you feel that you’re stuck with that contract, then?” I asked sympathetically.
“No,” came the answer. “What will they do if I just don’t pay?”
I quite liked that attitude.
Home again, to respond to client emails and talk with #1 daughter. Her English teacher is a martinet who docked her 50 points (of 200) on a paper for being late to class, 15 points for using the word “you,” and 20 points for each comma she didn’t care for. One of the other students in the class told the teacher during class, “If all of us are failing, don’t you think that says something about your teaching?” And of course he was quite right. Having just heard about the importance of speaking up when wrong is done, I encouraged #1 to make a nice list of the issues and to pay a visit to the department chair. She could explain what’s going on in the class and point out that she is going to have to pay to retake the class and have her GPA lowered, even though she has done all the required work and missed no class meetings, just for the sake of a bunch of rather arbitrary point docking.
Today I have those two meetings I mentioned, plus a music meeting, the church study group, bells, and choir. I have blog posts to do, an oDesk hour, and work for several clients, plus papers to grade. I am determined to get exercise in as well, but it seems to me that I will need some fluidity with time if I am to fit all of this stuff in. Like, time should stretch out during the parts when I’m writing the post with the deadline and grading the papers.
Oh — and I still have to make that optometrist’s appointment.
Congratulations on the new title: Web Designer!!!
I’m sure it’s more than rumour that got you the title. Giggle.
It’s funny how you guessed “baby” on my news. And you were REALLY close with your thought! Thanks for the well wishes. I’ll be posting often. A new one will be up in an hour or so.
And wow – your daughter lost 85 points on that!!?? Good grief. Going to the Chair is a fantastic idea if the teacher is not willing to look at his/her teaching and the class results as a whole!
We continuously fight against plagiarism here as well. I always give a big scary lecture in the first class of each semester pointing out how much I hate plagiarism, that I’m not interested in other people’s words, I’m interested in the students own words. At least my students usually accept that it is wrong. I caught one plagiarism case (copied from a previous year’s assignment) in the first semester but the system is very frustrating. The university rules make a big deal about plagiarism and how being caught can lead to suspension or expulsion – but they never do it! We had all the evidence and all that happened was the student got 0 for that assignment. Some years ago I had one good tutor who gave up tutoring because of the university’s lack of action over plagiarism. My suspicion is that the bigwigs don’t want the publicity that goes with expelling people because of plagiarism – doesn’t make the university look quite so good when they are trying to sell the university as a’top research institution’.
Your daughter’s english lecturer is not a martinet, just a ridiculously small minded person. Anyone with any sense – even an english lecturer – knows that, while written english construction is important WRT allowing the reader to understand the writer’s ideas, it is still the content that is most important.
@sighkey – It also seems to me that there’s a need for perspective. Using the word “you” in a paper in freshman comp doesn’t seem to me to be worth an entire letter grade.
I agree but it quite a common marking practice among inexperienced markers, at least where I work. One of my responsibilities is to check tutors’ marking. The use of informal language, especially the use of ‘you’ or ‘I’ in a piece of writing often results in tutors giving out marks that are too low. I suspect it is not really their fault. As undergrads themselves they are usually taught that informal language is not acceptable in a scientifc report but they have never been taught how to judge the severity of the offense. I point out to my students that I don’t mind them using ‘you’ if they are presenting a ‘for example’, although I don’t encourage its use. The use of ‘I’ is acceptable if they make it clear that they are presenting a personal opinion and if they use it sparingly. Too many ‘I’s and ‘you’s would lose marks although at most it would be a drop of 5 out of 100 marks and that would only be the case if the entire assignment was written that way. 5 out of 100 is an entire letter grade in the NZ marking system BTW.