Has there ever been a case of someone plagiarizing and NOT getting caught?

I'm curious about that one too.

I think it'd be more work to plagiarize than it would be to just not. xP
I mean, in a way that wouldn't get you caught. Y'know?

I had an acquaintance of mine in my organic chemistry class that would just copy/paste stuff from like Wikipedia and then not cite it. She got caught, obviously, but if you're going to plagiarize and not get caught, I think it'd take a lot of work.

Yeah, all cases of plagiarism are (supposed to be) referred up to the Dean's office. I had two cases of students copying off Wikipedia for a paper that didn't get sent up, because the professor of the class didn't want to. They failed the assignment. Another case, where a kid copied not just phrases and facts from Wikipedia, but also Wikipedia's analysis of a Mozart symphony, we referred it up. I don't know what actually happened to that student; I had no sympathy, honestly, because I had him in a class the year before, and he never came on time, tried to lie his way out of his absences, and put no effort into the assignments at all. It was a repeat performance in the class where he plagiarized, so I simply handled things by the book, as the professor told me to.

We use TurnItIn.com, a website that checks papers against all other papers ever submitted to the site as well as content available publicly on the web. I don't think it checks against subscription resources, like JSTOR or Project Muse articles, but often you can catch that stuff because it just doesn't match the rest of the writing. Oh, and sometimes -- get this -- sometimes students actually cut and paste but don't even bother to change the font to match their own! Or they leave in the footnotes of the original text or something.

So, yeah, if you were curious... :) :offtopic:

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Yes, it takes a TON of work to cheat without being caught, unless you have an unobservant professor/TA. And most of us are pretty anal about it. :sweat: You might as well spend the time studying.

Yeesh. I'm too lazy to cheat! I'll study instead kthx!

:rofl: That's the spirit, Lore!

I'm to lazy to do either. :talk2hand:

*snort* Studying is good for you! Yes yes!

I am actually pretty good about studying though I will admit some classes end up shoved to the back because I know that it isn't critical to passing a test for me to study my butt off.

Yeah, I remember doing that in college -- calculating exactly how well I needed to do on something in order to get the grade I wanted (sometimes to just barely pass... :sweat:). It's different in grad school because you pretty much get an A if you're there and trying, and why wouldn't you be trying, since, well, it's all stuff that interests me. I really enjoy my schoolwork. :)

I have never "barely" passed yet, thankfully. :sweat: YAY COMMUNITY COLLEGE. xD

But I did do pretty poorly in Organic Chemistry 'cause my other classes required I STUDY for the test since I never read the books. >.>; And O-Chem was hardly ever studied for.

I've heard organic chemistry is often the hardest class because you just have so much to memorize.

I think any science based class would be difficult for me to pass since I'm not a science minded person. Although, if the grade were based on memorizing random facts then I might not do too badly. Memorization is my thing when I'm in school.

All this talk of school makes me anxious to get back into school and get it over with - which is not the right attitude to have. *wonders when she's going to be mature enough to go back to school*

It is a lot of memorization, scholar.

And not easy memorization, Scribbled. It's like memorizing mechanism of reactions, being able to remember what reactants, reagents and products of reactions. And it's never the same reactant on the test. You just have to recognize what the reactant is based on nomeclature/structure and then remember what the reagents listed would do to the reactant and what product would for (sometimes there is more than one product). It was hard stuff. Fun stuff, but hard. And I think I managed a B every term but if I had had time to study for the tests (which I didn't do) I probably would have gotten an A. But the fact is, I have a fairly good memory and I would at LEAST make flash cards for the class which helped. But then I never studied the flash cards. xD

I tried to study by at least going through the flash cards once in awhile but like I said some of my other classes I had to actually study for the tests because I did not outside work for them. Like my psych class last term. xD I think I read one chapter before I decided the book was a P.O.S. and unreadable. >.>; Needless to say, I also didn't study as hard as I should have for the first test and ended up with a C.

You're making organic chemistry sound really fun. This is not healthy for me; I'm either going to end up taking a bunch of classes unrelated to my field, or a completely different field altogether. <_<

It is a lot of fun but like I said, it's not easy. I adored my chemistry professor, too, it's possible that you could end up with a crappy professor and thusly the class would SUCK.

The way the class worked made learning (imo) much easier. We got a work book from the book store and we would work in groups of 2-3 and go through the Chem Activities and the professor would have points where we would stop and go over it all together to make sure we were understanding. It was great.

Ooh, that sounds like a great way to run a chem class, Estrella -- rather than the professor just standing up there lecturing, and assuming that the students are going to learn it all themselves. That doesn't always work in large classes.

Correction, Scholar: that rarely works in large classes. I cannot stand those gigantic classes with several hundred students at once. The prof can't connect with any student that doesn't put themselves out there, and the lecture style isn't conducive for anyone to learn anything. That's just been my experience. <_<

Yeah, when I have to lecture 300-500 students, it's really draining. You know they're just out there, sucking it all in, and not necessarily learning anything. That's why our school, when it has big lecture courses like that, also has smaller discussion sections (20-30 students), and that helps a lot.

I go to a community college so my class is only 30-36 students. xD
I know, that sounds lame, but I love going to community college. It's so much easier to get the help you need.

From what I know of community colleges, a lot just depends on the teachers and classmates you get. My local ones, when I was in high school, were full of (a) people whose parents insisted they go to college in order to keep on living at home and who had no real ambition; or (b) people anxious to transfer out to a four-year university. Our community colleges had, I think, some kind of agreement with some of the sort-of-local universities.

That sounds right. I wish I had skipped starting university or went to a community college instead when I first started. Now I'm in school related debt and need to find a way to bring my GPA up before I can recieve financial aid again which makes going back to school really difficult to afford. I had no real idea what I wanted to do with my life when I first started out at university and now that I know.. I can't do anything about it. It's really frustrating.

I come from one of those families where you had to go to school of some sort after graduating or else. It's really messed me up as far as school is concerned. The whole bipolar disorder didn't help either or that it wasn't being properly managed.

Good morning, how are you all today?

G'morning, Goddess. I'm doing alright. How about you? What brings you to our lovely thread?