15% of my students plagiarized on their final exams (take homes / summer course). I’ve dealt with plagiarists before, but my role at that time was a teaching assistant. All decisions about how to handle it and what not was up to the professor in charge. Largely, confronting those students was up to the professor in charge. Now I’m in charge.
What shocked me this time was my response to their plagiarism. My emotional response. I feel sick about it. Mostly, I feel betrayed. Like some bond between us has been broken. But it’s this abstract bond. There is this implicit trust that these students broke. And when this 15% broke it, it was gone between me and my entire class. I became paranoid that all of my students were cheating. That they are all trying to pull one over on me.
I know, on an intellectual level, that they were doing nothing to ME. It wasn’t really about me. But my feelings say otherwise.
I have been fighting to keep my teaching innocence. To not conclude what others that have gone before have — that most of these students don’t care, just want the credits, just want to finish. I’ve been holding on to the one or two students who I know are really invested. Those who do care, try hard, want to learn. This makes doing that even harder. Perhaps it wouldn’t have done if my class was larger and the students who did this were anonymous forms in a 90+ student classroom. But I had a small class. I remember the questions these students asked, their interest in the theories… At least one of the 15% had me believing that he/she was one of those few who do care.
How do you handle the battering that our students give us sometimes? How do you keep the faith when students continually beat you down? Not turning in assignments, making up excuses, not showing up, not doing the homework and (worse of all) cheating?
If you know INTERACT, or you know someone who knows someone who knows how to use INTERACT, I need help. They have changed the interface since the last time I used it, and I am just trying to calculate the deflection for a depressed newlywed (male and female data both). I think I did it right, but I’m not sure. It’s the kind of not sure you can’t be when you plan on sending a paper out to a journal.
When you put in an identity it gives you a score right underneath (I’m assuming that’s the fundamental). When you put in emotion, it gives you the same. Then, underneath, it says “combined.” I’m assuming that’s the transient?
I know how to calculate the deflection if those assumptions are correct (the sum of the squared differences between the two). But that’s making a jump.
So if I have an E P A for “newlywed” at 2.81, 1.77, and 1.97 and a combined (depressed newlywed) of -1.44, 0.17, -0.19 then subtracting E1-E2 (2.81 – (-1.44)), P1-P2 (1.77-0.17), A1-A2 (1.97-(-0.19)), then squaring the three values and summing them, I get a deflection of 25.2881. (I’m assuming this is male data).
Is this right? Is the “combined” the transient score? HELP!
Filed under: Random
Blue and I went down to the new U to house hunt. For those of you following on facebook, you already know that our first choice is owned by a crazy lady who thinks she’s a house flipper in a town of 150 people or so. Delusional.
While we were there, I went to fill out the paperwork. Show my driver’s license and social security card. The woman who was taking care of this for me thought I was an undergraduate. True, she thought I was an upper division undergraduate. I found this amusing. I’m told to enjoy this while I can.
Filed under: Random
As those of you who are my facebook friends already know, I’m going house hunting crazy. I find these possibilities and just endlessly obsess over them (the good, the bad, the UGLY, the “wish I had become an engineer so I could afford this“). It’s sad really. When I sit back and wonder why I’m so obsessed (and I AM!), it because I realize I got nothing else.
So, in remembrance of this post, I bring you the new pie chart o’ me:
I need a hobby.
Filed under: job market
Blue and I spent the weekend at the new U. We went around the town. Saw what there was to see (and what there wasn’t — this place is small, ya’ll). We looked at some houses. Mostly we found that the houses we found online were in terrible locations (like two houses down from a frat house or an obvious party house — you know, the ones with deck chairs on the roofs or soggy couches on the lawns). But we found a nice neighborhood or two that we would like. We found Blue a coffee shop. I bought a university t-shirt (I am now again the same mascot I was in high school and my first college, and similar colors to the college I got my BA from… weird). It was generally good.
But, stepping onto that campus again, KNOWING that I was a professor there in the fall, was beyond surreal. How do you wrap your mind around it? That’s why I bought the t-shirt. I figure I can start wearing my new identity? Try to ossify myself (ossification-i-on).
I find myself not really believing it. Mostly, I don’t have time to think about it. I need to finish this class I’m teaching and try to finish the dissertation. Those thoughts take most of my time. But, every once in a while, I start thinking about my impending professorhood. What will it mean to be faculty? What will it mean for my life? How will this change the way I think? How will it change the way I live my day-to-day life?
I have already noticed some changes to my thinking. I go to the faculty meetings at my current U to report to the other grad students. I no longer find myself strongly identifying with graduate student concerns. I am still concerned for them, but it’s removed from me and I’m more able to emphasize with the other side. It’s slightly annoying, but at the same time it is fascinating to watch my self change with the adaptation of a new identity. I know I wouldn’t be aware of all of these changes, but every once in a while I catch on and am mesmerized (not by myself, but by watching these processes I study happen in myself — though, of course, I am mesmerizing… ahem).
I guess, stay tuned. I know my posting has been spotty. Hopefully that will be corrected when I’m allowed to think about more things than teaching/dissertation dissertation/teaching dissertation/dissertation/teaching… sleep. I imagine my experiences should be interesting, once I have them anyway.
Filed under: Random
Filed under: in the news
I am proud:
“We have a constitutional duty to ensure equal protection of the law,” the Iowa justices wrote in their opinion. “If gay and lesbian people must submit to different treatment without an exceedingly persuasive justification, they are deprived of the benefits of the principle of equal protection upon which the rule of law is founded.”
Filed under: Random
Snuggie or Slanket?
If you were as torn as I on this issue, look here. (Thanks again Dev)
And, if you were wondering, the answer is “yes.” As in, yes, this is really all I have to offer lately.
Filed under: Random
