Speaking of Graduation...

Wednesday, May 09, 2007

I will be graduating this Saturday. Not too eventful since I know I will be continuing my education, but nice to mark a milestone.

The most exciting thing is that I will be the student speaker at graduation. I actually wrote the speech almost 2 months ago and was given the position about 1 1/2 months ago. So, I have rehearsed to the point that I have almost memorized the darn thing.

I'm only a wee bit nervous. I actually had a dry run (of a completely different speech) at an event on Saturday and things went well. I think I might have the public speaking gene in me.
posted by suzyjax on 5/09/2007 03:40:00 PM > 0 comments

Things are busy, busy...

Things have been so busy this semester. I have had an internship that takes up a ton of my time. It's been great experience and I will still be working on it this summer. But, added to my time load.

In addition, I was leading a planning committee for a Trivia Night. This was what we hope will be a "first annual" kind of thing. We made $1600+!!! Yeah.

The semeter is over class-wise for me. Again--like last spring--I didn't have any finals. So, I was really finished with all my coursework last week. I've just been twiddling my thumbs until graduation.
posted by suzyjax on 5/09/2007 03:37:00 PM > 0 comments

"On the surface, I am not a stranger to the local University of Missouri that individuals could easily relate to the cast of the play"

Wednesday, May 02, 2007

Plagiarized?!

My school has started to use a service called "My Drop Box." It is a website where student upload papers and the site checks against several databases (including other student papers) in search of plagiarized and other material that is not properly sourced or cited.

Last evening, I turned in my final paper for my final class. This morning I checked the report and it found one link to another paper on the web. Here is the sentence:

"On the surface, this seems like a small number."

I am actually surprised that they only found that sentence once out of all of the content that is on internet! It is an example of the very innocuous sentences and phrases that the service pulls up on my papers this semester. How many times will MyDropBox pull up something like "The tragedy at Pearl Harbor on December 7.."?

Other examples from this semester:

"I am not a stranger to the local political scene." This was from a journal entry about a local city council meeting I attended.

"The event was held at the University of Missouri-St. Louis." This is from a journal entry about an international lecture on the UMSL campus.

"There was a wide array of characters that individuals could easily relate." and "I was very impressed with the cast of the play." Both of these from a paper about a play on campus.

I guess I find this irritating because I would never plagiarize another's material. Academic honesty is an important principle to me. I think only once have I forgotten to put in a citation in a paper, but it was very obvious because I had the material in quotes. However, I did hear about MyDropBox catching someone plagiarizing material from---of all places--Wikipedia!! And the student I heard that did this is supposed to be one of the smartest people on campus. I wonder what was going through her head when she did that. Oh well...I guess it serves its purpose. In the meantime, I will be laughing at my own reports from the system.
posted by suzyjax on 5/02/2007 06:56:00 AM > 0 comments

[web-design by may] [customized by suzyjax]