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Temple requires that term papers be submitted through a service known as TurnItIn which purports to check for plagiarism not just with other papers but with THE ENTIRE INTERNET.  A task that’s beyond even the best webspiders and the Internet Archive can apparently be done by a piddling plagiarism policeman.  Laughable.  Anyway, I submitted my term paper and received a note back two days later from the instructor that the paper had been flagged for plagiarism and that I needed to explain myself.

Me: I didn’t plagiarize anything.
Instructor: Well, large portions of your paper were highlighted in red, indicating that they were copied.
Me: Copied from where?
Instructor: It doesn’t matter, plagiarism is plagiarism.  The Fox School stands for the highest standards of education.  Don’t think you can slip one by us.
Me: I didn’t plagiarize, I’m too arrogant, what now?
Instructor: You need to explain this to the department head.
Me: Can you at least tell me what was apparently plagiarized?
Instructor: I’ll see if I can send a copy.

I received the copy, and you know what my plagiarism was?  QUOTES, FUCKING QUOTES.  Magazines, articles, surveys and webpages all meticulously cited in the end-notes showed up as plagiarized.  How fucking dumb is that?

The irony is that being cited for plagiarism by using citations makes it more likely that students will take other people’s ideas without citation and simply modify them slightly to avoid being accused of plagiarism, which increases plagiarism.  Two weeks folks, two weeks.

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I regained my faith in the youth of America today.  That happens every two months or so, but this day’s was particularly refreshing.  Today was the case competition for all graduating seniors and as we watched 3 crappy presentations and one stellar one the listlessness in the audience became palpable.  The judges left, and we were guaranteed a quick return as the presentations had already run over and then the trouble began.

The BA coordinator, herself having no reasonable business skills, opened the floor to questions.  The first was could graduation fees be rolled into admission fees?  The answer, yes it was part of the next “fee upgrade”.  The student fired back that the fee upgrade was several hundred dollars a semester to which he was met with silence.

Question 2- Integrated Experience
Student: The financial ratios section of the course was hard.  Is there any idea to remove that for non-finance majors?
Proctor: Yes.  We’re thinking of dropping that.
Another student: Then what’s the point of making it an integrated experience between courses if you leave out large portions of them?
Proctor: We’re going to add a simulations course as a pre-requisite to take care of that.  Financial math doesn’t represent the main focus of the business world.  (at this point, she made an enemy of every econometrics, forecasting, finance and actuarial science student in the audience)
That other student: You’re adding a pre-requisite to cover finance?  Since it’s a capstone, aren’t all the courses pre-requisites, including the finance ones we have to take anyway?
*silence*

Question 3- Common Experience
Student:  A lot of us feel that there was an unequal experience between people taking this course.  Some classes got to hand in essentially fluff.
Proctor: There’s a common syllabus for instructors to follow.
Me: But, CIS 1055 (basic computing) is regulated to within an inch of its life, you’re telling us that basic computing should be subject to more academic rigor than the capstone for all business majors?
Proctor: Next question

Question 4 – Ethics
Me:  It’s great that business ethics was added as a requirement, but what does it teach when we’re chided for filesharing as a generation while at the same time you show copyrighted films in the large session that I’m sure Temple doesn’t have re-broadcast licenses for.
Proctor: Educational institutions have a different standard, we’re using it for educational purposes.
Me: By that logic, we can photocopy text books as they’re for educational purposes, but students have gotten expelled for that.

At this point there was much loud talking and the questions got more derisive from here until it ended with the Dean herself being attacked.

Dean: we believe that your degree is a share in Temple University and we want that share to gain value and…
Student shouting from audience: How do I sell my share!
Another student shouting from audience: What firms require stockholders to pay the dividends? (I’m assuming referring to tuition)

My heart lept.  How many places have you seen a dean get heckled?

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I finally figured out why my BA 4196 instructor is effectively ignoring me.  He’s switched where he stands during class from behind the front podium to into the area where the desks actually are, and because of some interesting neurological phenomena that accompany some types of cateracts he doesn’t realize anyone on my side has their hand raised.  Then, he’ll ask if anyone has any questions.  Someone on the other side of the room and he’ll pan his head until his good eye sees me and I’ll ask my question.  He then looks back at the person who pointed out that I had my hand raised with a quizzical look as though through a system of classroom telepathy the other guy was made aware of my hand.  Once I figured this out, I started asking a lot more questions.  The instructor does his little surprise act every time like clockwork.

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I’ve been hammering away at a BA 4196 paper for the last 6 hours and I’ve found good proof that I should stop:  I recently noticed in my paper on the Russian ice cream maker Ice-Fili that I’ve been using as the unit of currency “rupee” a la the Link games and to a lesser extent India instead of  rubles, the currency of Russia.

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The BA 4196 prof was out today so there was a substitute.  We began reviewing the case that we’d submitted online before class and once I got over the fact that he kept saying “wolunteers” and “wolume” all was well.  The review of the case was quite in depth and most of us felt we’d missed a few parts.  At the end he remarked “that should help you in reviewing the case, when’s it due? Tomorrow?”

Our jaws dropped, apparently in every other section the instructor goes over the case before the study’s due rather than learning by failure as our prof. has been demanding.  This certainly explained why he called us idiots compared to the grades out of other classes.  In unrelated news, I’ve found I can get free shipping on garrotte wire through Amazon Prime.

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We had presentations today in BA 4196, goody.  The teacher spent the session staring at us unhappily and I spent the session looking quizzically at poorly wrought PowerPoint presentations.  At then end, the group answered a question really poorly and the teach popped.   While I hate it while it happens I love it after the fact when a teacher blows up.  In particular I like two speeches:

1) My generation is superior to you generation
2) You’re undervaluing this useless and valueless material

There’s also the “Your ethnicity is inferior to mine” speech but that can only be implied and generally comes from grizzled Soviet bloc mathematicians.  This professor wins the award for being the first instructor to give both in one semester!  He beats out my stat professor who did both but over two semesters.  He even walked out angrily two minutes before the regular end time of the class.

Later, I got my test back in Act Sci 3505 and there was a rare instance where I bit my tongue.  I had been out the previous week and after reviewing the test angrily told a classmate that the 2 points I received off for failing to explain an answer properly robbing me of a 90.  He said he’d lost 30 points for similar things and was unsuccessful arguing it.  His grade was a 50 while the class averages was 48.  Whew…

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Last Monday I nearly ripped my hair out writing a memo and preparing a presentation for a group project in BA 4196.  I got my grade late today.  48.5…. out of 100.  I looked into the individual grades and it broke down to one person getting 32 out of 100, another getting 33 out of 100 and me getting 48 out of 100.  Below that was a note saying “do not attempt to convert points out of total into a grade or percentage” I don’t know if this was some policy to cover his back-end kabuki system or a warning that based on our group’s poor performance such mathematical work could cause ourselves personal harm.

After six years, two schools and $3360 in SEPTA train passes I will not be undone by “Strategic Management”.  Ironically, I need a game plan.

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Last Monday I nearly ripped my hair out writing a memo and preparing a presentation for a group project in BA 4196.  I got my grade late today.  48.5…. out of 100.  I looked into the individual grades and it broke down to one person getting 32 out of 100, another getting 33 out of 100 and me getting 48 out of 100.  Below that was a note saying “do not attempt to convert points out of total into a grade or percentage” I don’t know if this was some policy to cover his back-end kabuki system or a warning that based on our group’s poor performance such mathematical work could cause ourselves personal harm.

After six years, two schools and $3360 in SEPTA train passes I will not be undone by “Strategic Management”.  Ironically, I need a game plan.

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Two groups presented case studies today in BA 4196.  For once, the humor was not from marketing majors fumbling to come up with financial justifications or accounting majors trying to explain how a solution could be sold but the instructor.  Over the semester, the number of students using laptops has continuously increased and today the teacher jumped on the bandwagon.  He spent the entire 45 minute period dicking around with his laptop, and not that dicking that’s just fudging with it while taking notes, this was hard-core screen adjustment, battery removal, USB mouse attaching and all.  He picked up nothing, and at the end of the period when he opened the floor no one said anything.  I was curious to see how he dealt with him having no information so when he looked towards me with the “you’re the fat one, you always have an opinion” glance I stared at the carpet weaving on the wall.

He began visibly sweating and eventually simply dismissed the class claiming he’d have to “look over” his notes.  I can’t wait for grades to be posted.

Update: They got a B-, I’m not sure what that’s supposed to mean, but if I think my next presentation will go poorly, I think I’ll start using a laser pointer to try to distract him.