Open Intervention Thread

This question is for the educators (or people who are good at writing papers) out there: let's say you can apparate, Mephistopheles-style, to your students the night before a paper is due and guide them to do ONE THING that might save their paper. What is that one thing?

6 Ways We Detect Plagiarism

Although many students get away with turning in an essay they didn't write, many more get caught. If you or a friend has ever been caught and wondered how, let me let you in on another awesome secret direct from the Professoriat. Or, rather, six.

All these things have happened to either me or a colleague in the past 2 years alone:

1. "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." --Inigo Montoya, The Princess Bride (see, again, how attribution works? Also, the person who put that on YouTube stole it, but let's not split hairs). The absolute #1 way we can tell you plagiarized or paid someone else to write your paper is because your paper sounds too fancy. A colleague of mine got a paper once that was written in professional jargon, full of weird neologism (look it up, it's not dirty) that only a grad student or PhD would dare think acceptable to use. Sure enough, he plugged a sentence into Google and up it came.
2. Your paper isn't necessarily "too good," but it doesn't sound like you. Granted, this only applies in a discussion course where the professor has ever heard you speak, but chances are the instructor has at least one example of your actual language (in an exam, for example), and can tell immediately when the "voice" of your paper sounds off. Especially if you suddenly start sounding like a B-level, bored Ivy Leaguer.
3. Everything in your paper is technically "correct," but it's in a weird order, it doesn't make any sense, and it's clear that you have no idea what you are saying. Here's a hint: just because academic writing sounds like gibberish to you doesn't mean it's gibberish to us. We can actually recognize the difference between well-written but dense academicese (Judith Butler, I am talking to you!) and complete gobbeldygook.
4. You never show up to class, on the rare occasions when you do and are awake and called on, your responses are monosyllabic and clearly indicate that you have not even looked in the general direction of the reading--and yet you turn in a paper on time that is surprisingly well-written but just a liiiiiiiiiiitle bit off-topic or vague.
5. You quote the text--but your quotes do not have page numbers, you haven't included a bibliography or any sort, and you even have a few footnotes that either don't go anywhere or are astoundingly professional-sounding. 
6. This is the most pathetic one, but you would be amazed how often it happens: your paper suddenly switches fonts! Come ON, are you trying to get caught?

If you want to avoid these detection methods and still plagiarize, then be my guest--but just know that the time and effort it will take to avoid these will equal or surpass the time and effort it would take to just write it yourself. And that is where the Paper Intervention comes in. Smart me just realized the "paper intervention" is also some sort of evil weapon/technique, but that's kind of appropriate, isn't it? Stay tuned for more Interventions, more musings on why plagiarism never pays (unless you run a paper mill), and some sassy and helpful YouTubetastics (soon, I promise--have to get an outfit put together).

Intervention I: Reading to Write in 5 Easy Steps

I hope to have an accompanying YouTuberVideo to add some spice (and fashion!) to this Intervention, but for now I'll just have to rely on the power of the written word. Ha, irony. Because if the written word had any power left, there wouldn't be so much paper-cheating! Hah. *Sob.* Anyway.

INTERVENTION I.

This is designed for the Not-So-Desperate (we'll call you DEFKON 1). If you have more than a few days to put together a paper that allows or requires secondary sources, here's how to go about getting the most out of your time. Future Interventions will be designed for the more-desperate.

Here goes.

Here's a great secret, direct from me to you, one I learned to rely on while in grad school and reading up to 900 pages a week (in ANOTHER LANGUAGE, bitches!). When you read for a class, you need to read in a different way than you read for fun (even if you don't read for fun--though if you're reading this, then you read something for fun. Anyway). You need to read to write.

How do you do this?

1. The first thing you need to do is let go of this text as a source of entertainment if it isn't immediately entertaining you the first second you pick it up (if it is, then bless you, you're a natural and the paper will come naturally). Stop caring immediately what happens in it. If it's a work of literature, spoil the plot AS SOON AS YOU CAN. (Pace to my grad-school BFF E. who has managed to retain a love and interest for the plot of every single thing she read in 6 excruciating years. You're one in a million, E). Look up a brief plot summary on a reputable website or "Spark it," but know that this is just to guide you through actually reading, and that any "insight" from Dr. Wikipedia or Dr. Spark will be immediately recognizable to your instructor. This is a PRELIMINARY STEP to make reading through the text faster and easier.
2. Once you have the plot down and before you even read 10 pages of the text, do some presearch. Go on JSTOR or MUSE and look at the two most recent journal articles about your text. (Undergrads beware: AVOID ALL SOURCES OLDER THAN YOU, they are irrelevant and usually embarrassing). What are the main themes these professionals have identified in the text? What are the quotes they used? Jot those themes down (20 min. max!) and then flip to the quotes and underline them in your text and make a little note, so that when you get to them you'll know they're important.
3. Now that you are armed, read smart. You've got no time to develop a nuanced "take" on this text from scratch, so instead, react to the other "takes" of smarter people who have come before you. Scholar X from your presearch says that The Great Gatsby is all about the struggle of optometrists for equality? USE THIS legimately! That is: don't pass the idea off as your own, attribute it to Scholar X and then set off on a reading of the text that reacts to it! Open The Great Gatsby and read it through on the lookout for passages that relate to your pre-chosen theme. Aim for approximately one good quote per 25 pp. of texts. Do not overmark! And once you have hit ten good quotes, START SKIMMING. You already know how the plot ends (spoiler alert: Gatsby dies. There, don't say I never did anything for you). Although, to be fair, the last sentence of The Great Gatsby is one of the most wonderful collection of words ever committed to paper, so if you skip or skim it you are missing out. But I digress.
4. Take your quotes and extract them onto your computer, taking great care to keep them notated at all times (with page # and author's name). Take about half an hour to 45 minutes to dash off a few sentences about each quote. Do you find it interesting? I hope so! If so, why? How does it relate to your pre-chosen theme? (If it doesn't, stay tuned for a future Intervention about How to Make Anything Relate to Anything). This will turn into your paper body and will make your professor weep with joy that you have actually taken the time and effort to analyze some text.
5. If you have to incorporate more than 1 or 2 secondary sources, poach a smart person's bibliography. Rather than head off on a JSTOR wild goose-chase (I'm going to assume you are too lazy/pressed for time to set foot in a brick-and-mortar library), find the most interesting-looking journal article you can from the past 6 years, and then look at its bibliography. Instead of wasting your time with some bullcrap from 1935, let this very smart published peer-reviewed scholar do some of your work for you! Read what s/he read! 

Well, kiddiez, that's it for my very first inaugural (redundant!) Intervention. Like this? Comment and tell me! Hate it? Also comment and tell me. Want more? Email me. And "like" me on Facebook. And like me in real life! I'm needy!

Plagiarism Hall of Fame

As a college instructor who has taught a lot of writing-intensive classes, I have seen my share of plagiarism and other academic dishonesty. I have certainly not seen it all, but I have seen enough to know that most plagiarists fall into the following categories:

1. The Desperate. This is by far the most common. For one of any number of reasons--a high-school career that imparted no writing or research skills, huge pressure from family, English-language issues--otherwise-nice students are driven to dishonesty because they feel like there is no other way. The instructor's reaction to this sort of plagiarism is usually much more lenient than to Type 2 Dishonesty (see below), because often times the student is so ill-prepared for college-level work that s/he does not even realize that cut-and-pasting from Wikipedia is not allowed (actually, it's a crime, but as I've discussed, my drive to felonize plagiarism has not met with a good response. YET). I can't speak for the entire professoriat, but what I personally will do in this case is give the assignment a preliminary F or D and call the student in for a "Come-to-Academic-Secular-Version-of-Jesus" moment. I give them some extra help on future assignments if they'll take it (they usually will!), and more often than not, they are scared straight.

2. The Malicious. This is far less common, or at least I like to think so. This is the one that really breaks an instructor's heart. Malicious plagiarism happens when a student has feelings about the course, or college in general, that are for some reason so negative that s/he feels as if s/he is entitled to a good grade but above the work--which, lest I risk over-repeating, is not that hard in the first place. As a result, the student either "borrows ideas" from another student in a different section, or, worse, copies-and-pastes off some dubious source online, or, EVEN WORSE, pays someone's hard-earned money to a horrible paper mill that employs bona fide douchebags like this asshole. When plagiarism can be proven to be malicious (when, e.g., a student first denies it, then admits to it but offers a sob story about Tough Personal Problems, and then posts a bunch of videos of him/herself partying in Mexico on his/her public Facebook profile--just a random example), then at least I adopt a Take No Prisoners attitude. I will generally do the harshest thing available to me--usually an F on the assignment and a referral to some Dean or other--and then refer it upwards. 

Though we all prefer Type 1 Dishonesty simply for the good of humanity, the purpose of Paper Intervention is to help prevent BOTH types. Like I said, even if you have cheated and gotten away with it in the past, I am not here to judge you (really), I am here to help you see that it is actually easier and better in the long run to just do the work yourself. Remember: you're an undergraduate (probably: if not, SHAME ON YOU ZOMG! I mean, no judgements! Er...), it doesn't even have to be that good. Please post any queries you want into the comments here or email me for a one-on-one consultation if you want.

Instructor-Friends: Please feel free to post your own Plagiarism Halls of Fame in the comments and help students see how transparent it is!

Paper Intervention has Facebooked Itself

I promise all of my real friends and not-as-real Friends that I will not be annoying them with a zillion requests to "like" Paper Intervention on Facebook. But, you can if you want. The Facebook page will just annoyingly link to the blog and not-as-annoyingly be a place to post The YouTubes.
But in the meantime I guess you can "like" it if you want. Facebook suggested I added a weird corporate-looking smaptastic Like Box to this blog, but I'm going to hold off on that for awhile. The Internet is so weird! In the meantime, post your paper queries in the comments or email me.

Welcome to the Paper Intervention!

Hello, everyone! Dr. Paper Saver here, and I'm ready to save your GPA, integrity and (perhaps) future.

Did you know that according to this source I've linked to (see how attribution works?), between 75% and 98% of college students today have admitted to some sort of academic dishonesty? Look, I'm not here to judge you (I do plenty of that on my own time), I'm not here to guilt-trip you, I'm not here to encourage you to think of better and more "undetectable" ways to get away with not doing your work.

I'm here to show you that doing your own work is often less work than cheating (especially in the long run!), and it's guaranteed to be better for your GPA, because many cheaters get caught, and punishments are severe. Not as severe as some of us would like, of course--my longtime campaign to felonize plagiarism doesn't seem to be getting off the ground!

So since I can't get you all arrested and carted off to the Grey-Bar Motel, what I would like to do is show you that you can write a paper yourself, that it's not even that hard, that it gets exponentially easier the more you do it and that easy, legal shortcuts that your professor will actually be happy, rather than depressed, that you used.

Starting this week, this blog will be accompanied by a YouTube channel where I will provide amazing tutorials that will save your paper, whether you've got a week or two hours to do it. Until then, please feel free to post queries in the comments field here, or email me at paperintervention@gmail.com and I will post them and answer them here.

SPECIAL NEWS! In addition to the blog and vlog and whathaveyou, for a limited time (until Sept. 2011), I'm also available for one-on-one consultation over Skype, phone, Chat or (in rare cases) in person at really reasonable rates (sliding scale depending on your level in school and how intense of a Paper Intervention you need!). This is a legit tutoring service not unlike the Writing Center or Lab at your school, except on your time, from the comfort of your own home, probably cheaper, and definitely more fun. Plus, as a professor myself I have a unique angle on how your paper will be received (I can even give it a "grade" so you can see what you might get on it, though every prof grades differently, of course).

IMPORTANT CRAP: I cannot emphasize this enough: this service is a pet project of mine while I have some free time and is designed to combat the rampant and depressing rise in academic dishonesty in recent years. If you want to pay someone to write a paper for you, then you've come to the wrong place. Prepare to drop $250-1000 and turn in a total piece of crap that will probably get found out if you want to buy a paper--if you want to write your own, just faster and better, then you've come to the right place!