Author Archives: Christene

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is apparently a thing. I thought it was a myth, and maybe once or twice in my teaching career I would come across it. My co workers warned me of its existence, but I didn’t believe them. A few times when reading papers I had doubts, but could not find any evidence. Then final papers came in.

One student blatantly plagiarized her entire paper. Aside from the fact that the writing was far too different from her previous work, including in-class writing, she hadn’t even bothered to edit out the bits which indicated where she obtained the work (1.5 pages from Wikipedia, 2 pages from GradeSaver, and 2 pages from the Poetry Foundation). Of course I now started second guessing her previous papers, but I had no proof, and had already returned them to her.

The policy at my institution for plagiarism is an immediate fail, and a report on file. She wasn’t doing terribly in my class, and would have probably ended up with a B or B+ had she not done this. I didn’t want to wreck her entire academic record (even though she arguably just did that herself). The final decision was mine, so I emailed her letting her know that she will receive a zero on the paper, and if she does exceptionally well on the in-class final, she may end up with a C in my class. According to my co workers I was being extremely lenient.

She came to my office in a tizzy stating it was totally unfair that she should receive a zero on her final paper because she “had plagiarized the last paper too and didn’t get a zero on it.”

And I just lost all pity for her.

To Believe

The children are learning about all the different holidays right now, and last night Ally asked me if we could have a menorah next year. Sure, why not? We are not Jewish, but arguably I am not a very good Greek Orthodox either, and that hasn’t stopped me from celebrating Christmas all these years.

I am not bad at it because I don’t believe, I am just bad at the practicing part. Because I do believe. I believe anything, and nothing, and everything. I believe life is meaningless, while simultaneously believing everything happens for a reason. I believe in randomness and that God has a master plan, and that He is just as confused as the rest of us and His master plan makes no sense.

When you pray nothing happens because God hears you and hasn’t the slightest clue what to do about it. He created a universe that was already here, and everything ran away from Him and is running without Him. Besides, if everything is predetermined, what is the point of praying? Did you think something was going to change?

But no one understands the literal definition of predetermination. It means just that. Pre, as in before, and determined. It does not mean that there is some sort of well thought out, flawless map. It simply means things were thought up beforehand and then set into motion. For all we know it could be a chain of random events in a never ending sequence.

Belief and faith, or trust are also misconstrued as the same thing. To believe does not mean to trust. I believe the man next door exists. I see him almost every day. That doesn’t mean I trust him with my life. In fact, I am not sure I would even trust him with my purse.

So you can believe all of these things together. They are not mutually exclusive. And if I can believe all of this, then if my daughter wants a menorah, she can have one. As long as I don’t burn down our living room with the shemash, and if I do, well, it was predetermined. For no reason whatsoever.