How many times have I heard my students say the same thing or something like it? They just want the pain to be over. They no longer care about doing a good job: They just want to be done. Just today I saw one of my failing Excel students trying to calculate (not using Excel) how many assignments he needed in order to pass the class. I didn't say anything. I get it, I do. At some point, your brain just throws up its tiny hands and snarls, “Enough!”
So now my paper is on my chairperson's plate, so to speak. I hope she's hungry, because it is the scholarly equivalent of a double quarter pounder with cheese. One hundred and eighty-five sources on my reference list. A bit much, ya think? I don't know if she'll swallow it. She's seen all of it but the literature review section, and she didn't say anything about it being too long. But I know teachers. I am one. Sometimes they wait until they've got the entire paper, and then they shred it like a shark in a feeding frenzy. I expect to see the electronic equivalent of blood. Buckets of it.
This is finals week at work. The students are beyond weeping. They wander around in a state of shocked horror. Some of them will lose their funding if they fail Excel. I feel bad, but what can I do? I can tell, I can show, but I can't do it for them. They have to care enough to do the work themselves. I wonder what percentage of the class has wrangled a family member or friend to do their assignments for them? One paralegal student in my Access class actually admitted it. She blamed him because she couldn't open her homework files on her school computer. I knew something was up when I was able to open them just fine.“But where are my assignments?” she cried.
“Inside the database,” I replied. “Which ones do you want to print?”
“That's not what it looked like when my friend did them.”
“Well, maybe you should have done them yourself. Then you would know how to find them and print them.” You can imagine how well that went over.
So if one blatantly admitted she didn't do the homework herself, how many others cheated that I don't know about? Will never know about? Do I even care? I used to feel anger, like, how dare they! But I can't conjure up anything. I get it. When we are under the gun, we choose the path of least resistance. If we can get away with it, we cheat. Hell, I break the speed limit all the time, because I know it is unlikely I will get caught. But I don't cheat on my dissertation studies. I could: Who would know? But I don't, and I won't. I guess I've gained a little integrity over the years.
I can't write anymore now. My neighbor just got home and turned on her stereo. The bass is echoing through the place, making my tiny little speakers seem like toys. Thank the writing gods she didn't get home an hour ago, because I would have had to have killed her. Again. (See previous post).
My chairperson has two weeks to ruminate on my submission, so I can focus on the end of the term, the finals, the grading, and the prepping for the new start next week. The work at the career college never ends. Round 'em up and mooooove 'em out. Git along little dogge. Yeee-haaaaa.
