I stayed up late to talk to my boyfriend last night and because of all the stress, got only 5 hours of sleep. UGH. I went to campus early for my group meeting so that we could come to an agreement on how to handle this guy who had plagiarized. Technically since we didn't actually turn anything in yet, it's not quite against the plagiarism policies of the school (one could argue that it was a rough draft). Since there is less than a week before this is due, it's unlikely that he would find a different group. We wanted to give him a chance to confess and fix it, so we decided to confront him. We also agreed that if he didn't show up for the meeting, he would automatically be kicked out of our group. He showed up and we started questioning him on his part. He started sweating and his glasses started fogging up; he was clearly feeling interrogated (GOOD!). He admitted that he copied and pasted and then said that he thought we only had to do a presentation, not turn in a report. (Maybe if you pay more attention in class, you would know that there was a report!) Anyway, he agreed to fix it and we made him promise to fix it tonight. I lectured him on the repercussions of cheating, Manuel told him that if he doesn't follow-through, he's out of the group. We changed his part and Jane outlined exactly what he should write, so we'll see how he does. His part is now very easy, but I'm expecting his work to be crap and that we will have to re-write it anyway. I'm OK with this. I don't care anymore. Part of me is angry that he is getting away with this and will receive OUR grade for this paper. Part of me wants to inform the professor, but oh well. We also agreed as a group to sign a document that details what each of us is working on so that it can protect us in case anything goes wrong. I'm sure it won't, because we will make sure it's not plagiarized now, but we still want to protect our own asses just in case!
I found out that many cultural differences today:
1. Eastern Education requires no critical thinking and copy and pasting is acceptable.
2. This particular student is being pressured by parents to get a higher degree and he chose Event Management because he thought it would be easiest. He doesn't want to be here and therefore doesn't try at all.
3. Many of the Chinese girls in my class are here because their parents want them to get married, so they went to school to avoid getting married off right away. School buys them a few more years to be single. But when they graduate, they will probably be forced to marry.
4. Many of these traditional Chinese girls have never even kissed anyone! 23, 24 years old and they are supposed to get married, but haven't even kissed anyone!
These facts are scary to me! 1 and 2 definitely don't excuse that one student's behavior, but it does explain a bit of background. Number 1 especially doesn't explain it because he's already been at this school for 1 semester already so he should know the policies of this university.
Anyway, then we had Research Methods class which was very confusing. The professor doesn't explain things well and the material is so tough that it needs to be explained a lot better. It would be more helpful if our tutors went over the stuff in class a bit more to help explain it to us, but instead we have to do stupid practice assignments that are different! After my tutorial today, I expressed my concerns and suggestions to the tutor and said that we are all very panicked about the mid-term next week because no one understands the material! She said she would pass the message on to the professor, and she said not to stress too much about the midterm because it's easier than we think (I doubt this!). Anyway, then we were talking about English as a 2nd language and I briefly mentioned the trouble I was having earlier today. She said that I would be shocked to find out how many students pay other people to write their papers for them! She said that it's a big black market for buying papers and it's so hard for the University to prove because it is an original work, it's just not THAT student's original work!! She also mentioned that it's not fair how the University just wants money so they will let anyone in that can't speak English and then my program is dumbed down for them. I agreed that this is something I've been increasingly frustrated about at this school because it's not fair to me. Oh well. I'm trying hard and let's face it, I'm not getting perfect scores, so I can't complain that they don't grade hard enough, it's just that I wish it were consistent. Poor English skills should be punished. whatever. I guess I should just try my best. She also gave me a couple hints on the exam, so yippee!
Anyway, then I got home and fell asleep for a while, which is bad.. Ate a very late dinner and am resting before I have to work hard this weekend on the group assignment and studying for my midterm exam! Ahh
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