The Professor

Good evening all my fans! As you all know I obtained my Master of Science degree in April! I did not forget what it is like to be a student. So, I thought will all of my knowledge and work experience I would be a professor. Here I am. Professor Kandrach. Instructor Kandrach. Ma'am. Kirsten. Those are all of my titles. LOL I am currently teaching Criminal Law. I love the class and it's totally cool and interesting. I have 24 students. It is a 300 level course so most of you know what that means...they are juniors/seniors.

One would think at this level that they know APA format is required in ALL writing right? This includes discussion forums and writing assignments. Well, not the case in my class. I have a student (who shall remain nameless of course) that has a 38% in my class. How does a person even get a 38%?

Anyway, I am a tough grader. I have explained to them in my announcements and my guidance for each week what I expect of them and what is required. The discussion forums require and initial post and 2 thorough responses to their classmates posts. They are to use APA format and cite references and yes...my discussion forums do require references. The writing assignment is (for this week) to be 3-5 pages long excluding the title and reference pages. And they are to use APA format! Pretty standard and relatively easy.

So, this student has decided to not even complete the three required posts. She does one post, doesn't respond to her classmates, and doesn't use APA format. I have explained that one liners will get you nowhere in my class. Automatic deduction of points. No APA more deduction of points. Then she turns in her writing assignment for the week. Now, remember that all of my students have my email address and phone number and can call me at any time (which I have students that do). I open her paper, use my plagiarism checker and find out that her paper is 83% plagiarized. Really?!?!? So I look deeper at the paper. Yup- definitely plagiarized. I can also tell it is not her writing because she doesn't speak that way in her discussion forums. Not to mention she didn't even cite references. UGH! I'm totally annoyed.

So, I send her an email and I tell her that the similarity index of her paper is way too high and that she should look it over. I also proceed to tell her that if she would like to re-do her paper and turn it into me by Monday I will accept that as her final paper. Basically, I tell her in a nice professional way that she is going to flunk my class if she doesn't get it together. She emails me back and says......."Ma'am, I will think about it and let you know." WHAT?!?!?!? Is she serious? Really? What does that even mean? Geesh. Here I am giving her an opportunity at this teachable moment and she basically tells me to go jump off a bridge. UGH! Now, I feel like giving her a big FAT ZERO!!! But, I will wait and see if she redeems herself.

The life of a teacher...

Until next time...think about it...UGH