Plagarism so self-reflexively ironic, it will cause YOUR HEAD TO EXPLODE

[HamdenRice]

like a citizen of one of those android societies in the first Star Trek that Kirk and Spock tricked into logical loops that caused their brains to burn out.

I was reading an old copy of Harper's from 1995. There is a long, funny article by a woman who writes college term papers for lazy, incompetent students who buy rather than write their papers.

To avoid being fired, she wrote under the pseudonym, "Abigail Witherspoon." I was curious whether "Abigail Witherspoon" ever "came out" to reveal her identity, and whether she went on to become a successful magazine writer. So I googled "Abigail Witherspoon."

One of the first links returned was:

http://www.ezwrite.com/itemdetail.asp?IDNO=556

Research Papers Online

A DISCUSSION AND ANALYSIS OF “THIS PEN FOR HIRE: ON GRINDING OUT PAPERS FOR COLLEGE STUDENTS” BY ABIGAIL WITHERSPOON: I.E. STUDENT DISHONESTY OR CHEATING IN COLLEGE

The overall proposition, or theme of one article entitled “This Pen For Hire: On Grinding
Out Papers For College Students” has to do with one Abigail Witherspoon, which is the
pseudonym of an American woman who resides in Canada and works for a ghost writing service.
The responsibility or task of this ghost writing service is to write term papers for students. As the
author points out, many of these students are either lazy, have trouble with the English language,
or perhaps some other reason not specifically identified by the author. Abigail Witherspoon paints
a self-portrait which she likens to a prostitute. Similarly, she also paints a portrait of herself and a
stable of writers, who work for an outfit named Tailor Made, a rough reference to Tailor Made
Essays, Writing and Research, which gives the reader the impression that these are a bunch of
desperate hacks who perform the amoral task of writing papers for college students, and working
under a couple who she refers to as Matthew and Sylvia. It is clear that Ms. Witherspoon is
despondent about her occupation.

<end quote>

Do you see what this means? Yes, the end of civilization.

Some student somewhere was asked to write an essay about the amoral occupation of writing term papers for students, and problem of dishonest students who are too amoral, stupid and lazy to write their own papers, and who cheat by amorally buying papers from paper writing services.

That student completed the assignment by purchasing a term paper from a paper writing service.

[Swede]

1. Talk about being too clever by half!

People who grade papers will HAVE to google search key phrases in every paper.

[skater314159]

2. There is software for that...

...the University where I taught had several different programmes that you could get (at only 5$ a copy!) that would check sections or even whole papers against papers, webpages, and other print media (it also can check in multiple languages - if a text references foreign sources).

Most of the students I ran into just didn't know how to cite sources properly - which prompted me to have study sessions in the University Library where I would teach students how to look up sources in jornals, databases, online and in books. After being taught, they ammended their behaviour.

There were a few (and it really wasn't that many) that I caught who had purchased papers, had a friend write them, or just plain copied crap off the internet... and when I confronted them, they didn't even care. I sent them (and the papers that they had cheated on along with everything else they had done in my class) to the Academic Board... which usually kicked them out of the University.

Sidebar - one fun thing I enjoyed doing with the software when I had free time (ok, yeh, I was supposed to be grading papers and such, but I was slacking!) was to take it an analyse certain blogs and writings of those of the conservative and Rightist slant. It was amazing how little they write for themselves! I still wish I had that software - it's really interesting to look at Michelle Malkin and Anne Coulter using it!

:hippie: