Last week I finally decided to go to my history class. I hadn’t been in nearly two weeks, despite the absence policy, for a few reasons: first, because I am a senior and refuse to accept the reality that I am still obligated to attend classes when I do not wish to; second, because the class is at 9 a.m. and I rarely go to bed early enough to feel like getting up in time for it; and, third, because whenever I ignore the first two reasons and do go to class, no sooner do I take my seat than I regret my decision and resume a study of the insides of my eyelids, an activity of which I never tire and which is, I think, more profitable than listening to the lecture.
But last Friday, remembering that I had turned in a paper the week before (via Bb), I decided to make an appearance. After all, I reasoned, it is a fairly large class and if by chance the professor hasn’t noticed my absence yet, I don’t want to bring attention to myself by not coming to retrieve my paper.
To my relief, she had not yet handed them all back. After class I came up and got my paper and flipped to the last page to see what she’d given me. The assignment was one of those ridiculous scenarios asking you to address a book-worthy topic in 4-5 pages. I’d written on the American Revolution which, being an American and a senior in college, I figured I could expound upon without much effort or forethought. I thought I’d done all right.
But instead of a grade, on the last page I found a note—“Please see me after class.” I approached her; she gave me a coldly polite smile. “Could you come up to my office?” she asked.
“Well,” I thought as I walked upstairs, “it’s no mystery what this is about. Guess she noticed my absences.”
We went up to her office and sat down facing each other. I smiled insincerely. She gestured to my paper. “In some ways this was an amazing paper. Very interesting.”
I nodded, trying to understand what she meant by those adjectives.
“But certain… certain words and phrases… raise the question of how much of it is your work.”
My head reeled. Up to that point I had still been half-asleep; suddenly I felt I had just taken three shots of espresso, and I swallowed accordingly, feeling my face redden. I realized this probably made me appear even guiltier, so I grew still more uncomfortable.
“So,” she continued, “I just wanted to find out a little about your background.”
I gave a brief history of my education—English-turned-Spanish major, with a lot of history courses in between. Apparently she wasn’t satisfied.
“Well, like I said, when I read your paper, some bells went off. I gave it to another professor, and some bells went off there, too. So, I wanted to talk to you in private and ask…”— she cocked her head— “is there anything you want to tell me about your paper?”
I stared at her a moment, thinking. She had asked me as if she knew beyond any doubt that I was guilty and was only giving me a chance to make a fool of myself by trying to lie about it. The beauty of the situation, I realized, was that I had nothing whatsoever to hide. The paper was entirely my work and she had nothing on me. Part of me wanted to draw this out and really make a scene, just to glory in her mistake.
“No, nothing at all,” I answered finally, and then asked her what, specifically, led her to believe I was plagiarizing.
“Well, it’s just not the kind of writing you normally see in a 400-level history class, when students are still trying to find their…style.”
I nodded. Her confidence in my incredibility stirred equal doses of flattery, amusement, and burning anger in me.
“For instance,” she said, sitting up and scanning the paper, “what does the word ‘ontological’ mean?”
I told her what it meant, and then said “Look, I can guarantee this is my work. I can write well. If there’s nothing else I can do, I can write.”
She still didn’t seem convinced so I offered to let her see some of my other essays.
“No, no,” she said, “I’ll take your word for it.” Then, clearing her throat, she leaned forward and looked at me. “Now. What will happen is we’ll pretend we never had this conversation. I will go back and grade your paper for content and argument, so I can’t guarantee an ‘A,’ but I don’t think you’ll have to worry about failing.”
She looked at me as if she had just offered me a once-in-a-lifetime deal.
“Gee, thanks,” I said. “Go screw yourself,” and getting up from my chair, I calmly walked over to her bookcase and shook it violently by the shoulders till it vomited all of its contents onto the floor. Then I balled up my paper and bounced it off her face, picked up my chair, and chucked it through her office window.
Not really, though I certainly considered it. Actually, I told her I didn’t blame her for thinking as she did.
What’s sad about this situation is not that she suspected me of plagiarism simply because I write a good paper. What’s sad is that my paper was not, in fact, that great; it only seemed so because everyone else’s was, at best, completely ordinary; at worst, completely inarticulate. I know this because of her reaction, and because I have read other people’s papers plenty before, and because in almost every class I take I get this sort of reaction, though to be accused of plagiarism was something new to me. The thing is, fifty years ago there would be nothing exceptional about my writing.
30 comments
I completely agree that grammar is not taught earlier on, which was what my criticism of education was. The problem is not necessarily at the college level, but that we are not adequately learned by the time we get to college. I was fortunate enough to go to a public school that taught Latin and I took it for four years there. I will completely agree with you, in today's education, that is one of the only ways to learn grammar well. It is definitely where I learned most of my grammar.
I appreciate what you're saying. Let's take your skating analogy as an example. When I read that sentence, almost immediately I was reminded of two sections of two books I have recently been reading. The first is a sentence from E.L. Doctorow's latest novel, Homer & Langley. I am not a big fan of Mr. Doctorow's philosophies but a sentence on the first page of his novel has for some reason stuck with me and just now resurfaced. The scene is being narrated by a man who is gradually losing his sight and, in order to keep track of how much his sight dims daily, begins going to a lake in Central Park where people ice skate:
"All I could see were these phantom shapes of the ice skaters floating past me on a field of ice, and then the white ice, that last light, went gray and then altogether black, and then all my sight was gone though I could hear clearly the scoot scut of the blades on the ice, a very satisfying sound, a soft sound though full of intention, a deeper tone than you'd expect made by the skate blades, perhaps for having sounded the resonant basso of the water under the ice, scoot scut, scoot scut." The second section is a scene from Anna Karenina in which a character named Levin goes down to a skating lake to find the young woman with whom he is deeply in love, and who may or may not love him. He is a habitually nervous man and he is trying at this moment to calm himself and gain composure so that he can skate out to her and comport himself calmly and smoothly: "He stood up, took off his overcoat, and having given himself a start on the rough ice near the shelter, glided down to the smooth surface of the lake, increasing and diminishing his speed and shaping his course as if by volition only. He approached Kitty timidly, but her smile again tranquillized him." A few paragraphs later, Levin has openly admitted his feelings to Kitty, only to receive an awkward cold shoulder. One senses, reading this scene, that a tension is building up inside of Levin and that he is on the verge of trying something desperate. That desperate action will take place later when he asks her to be his wife, but for a present release of energy he decides to attempt a new skating trick, one that goes over well for him in comparison to the larger, clumsier leap he will make a few pages later when he pops the question: "Levin went up the path as far back as he could get up speed, and then slid downwards, balancing himself with his arms in this unaccustomed movement. He caught his foot on the last step, but, scarcely touching the ice with his hand, made a violent effort, regained his balance, and skated away laughing." Now those are three beautiful passages triggered by the mere mention of ice skating as metaphor- beautiful for their perfect representations of the rhythms of skating against the parallel paces of life's isolated vignettes, and beautiful for their place in the larger contexts of the respective stories. My point here is that, had I relied only on the studies required of me for academics, I would have read neither of these books and your analogy would never have had the dimension or depth or emotional weight that it had for me because of the associations that surfaced when I read it. Here is the problem: the average college student who does little or no more intellectual work than is required of him/her either: (a) has not read either of those books because they were not required, or (b) has read them, but was likely too busy looking for things like "misogynistic marginality in Anna Karenina,” or whatever the assigned essay topic happened to be, to notice the fine art in those sentences and their significance in the story as a whole. As a result, most students will go on skating, as you say, and have a splendid time and even get some good exercise, and they will hear the "scoot-scut" of their blades against the ice, but for them it will be a shallower and flatter sound, and the whole experience will never satisfy or move them as deeply as it could have if they had "sounded the resonant basso of the water under the ice."
1st Student: “Reason!” Teacher: “Yes, that’s right!”
2nd Student: “Vol-tay-ur!” Teacher: “Voltaire! Yes!”
3rd Student: “Day-car!” Teacher: “Descartes! Great job!” While I sat there ducking these clumsy lobs and frantic tosses it occurred to me that of the few people in the room who had read any of Descartes or Voltaire, chances were that what they’d read was limited to a small excerpt required of them in introduction to philosophy. Now if you want to talk about people not being qualified to say things, I suggest we start right here, because this is essentially the daily routine in the average liberal arts classroom.
I completely agree with you here. I am a junior currently in 2 400 level classes and 1 700 level class. The pace at which the 400 level classes move, is even too slow for most of the freshman in attendance to the class. I would lean to think the decline is in earlier education, however. We do not receive adequate preparation for college because the teachers are looked down upon for using age old methods that worked, such as strict memorization. They are more concerned about merging work and play. I actually had a debate with someone last week about students' unpreparedness for college. I have a class where we have to turn in a paper hand written. The class was complaining about grammar and spelling. I commented that anyone who did not know basic grammar and spelling should not be at a university. This student contradicted me saying, "But basic grammar is hard!" I think that adequately sums up where our education is going.