Shallow Thinker

I’ll be the first to admit that every school system has their problems.  I’ll also be in line to discuss how our local school system seems to have a much larger pile of problems than the rest.  Horrible decisions are made almost every day and top administration officials seem concerned only with protecting themselves and promoting their friends.

So, like any dysfunctional group, the local school board isn’t the best at planning ahead.  For about a week, the local weather services had been predicting a chance of snow for last night.  But yesterday turned out to be one of the warmest days of the week.  It reached 50 degrees.  Not sunbathing weather, but certainly nothing to cry about.

In the late afternoon yesterday, with the temperature hovering in the mid-40’s and the precipitation definitely not falling, the local school board made the decision to close schools.  And because my daughters’ preschool follows their lead, it shut down as well.  At the time, I thought it was preposterous to make such a decision at that time.  Wouldn’t the wait-and-see approach be more appropriate?

It just goes to show what little I know.  I took a couple of picture of the great blizzard that hit our area last night.  Here’s a shot of our front yard looking across the street over to our neighbor’s house:

How did I survive out there?!  And you want to know something even crazier than all that snow?  I actually tried to drive to work in that mess!  Our parking lot was beautiful under such a thick blanket of snow.

So if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to build a snowman.  I’ll probably make just as much progress on the snowman as I’m going to make on this report that I’m working on.

You can check my blog archives, but I don’t think that I’ve ever complained about graduate school before.  (No need to actually check.  Here are the links to my school complaints - 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 & 7)  So, since I’m such a good sport about this school thing, perhaps you’ll indulge me a moment to complain.

This semester came to a close last night as I took a final exam.  I’ve never been one of those to take the full amount of time allotted for an exam.  I’m usually one of the first ones to walk-out, as a matter of fact.  It’s not because I’m smart or super-fast, it’s just my approach to exams.  I figure that I know the material or I don’t.  So, I put down what I know, fake what I don’t and move on.  For this exam, though, almost everyone was in the classroom for the duration. I allotted myself 30 minutes for each problem (5 total) and figured that I’d have nothing to do for the last 30 but maybe verify a couple of steps.  Nope.  I spent the entire time crunching numbers.  This wasn’t an exam in investment analysis.  It was an exam in using calculators.  I made so many calculations and wrote so much that one of my mechanical pencils broke.  One of the test problems had an entire page of text to read through just to find the six or seven numbers pertinent to the problem.  The professor insisted that this “case study” was a real life application of what we’ve learned.  Yeah?  Well, in real life, I’m not limited to three hours and I have a paycheck waiting when I’m done.  So I deem your problem silly and trivial….but I’ll still do it.

At any rate, the semester is over and I can catch my breath before diving back into a new semester in January.  The holidays now seem a little cheerier and my evenings are a bit more free.  I don’t have a care in the world!  Well, except for the fact that I have a compulsive need to check the school website every half hour to see if my grades have been posted yet.  I’ve already checked three times while writing this post.  If his final were really so important, you’d think that he’d have the grades posted by now.  Jerk.

UPDATE: Behold the power of my writing!  An hour after posting this the professor posted our grades.  I was joking about it, but this is the first time I’ve had a class where we took a final and less than 24 hours later, the grades were posted.  Now pardon me while I find something else to complain about.

Quick background - My employer pays for a portion of my graduate school, but only if I make a B or higher in the courses that I take.  The process is that I take the classes, get my grades, show them to my HR rep, and the company writes me a check.  The university normally requires students to pay before the semester starts, though.  Fortunately, they offer a deferred payment option.  I request this option at the beginning of the semester, pay a small fee, and I’m good to go.  By the time the bill comes due, I’ve already gotten my grades and the check from my employer.  It’s a pretty cool system.

Now the story - On August 3rd, all of my assignments for the summer semester were due.  August 4th was the deadline for my professors to submit grades for the summer semester.  Yesterday, I received a letter in the mail from this same academic institution.  It was dated August 5th.  The letter told me that my request for deferred payment for the summer semester was received.  And approved!  I reread the letter to make sure….yep, it said “summer semester.”  I looked at the date again….”August 5, 2009.”

So, the day after the summer semester was over, the school told me that it was OK for me to wait and pay my balance until after the semester was over.  I’m glad I was approved, and I’m thankful for them working with me, but it makes me wonder.  What am I supposed to do if my application is denied and I don’t find out until after the semester?  Do I go back and untake the classes or to I make the payment two months ago?

While my escapades into the mind of a plagiarist were fun, they do distract slightly from the overall arch of this academic year.  On August 19th of last year, I started the graduate program.  Since then, I have completed five of the ten courses required for the degree.  I have looked through my course requirements and talked with the various department heads and, if all goes according to plan, I’ll take two courses this semester, two in the spring, and then have one last class in the summer.  I’ll finish with the following degree:

Masters of Science in Engineering in Engineering Management with a minor in Technical Communications

They might have to give me two degrees in order to fit the whole name on there.  Basically, the MSE is offered in things like Electrical Engineering or Mechanical Engineering, but all of that doesn’t really relate to the part of my job that I enjoy doing.  The Engineering Management curriculum is more focused on the work that I do and the things that interest me.  It is a step out of my comfort zone to try for the minor in Technical Communications.  The classes typically require more time, work, and research, but I have found that they are very beneficial.  For instance, if it weren’t for the course that I took this past semester, you guys wouldn’t have had that fun plagiarism story to read.  See, we all win.

At the halfway point, I must admit that this has been a challenging experience.  I haven’t been overwhelmed by the difficulty of the work, I’ve just been much more stressed because of the time commitment that has been required.  Some nights require me to be at school, so I try to make sure that I’m at home with the girls the other nights.  I’ve given up reading (alright, video games) after the girls go to sleep in order to work on work and assignments.  And, I’ve had to devote the better part of a few weekends for some projects and some papers.  Through it all, Kelley has been very supportive and just plain amazing.  Thanks, Babe!  At the end of it all, I should reward you with something cool.  I have some ideas, but most of them involve building a statue of you from cheese.  I’ll keep working on it.

And, you have my word that this is the last time I do something like this.  Until we decide that I need a PhD, but after that, definitely no more degrees.  Now, I might try to become a licensed engineer and have to take the PE exam which would require a lot of studying.  But other than those two things, that’s it.  Unless I find a cool, new hobby.  But other than that…

Since Alana and Kelley enjoy taking moral dilemmas and questions of ethics and reducing them to tests of grammar, I figured we might as well continue along our journey and see how far down the rabbit hole this goes.

Within 30 minutes of sending the response that I posted (click here to refresh your memory), I received an e-mail in response.  The wise thing to do in this case would be to simply ignore it and wash my hands of the whole ordeal.  But I have a sneaking suspicion that you know me better than that:

John,

I appreciated your comment on my paper, but what i dont appreciate is you go around my back and make comment to prof. [REDACTED] about my paper without letting me know. Prof [REDACTED] tell me you wrote him an email about my paper. If you email him about my paper you need to let me know, because those paper is not finalize yet.  If there is anything i need to fix you need to inform me on the review. But instead you go around me and email prof. [REDACTED] without my knowledge. What you try to do? what is your intenstion?
What you doing is inappropriate.

Two things should be obvious to you by now. 
(1) This guy does not have the best grasp of the English language.  (Granted, Kelley and Alana would argue that I do not possess this grasp either, but this is my story so we will assume that I am a pillar of academic and moral excellence.)
(2) He’s not happy with me.  Of course, his words seem to indicate that he doesn’t like the fact that I corresponded with the professor.  I’m not a psychologist, but I would venture to guess that his anger is displaced to something that is beyond his control instead of the obvious things that he could have done to prevent the situation.

As I said earlier, the wise thing to do is to let all this pass and to just ignore it.  But have you checked the web address of my blog recently?  It certainly ain’t “smartboy.com.”

[REDACTED],

My correspondence with Dr. [REDACTED] was to determine what actions I should take and how best to proceed with the peer review.  This is the same advice that I gave to you.  If you’re not sure of the assignment requirements, contact the professor and make sure that things are clear.  My communications with Dr. [REDACTED] were neither inappropriate nor out of scope.  The notion that anything I do needs to go through you is just silly.

Once again, if you think that I have done something inappropriate, then please feel free to notify Dr. [REDACTED], or if warranted, contact the department chair, Dr. [REDACTED].  My suspicion, however, is that you are not so much concerned with my asking for guidance on the assignment.  I would suspect that you are probably upset that I easily identified your sources and that I did not keep quiet about it.  There is only one person that determined the outcome of this situation.  Your actions forced me to seek guidance when your report was simply a compilation of internet sources.  Your actions determined whatever final standing you have with the class.  If you are going to be upset about how this has turned out, your anger should not be directed at me.

Again, I encourage you to speak with the proper authorities if you feel that my actions are inappropriate or that I have perpetrated some type of academic misconduct.  Until I hear from a formal review board, I will consider this matter closed.

john

Will I get another response?  It’s tough to tell.  When you try to handle things tactfully, you run the risk of the other person not completely understanding the gravity of the situation or the intensity that you wish to convey.  I have opted to run that risk and refrain from just replying “You are a stupid cheater, you cheating McStupidHead!”

There is one other piece to this puzzle that you may interest you.  My employer, as well as the employer of the person in question, offers tuition reimbursement for graduate programs.  The caveat is that you have to make an A or a B in the course in order to be reimbursed.  I don’t know what this guy’s final grade was in this course, but I’m going to guess that it didn’t warrant getting a check from his employer.  If that is indeed the case, this was a $2,000 mistake that he made.  A mistake that I warned him about twice.

Moral of the story:  If at first you don’t succeed, try again.  If you don’t succeed the second time, find someone involved and blame them because, clearly, your plagiarism was of good quality and deserved a better grade than the 0ne you received.

Now, if you’ll pardon me, I’m off to crush some more hopes of academic success!

Remember our saga with The Plagiarist?  You don’t?  Well, let me refresh your memory….click here.

This afternoon, I checked the school’s website and our grades were posted.  Apparently, I wasn’t the only one.  This evening, I received an e-mail from the “alleged” copy-cat.  I thought that you might enjoy what he said to me.  I have only removed the professor’s name.  The rest is exactly as it was written in the e-mail.

John,

Why u going around my back make comment to prof [REDACTED] without let me know. U r task to do peer review, any comment u have on my paper o need to before I have it finalize for him. Why u have write him and make comments without my keying me know, ur job is to comment on the and so I cam improve, ur job is not to around me and talk prof [REDACTED] on my paper.

Now do you see how I was able to easily identify what portions he had written and what portions were copied from the internet?  I had several ideas for responses, but I couldn’t come to a definitive conclusion that would make an impact.  I kept coming back to the fact that if this guy was mad at me because he got busted for plagiarizing, even when I warned him twice, then the use of logic probable wouldn’t help.  A lecture on ethics or integrity was out of the question, as well.  I even thought a few moments about turning it around and saying something like “Me?  You want to talk about what my duties were on this assignment?  How about you actually try to write a paper instead of copying whatever Google gives to you and then come lecture me.”  But, again, based on my dealings thus far, I figured it wouldn’t have the impact that I’d hope for.

[REDACTED],

My initial thought was to dismiss your e-mail, but I think that you deserve some response.

I copied Dr. [REDACTED] on all communications between you and me.  If you’d like to look over the instructions that were provided for the peer review, I believe that you will see that it was a requirement of the peer review assignment.  If you think that I have not performed my assigned task adequately, then I fully encourage you to bring that to Dr. [REDACTED]’s attention.

If your concern is that Dr. [REDACTED] was made aware of something that you were not, I believe that your are mistaken.  My review of both of your submissions indicated a sever lack of citations and some problematic use of text from internet sources.  Those comments are included on the documents that I returned to you.

Please let me know if I can be of any further assistance,
john

In our last installment, we learned that engineers can use the internet.  We also learned that sometimes, they have the ability to discern between a research paper and a sales pitch from a website.  Let’s see what exciting, new adventures await our boring, old graduate student.

Saturday night around 10:30, I saw a little flashing indicator on the screen.  I pulled up the new message that had arrived and it was from the guy that sent me his paper.  It said something like “Good thing you checked the file.  Here’s the real copy.”  I opened it up and there were 10 pages, single-spaced.  I figured that it could have been a mistake the first time around and went to bed Saturday night with a Sunday full of editing looming over me.

Sunday afternoon I opened the new document.  The first two paragraphs were indeed written by the gentleman in question.  It was painfully obvious.  I forwarded them to Kelley because I knew that as an editor, she would appreciate this guy’s butchering of the English language.  (I think she cried herself to sleep after reading it.) Subject and verb agreement was out of the question, but it would have been nice if they would at least have been on the same topic.

After the first two paragraphs, a miracle occurred.  The writing suddenly became clear and coherent.  Words like “insidious” and “disproportionate” began to sprout across the paper.  So, once again, I used my keen grasp of the googles and located various websites that had been copied and pasted.  I will give him credit for at least changing his sources this time…but not much.

The most hilarious (sad?) part of the whole thing is that in his revised paper, the conclusion paragraph was lifted straight from a website.  The final paragraph and the last chance to salvage any dignity that remains…from a website.

In about 30 minutes, I completed my long day of editing.  I sent the file out to the offender with my comments and the hyperlinks to the websites that were used.  I also suggested that he contact the professor for some guidance.  My rationale to him was that maybe I didn’t understand the assignment very well and the professor could clear that up.  And then, I took my googling and editing skills and did the only thing that I knew would make a difference.  I went swimming with my girls, had an awesome dinner with some great friends, and played with legos.

Want to hear a boring story with a funny ending? Well, actually, it’s a funny middle part, but I don’t know the ending yet, so for our purposes, it’s the ending even though it’s really the middle. So, we’re all on the same page of the middle-ending. Boring. Right?

One of the classes that I’m taking this semester is called “Workplace Research Methods.” It’s a good overview of the different types of research that are common in industry and it goes through things like how to present numerical data, how to properly reference sources, how do do a literature review, etc. (See, I told you it had boring parts. But hold on.) We spent a week talking about how to do sources and the importance of proper references. We provided two assignments the were based on the premise of finding, using, and properly citing sources. Our professor wrote the book on how to do sources. Literally.

For this class, we have one last assignment with multiple parts. (1) Write a 10-12 page research paper, (2) turn it in for peer review, (3) review someone’s paper (the professor assigns who we look at) (4) edit our own paper per our peer’s help and (5) submit the final draft. I was under the impression that #1 was due this upcoming Sunday night. When I looked at the course website yesterday, I found that this was not the case. The paper is actually due this evening at 8:00. AaaaaAAAAAAhhhHHHHHHH! I cobbled together my best BS and voila…..8 pages. Not good enough. I threw in some not-very-helpful graphics and modified the formatting a little and, WOO-HOO, 10 pages.

This morning, I e-mailed my paper off for review and a few minutes later, I received the paper that I am to review. I knew it going into this, but my weekend wasn’t looking too good. I essentially have 48 hours to read and critique a colleagues 10-12 page paper.

But lady luck was on my side.  First, the guy I’m reviewing didn’t read the instruction very well. His 10 pages were double-spaced instead of the single-spacing that was required. Sweet, my work-load just got cut in half. Ah, what’s this?  The 10 pages counts his title page and references. Even less to read now!

I got about three paragraphs into the paper and realized that the tone and style were very odd. I highlighted a sentence, pasted it into Google, and…wow. Just wow. 70% of the paper was lifted verbatim from a website. I did a little extra pasting from the areas that didn’t match the first source and found that another 20% came from a different website and the remaining 10% from a third. Not rephrased, not quoted, not glanced at in an awkward manner.  Lifted straight from the internet.

Let me stop here and ask if I’ve mentioned that our professor is familiar with how sources should be handled? I have?  Maybe I should mention that this guy copied from readily available on-line sources. It’s wrong to plagiarize, don’t get me wrong, but if you’re going to do it, why copy from something that’s so easily traceable? I suppose that those who aren’t smart enough to do it without getting caught are stupid enough to do it in the first place. At any rate, I slapped a big note across the entire paper that said something about the proper way to use and reference sources and I sent it on its way. And as a reward for his stupidity, my weekend just got a lot better!

In reality, my paper probably stinks. I’m sure that I rambled on incoherently (a trademark of my writing style) and came to conclusions that were completely irrelevant to my research. It’s what I do.  When the final grade is issues, I will probably lean closer to an F than an A.  But, you can bet your bottom dollar that I will hold my head high and quote my Uncle Joel: “At least it was an honest F.”

PS - Did I mention that the professor is a bit of a stickler for not plagiarizing?

Image is from a post on West Georgia's website regarding plagiarism. I hope it's not plagiarism for me to "borrow" it here.

From time to time, I might fall into the trap of using this blog to complain about certain things that I don’t like.  (I could take the opportunity to find all of the links where I complain, but who has that kind of time?) It’s a convenient outlet, I admit, but I also have to keep in mind that I have it pretty good.  Recently, I posted about the rigors of this summer’s schedule.  Two graduate-level classes jammed into the summer semester is tough, but when I look at it, I have to admit that I’m very thankful for the opportunity to take these courses and to be working on another degree.  I shouldn’t whine and cry so much…but don’t expect that to stop me anytime soon.

I noticed this weekend that I’ve only been in class for 2-3 weeks and my mid-term is this upcoming Monday.  Most classes drag on so much that I’m begging for the final just so that I can end the misery.  Heck, some classes start so bad that I’d rather take the final on the first week just to be done with it.  But, with the summer’s accelerated pace, I’ve been so far behind that I haven’t had a chance to be miserable.  How awesome is that?

Some people may think that this is proof that there are good things in every bad situation.  Not me.  I take it to mean that if I’m going to crash and burn, I’d rather do it full speed.

I have a gift/curse that has been with me for a while.  My parents would probably indicate that it was absent during my childhood years, but it was definitely present during college.  When it comes to doing things, I tend to go over-board.  Projects for class?  Overboard.  My boss tasked me with tracking a couple of programs.  My response?  I went way overboard.  (I set-up an automated spreadsheet with correlations between budgets and task completions and planet alignments and ants crossing the parking lot.  It’s got detail.)  Another example is my attendance to classes in college.  I could not stand to miss a class, even if I knew that my presence wasn’t vital.  I don’t think that I intentionally missed a class until my junior or senior year.  When I take on a task, I go all-out.  That’s a good thing…right?

The problem with my approach is that I tend to burn out much faster than most people.  I set-up a killer spreadsheet, now I don’t want to see it anymore.  By the time college was winding down, I was down to a dull roar and barely made it across the stage to get my diploma.  In like a lion, out like a lamb.

This semester is testing the limits of how much I’m willing to give.  I’ll be the first to admit that signing-up for two graduate-level courses wasn’t a smart thing to do for the summer session.  The classes as separate entities wouldn’t be that bad during the summer.  Both courses together during a normal-length semester wouldn’t be unbearable.  In my efforts to get my degree and get out, I’ve hit a speed bump.  There’s a lot of effort required for this summer.  My nature says to give it 100%.  But that’s taking too much of my time with family and work.

So, here’s the brain-twister that I’m trying to work-out.  My mentality is to work with a hard-core pace and try to get 98.75% in both classes.  But, I’m looking at the mountain in front of me and wondering if this might be a good time to try out the cruise control on my brain and settle for a B-.

My mom always said “just do your best.”  Is it OK to do my “just good enough”?

I’ve complained (at length) about my graduate classes this semester.  Realistically, my class titled Advanced Materials was mentally challenging, but didn’t consume too much of my time.  Each week, I could count on a difficult-to-follow, but highly-informative lecture.  The exams were a good mix of concepts and applied theory.  The other class, Facilities Planning, was the exact opposite.  The concepts were easy to grasp but the time spent on the course was insane.  The class was cross-listed with an undergraduate class.  So, for some strange reason, the professor felt the need to assign tons of busy work.  The final exam was ridiculous, as well.  Time-intensive problems that are wrought with opportunities for small errors that can greatly affect the outcome of solutions.  YAY!

In the Facilities Planning course, we had a final project to put into practice the concepts that we had learned.  When I say “learned”, I mean things that we did over-and-over in homework.  I suppose teaching the concepts would have been too much to ask of the professor, so repetition seemed to be his method of instruction.  At any rate, we were supposed to design a facility.  Here are a few of the images that I created to illustrate the building that I designed/planned.  Click ‘em if you want to big ‘em.

I will be the first to admit that I’m not an architect.  There were a lot of things that I did not consider in my facility, and I knew that when I was putting together the final report and presentation.  I knew that the professor was going to find these details and dock my grade heavily for it.  And then, I sat through some of the other presentations.  Magically, I began to feel really about my work.  This is one of the graphics from the a group of undergrads:

Yeah, I think I spent too much time on my project.

Yesterday was my first Marathon-O-Exams.  I was indeed able to start the first one on Monday and then finish it up on Wednesday.  This probably put me at a slight advantage to the other students because I was able to see what was on the test.  However, the way I worked through it probably minimized that impact.  But the final tally on the first exam was right at 3 hours.  A standard exam…3 hours.  I’m one of those people who seems to take tests well and I guarantee that some of the other students in that classroom needed more than 4 to complete it.  I’ve heard numerous accounts that this professor’s final exam can last more than 6 hours.  I think he needs some help.

Exam #2 was e-mailed to me around 10:00 AM, and I finished the last problem around 11:00 PM.  I probably put about 4 hours in on that one.  The good news is that it was a mid-term, so I won’t have another one like it until the final.  The downside is that there are really only two exams and I hope I did well on this one!

So, no more exams for a few weeks.  The swirl of academics is now yielding to the swirl of meetings and business.  My advice to you youngsters out there is if you want to get an additional degree, do it while you’re there.  In some ways it’s easier to get the master’s now, but in others, it’s harder.  Time constraints being one of the “others.”  So, stay in school.  And don’t do drugs.