Plagiarism

I was going to vent about a hassle I had recently in one of my grad classes regarding an idiot group mate who plagiarized part of a project. But that got me thinking about my own experiences, and this came out instead.

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I was never really a bad student in school. I was smart enough to know how to get maximum reward for minimum gain. I rarely studied, and was irregular at best with homework, but I could carry a relatively intelligent conversation in class and I was generally well-liked by my teachers (which certainly didn't hurt the grades).

I have two distinct memories from English class - one from seventh grade, the other from eleventh. For different reasons, both have stuck with me, and while locker combinations and schedules have long since faded, these two events pop into my head all the time. The funny thing is, I'm sure the teachers have no idea. Interestingly enough, they are both about poetry.

Seventh grade. The assignment was to write a poem. I'm sure there was more to it, but it's unimportant now. Maybe something about poetic devices. As usual, I put it off until the night before. I'm actually not incompetent when it comes to writing poetry, but I was having a tough time getting started. But when I did, it was in the back of the family van on the way back from the grandparents' house. I remember reciting it over and over in my head since I had nothing to write my poem down on. Maybe this is why I can still remember today how my poem began.

The next day I handed it in, and all was well. I even added some clipart for some extra pizazz.

I don't remember how long it was before the teacher graded and passed those poems back. When I got my poem - the one I was proud of enough to have memorized - I couldn't understand what I was looking at. In his red pen, my teacher had written, This is very good. I hate to ask, but are you sure you didn't have help with it? He gave me a 100, but that meant nothing. You can't put comments into your gradebook, but it sure did cound more to me. At the time I was more angry that he had put such an accusatory question on my paper, but now I see what a slap in the face it was. He basically called me stupid, and unable to produce the quality of work I had handed in.

Flash forward to junior year. The project was to hand in a small collection of poems. Again, specifics don't matter. What does matter is the fact that I felt utterly unmotivated - not unable, mind you - to complete the assignment. So I took the easy way out. I dug up one of my obscure punk rock CDs and jotted down the words to one of the songs. It was an Operation ivy song, pretty sure it was called Freeze Up (funny how that detail is important enough to remember). I mean, come on, the teacher was brand new, and this was before the days of the omniscient Google search, so I felt I was safe.

Turns out I was. The teacher had no idea. In fact, she thought "my" poem was so great, that she pressured me for a week to enter it into an upcoming contest. At first paranoia suggested she was messing with me - the old Tell-Tale Heart approach. But she wasn't smart enough for that. She genuinely loved my poem. And she just couldn't figure out why I was being so bashful about displaying my work.

Her relentless compliments were more damning and more punishing than anything she could have done if she had known my crime. I felt like a complete failure. But I learned my lesson.


I guess it makes sense to pair these two separate memories together. One questioned what I did, the other praised for what I didn't. Unnoticed accomplishments and rewarded failures. I know which one I prefer.