USE MARISOL'S SOURCES
The downside of borrowing from Marisol is that I still have to open all those websites and read them. Even with the tricks Ms. Sabin showed me, it’s still so much work. And boring.
I’ll bet that the teacher doesn’t actually read our entire essays anyway. She probably just skims them and checks to make sure we’ve used enough sources.
To save time, I copy and paste text from each article into a document. Then I go through and change several words in every paragraph. It takes a lot of effort on my part, that’s for sure, but that tool Ms. Sabin showed me–right-clicking on a word to replace it with a synonym–really saves time.
I’m careful to put quotation marks around the paragraphs I don’t change, so she can’t accuse me of plagiarism. I think we’re supposed to put citations after each quote, but I don’t remember the exact format. Why does it matter, right? Instead, I paste the address to the website. That way, if she does check my work, she can just click on the link to see my sources.
Retyping Marisol’s sources will take forever. So will using an online citation generator. Instead, I upload the picture I took and enlarge it to the size of the page.
A few weeks later, I’m in a meeting with Principal Esperta and my English teacher.
“Dominic, your research paper is basically lifted from your sources,” the principal says.
“That’s not true. I changed a lot of words. And I used citations!” This is so unfair.
“Changing words here and there is still plagiarism. And speaking of your sources, the list appears to be a photograph of a computer screen. A computer being used by Marisol Tanaka.” Ms. Sabin points to Marisol’s name in the upper right corner. I can’t believe I missed that.
“They’re just sources. Marisol didn’t invent them!” I argue.
“You presented other people’s work as your own. We call that academic dishonesty,” the principal says. I don’t know why she has to be so superior about it.
“I was just trying to save time.” And what’s wrong with that?
“Instead, you’ve wasted an entire semester,” Ms. Esperta says. “A zero on your research paper leaves you with a failing grade, which means you’ll be repeating this course next year.”
“That’s not fair.” I’m so mad that I’m shaking. I didn’t think I was breaking the rules. What if I offer to redo the paper? Or ask for extra-credit assignments?
