One of my final exams was late, was on the wrong topic (cars), and, as I got through it, I found a suspicious sentence, googled it, and voila, ten straight words from another source. The other source was on the web, also about the advantages and disadvantages of cars, but I didn't linger; I'd found what I was after, and gave the student a zero. No student is going to pass the class, or get any grade at all, for plagiarized work. And that's what I told her when she came in inquiring about her grade.

She burst into tears and what ensued was a long story about how ten straight words from a website about the disadvantages of cars, could end up on the final, with her believing that this was ok, and that she should be able to pass the class and move on with her life. Actually she wanted more than to pass, she wanted an A, but that's kind of like what graduate school is. You get an A, you pass.

Way back in 2012, she had written most of the essay on cars, in a group of people who studied English writing and who tried to produce quality essays. At that time, yes, she had taken phrases from different places on the web, and she even showed me another, which came from a TOEFL site that encouraged good writing and had academic phrases. At that time, she considered this good writing, although up to ten words at a time came from other sites. In general she considered it her own writing, so, when it came time to submit something for the final, she didn't have any trouble submitting it and calling it hers. It was hers when she wrote it. It was still hers today.

I was still stuck on the fact that eight straight words from her final exam matched up exactly with a site easily found on the web. I recognized the fact that she hadn't intentionally tried to fool me, or pass off as hers, somebody else's entire essay. In fact the essay she had given me was quite poorly written by my own standards, but I hadn't even looked all that carefully once I'd found the eight words.

I took her word for it that she had at one point these academic phrases memorized so well that she didn't always know what was hers and what was not. In her country, one memorized essays, or at least phrases, and one recalled them at will, that's how one lived. That's how one put together one's own essay, and sure enough, voila, she found one in her e-mail, dated 2012, that looked like the exact one that she had given me. And she maintained that she considered it hers.

To her getting a zero was pretty harsh for something that wasn't even intentional on her part, that was her attempt to provide high-quality writing for an assignment, that she didn't even realize wasn't supposed to be about cars. She was proud of her essay, as, though she'd written it a few years ago, at least she'd written it.

I let her write the final again. This time, no cars. Write about the topic.