If I Hadn't Been Sure Before

Last night was my last class. I've been teaching Academic Writing 121 as an adjunct instructor for a Florida-based Catholic University for about four years. My classes have been held at a military base in Georgia. I've enjoyed meeting so many military members--the classes are held on military bases throughout the southeast and our contract with the military makes the school a bit different from others. The military promises recruits that they can go to school at the DOD's expense, but doesn't tell them that they have to be college material. We aren't allowed to use SAT scores or any requirements other than that they can write a check for $35 that doesn't bounce. So we get students who, because of their intelligence level or because of poor preparation from previous schools, really don't belong in college. My course is one of the first ones they take, so I get quite a few below-par students. It's difficult to assign a failing grade to a student who has failed, but who has survived several tours in Iraq or Afghanistan.

Most of the military students are just ideal students, regardless of their ability levels. They are so grateful to be in college and for most of them, access to college is why they joined the military.
Then there are the students who only want the degree, not the education. They tend to be the poorer students, in terms of ability. They plagiarize, and they are really bad at it, which makes it easy to spot. Last night two students turned in plagiarized papers. One had done this previously in my class, and I had explained to him (when he protested and said that he had written the paper himself) that blue hyperlink text does not appear in normal writing. I also told him that the different types and sizes of fonts in his paper was a clue. He re-wrote the paper after changing the topic. It was off-topic and probably written by him since it was poorly written. I was concerned that all I had accomplished was teaching him how to plagiarize better, and that turned out to be what happened. The paper he turned in last night was clearly plagiarized, was off topic, and didn't make much sense. But the blue hyperlink text was gone. I was able to google a couple of sentences and find his source, from which he had copied text word for word. He fails the course.

The second student has been flying under the radar for the whole course. I wasn't suspicious of him at all until last week when he turned in his rough draft for a compare and contrast essay. There were no mistakes in it. I gave it back to him, and last night he turned in the final copy. I googled a few sentences from it, and up popped the source. This man is a polite, gentlemanly, forty-something student, and I am so disappointed in him. He fails the course also.

I had decided before this term started that I didn't want to teach for St. Leo anymore. The commute is over seventy miles roundtrip, and the security at the base is annoying. (If it made sense, that would be fine, but it's very erratic and nonsensical. It's outsourced and that may explain part of the problem.) Also, I am only allowed to teach the one course because my Masters is in education rather than in English. My undergraduate degree is in English, but that doesn't allow me to meet St. Leo's requirements. I'm tired of the course.

If I had had any second thoughts about my decision, getting the two plagiarized papers last night would have taken care of that. I asked the Dean of Student Affairs if I was a cop or a teacher. He thought for a moment, then answered, "As an English teacher, you're probably mostly a cop, because of the plagiarism issue."

No thanks. I'm done.