so you're brilliant, gorgeous, and ... I don't believe you

[freckles_and_doubt]

Ooh, my Livjournal bar is all over a meteor shower. This makes me strangely happy. As, in fact, does the fact that yesterday we took Lucy out to Overture - or, rather, Lucy took us out to Overture, courtesy of British Air, who stuffed up her flights royally and gave her Monies in recompense. Overture was luvverly, although they've changed their pricing structures and are no longer quite as good value as they were. Gorgeous food and wine, however. Entrecot and mushrooms, and incredible trout terrine with magical pickled things done to cauliflowers. And deconstructed postmodern apple crumble, all exploded on the plate, with cardamom. Good food also makes me strangely happy.

This weekend I don't have a pile of marking to do. I feel about 30Kg lighter. Finishing the marking, it's an astral diet plan. The weekend is mine, mine, utterly mine, and I'm sleeping ten hours a night and bumming around doing not much with enormous enjoyment. My day job takes it out of me; I don't realise how much it takes it out of me until the pressure lets up a bit and it transpires I'm actually dead. Also, my eyelids are turning into a dragon's again, which is a sure sign of stress.

In fact, I lie: I have two essays to mark. They came in late, and are driving me bats because I can't work out if the writer is plagiarising or not. They're beautifully written, sophisticated, on topic, focused; mad googling doesn't turn up any of the phrases she's using. Either she's an undiscovered genius, or she's plagiarising with extreme cunning from very obscure sources. But it's horribly depressing, to actually start reading the one piece of excellent work in ten which I'm lucky to receive, and have my immediate response be not joy, but suspicion. It's a filthy time we live in, when basic honour is no longer an entrenched and accepted virtue. It makes one realise why the SCA exists.

Moral issues notwithstanding, I'm having a lovely weekend. I hope you are too.

Comments

[veratiny.livejournal.com]

Just read an article in the paper today about people paying to have essays (and dissertations--apparently a PHD goes for $54 per page...not sure who is responsible for the actual research!) written for them by people in India--well we've out sourced IT and call centres might us well outsource education! The sites they mentioned: www.freelancer.com, ozesay.com.au.

[schedule5.livejournal.com]

Scary google ad on my email today:

"Let Us Write For You
Top grades. Easy, quick & safe! We specialise in nursing topics.
www.ManuscriptServices.co.uk"

So who knows if any given nurse, who potentially could kill you through incompetence, got through her qualification by paying someone to write for her!

[extemporanea.livejournal.com]

Yes, it's the one form of essay-writing dishonesty it's pretty much impossible to detect. I assume you've seen the write-up here (http://chronicle.com/article/The-Shadow-Scholar/125329/)?

[schedule5.livejournal.com]

I've read it now. How horrifying. I've been asked on more than one occasion to do homework / write stuff for others for money, but it's never occurred to me to actually do it. Then again, I've never been quite that desperate for the money. This is a damn good argument for oral thesis defences.