When I was a stupid kid, I wrote papers for the jocks at Frederick Community College who needed to pass their classes to stay on their teams. I grew up, turned 18, discerned the error of my ways after being nabbed, nearly, taking someone else's final exam at the University of Maryland. The teaching assistant was too blinded by my flashing smile to gleam that I wasn't his student until the exam was lost in the pile in front of him. I high-tailed it out of Ellicott Hall and halted that line of business, but that foolish (at best) period in my life has left me with a skill. I am able to discern when words not their own have been put on paper by the students of the Professor who married me (despite my confession to him of that bad monkey enterprise).
It's not always the text itself that gives them away. I'll not forget the paper (such a delight to read) that turned out to have been a piece unchanged by a single word of a several years-old issue of The Economist, complete with poached footnotes. I downloaded the article and stapled it to the term paper, and the Professor returned it with neither grade nor comment to Missy, for such was her name. What gave Missy away? Her signature on the cover sheet was crowned with hearts over the i's of her name. The text? Clear and concise, well organized, and probably peer reviewed, which I suspected was beyond the ken of the young student. The Professor gave the kid another chance. I married a good man.
I remember very well the day the teacher returned my sister's paper because of her use of "impecunious jobhopper" to describe President Ulysses S. Grant. Elaine was seven.
Posted by: Moretta | April 28, 2010 at 07:13 PM