Thursday. Day four of the first week of fall term. My first week at Portland State.
As I sit in math class (which had been proceeding along for perhaps 20 minutes), a young man quietly enters the room, takes a seat in the back and pulls out a notebook. I return my attention to the professor and her lecture and promptly forget the interruption.
After class, as I am gathering my things and other students are leaving, the young man who arrived late approaches the professor. He mumbles something unintelligible, and the professor asks him to repeat himself.
“Uh, I wasn’t here on Tuesday. Did I miss anything important?” he says.
I sighed. There are a host of stupid things that students do which make professors furious. This seemingly innocent question is one of them. He (and apparently a good portion of the student population) did not know that.
In an effort to help my fellow students, I’ve decided to offer some sage advice from an old veteran: a veteran student and a veteran educator. I’ve seen it all and heard it all, and I guarantee you that every professor who has been teaching longer than a few weeks has heard it all as well.
First off, please don’t ask your instructor if you missed anything important during your absence. I sincerely hope that everyone who asks that question is asking in jest, because the answer is so plainly obvious. Of course you missed something important.
The instructor took the time to prepare a lecture, come to class and deliver that lecture while answering questions and explaining relevant topics. I’m quite confident that pretty much everything the instructor said was indeed important.
Instead of asking stupid questions, a better approach would be to get an idea of the lecture material you missed. Study it and ask questions specific to what you don’t understand.
Next, let’s discuss plagiarism. I’m going to give you a little piece of inside info: Instructors have access to the exact same Internet that you do. Wild, huh?
Rest assured that if you can find it online, so can your instructor. In fact, I’d wager that your instructor can find your source quicker than you did. They teach these classes repeatedly and quickly get a feel for the sources that are commonly used by students.
Plagiarism is a huge problem in colleges across the country. According to plagiarism.org, 43 percent of college students admit to cheating on a written test. That’s an astronomical amount, and college professors are aware of that number.
In the same vein, please don’t turn in papers that would embarrass a sixth grader. All the popularly used style guides (MLA, APA and Chicago are the big three) are available online, and the PSU bookstore has quick reference guides for those instances when someone forgot to pay the light bill and the Wi-Fi isn’t working. Writing clear, concise and professional-looking papers does wonders as far as showing your professor respect and making both your lives easier.
Most people think they will be able to get away with cheating. Some students can be quite clever in their attempts, like the guy who printed up a crib sheet, used a Xerox machine to expand the image and then had it printed on the back of a T-shirt.
This guy then had his buddy wear the T-shirt to the test, with the buddy sitting directly in front of him. Fairly imaginative, but still pretty dumb. The whole class could see the shirt, and within seconds the two guys had been ratted on. They weren’t allowed to take the final and failed the class.
Don’t ask questions that can be answered by reading the syllabus. Doing so shows laziness and proves you did not read one of the most important documents you have been given for the term.
We are all college students. We are here at PSU to learn and to explore boundaries of thought and knowledge. We are not here to slack off and drag ourselves through four years while doing as little actual work as possible. Take the initiative, be an adult and show the world what you are capable of. You’ll be forever grateful that you did.
