Sticky Business

Ugh. So here it is; the week that I need to decide which topic to write my English Lit research paper on that is due the week after next. The problem is that my professor gave us so many topics to choose from that are interesting and I would like to write about, that I'm having a hard time choosing. Could be worse, I know. He might have given us a crappy list to choose from and then I would be complaining about having to research the crap. At least it won't be horrible to research a subject that I want to explore in detail.

Documentation is a different story. If there is one thing I despise about college writing, it is the endless hours spent documenting and citing sources. A necessary evil to be sure, as there are many students who would be thrilled to just cut and paste another's words into their own research papers if they thought they could get away with it. But, that is plagiarism... unless of course the appropriate quotation marks and works cited styles are utilized. Then it is research.

Literary research paper writing can be quite a sticky business simply because you are researching another's work and words. It is a very fine line between paraphrasing a writer's work and meanings and plagiarizing. It never ceases to amaze me how many students think that they can get around citing works if they just reword their sources. They get caught up in thinking that if they just change a few words around here and there, then they are not actually copying.

It is a pity. Really. Here, I, along with a majority of the other students take great care in ensuring that we are producing an original, well documented research paper. But there is always that poor misinformed schlep who tries to get past having to do the hard work. I mean, HELLO! They have software installed at the writing lab that is specifically designed to catch cheaters.

Copy THAT!

I'm hoping beyond hope that in this class, on this research paper, no one tries to lift work that isn't their own. Cheaters suck and plagiarists are the bottom of the barrel.