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Dumb student
Hardly an excuse
PALEONTOLOGIST James Lamb used to share an office with another professor at Wake Technical Community College in Raleigh, North Carolina. One day, he recounts, a student came to complain to his colleague about her poor grade in a term paper.
The professor replied that the grade was poor because the student's paper had obviously been plagiarised. He proved the point by citing the original sources for various sentences and paragraphs she had submitted.
Sounding both injured and indignant, the student replied, "No, I didn't do that. It was the person who wrote the paper for me."
"There followed a silence in the office of what was probably only about 30 seconds, but what seemed like 5 minutes as my office mate and I stared at each other, trying to come up with a reply that even came close to doing justice to the situation," Lamb recalls on the Vertebrate Paleontology mailing list. He adds, "I have to say, I'm glad to have left teaching."
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