How stupid can you be?

Online courses seem to bring out the dumb in some people. I have had my frustrations over the past year taking online courses, from people who don’t use spell check, to the ones that use “text speak” – C’mon people, this is a college course you are taking – to the ones that simply cannot operate a computer. (My philosophy is that maybe they should require students to take a computer course, or pass some kind of computer competency test before allowing them to take a course that relies upon having computer skills but I digress.)

This one takes the cake though. I mean really? Who does crap like this? In my Art Appreciation class, we have to give our thoughts on a specific piece of artwork, or the artist, or even what they went through at the time. (key phrase here: our own thoughts). Pretty much par for the course in online classes: essays, discussions, more essays. Yesterday, as I was reading through the posts of my fellow cyber classmates, I came across a post from this chick. As I was reading it, my BS meter was going off pretty strongly. I remember her previous posts, and not to sound arrogant, but they were definitely NOT good, or at least not even as close to good as this particular post was. So being the untrusting soul that I am, I took the first sentence in her post, popped it into Google, and BAM! first result was word for word from Wikipedia, along with several other sources, all word for word. I take the second sentence of her post and this time the first result is a New York Times article from an art critic! Word.for.freakin.word.

Busted.

I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I called her on it. “I thought these discussions were supposed to be our own thoughts on the subject. I am interested in hearing what YOU think of this work” I realize that the teacher probably would have noticed it herself, I mean it was THAT obvious, but I couldn’t help myself.

I get so angry when I work my ass off to really look at the art (or whatever subject I might be studying at the time) and read my textbook and try to understand what I am looking at so I can form my thoughts into a semi educated discussion and some dumb girl plagiarizes her posts. Don’t you think I would rather copy some sentences from someone else and use that as my own post? It would definitely save me a hell of a lot of time.

If you are going to be that shady, then at least paraphrase what you find rather than posting it word for word so anyone can pick it up in Google and realize what a complete idiot you really are.