
"Hey, I'm glad I got to work with you. Working with you taught me that life is unfair."
Allow me to give you a few of hundreds of memorable exchanges during my year with him, and I'm quoting from the emails:
[email after going through 15 pages of his garbage]
Me: So you said that the lowest percentage in 5 years was in 2002, which you say was ABOVE 30%. I just did the calculation and it was 27.5%. (1600/5800). What happened? Am I missing something?(pause.) (?!??!?!?!) (unpause.)
Him: I did not do precise calculation, just calculate by heart.
Me: What does that MEAN? Calculate BY HEART? You have two numbers in front of you and you made a guess?[my first whiff of plagiarism in drafting a textbook chapter]
Him: it is not a guess. just rough calculation.
Me: Why are you making rough calculations when the numbers are in front of you?
Him: I think I only need the trend, not the precise number.
Me: But that's the point. The trend was incorrect. You made a broad claim that didn't require precision, but even the broad claim was wrong.
Me: I'm finally looking at the new draft for your section. It is 100% different from the section you gave me last semester that I spent hours and edited, revised, and used and now you have given me something that is half as long, and entirely different.[my second whiff of plagiarism for ANOTHER paper I had to do with him]
Him: My second draft is a response to your request of writing in my own words. The first draft is just direct collection of information from someone's book, if you have revised it in a way that make it appear to be your own work, I think you can use the version you revised.
Me: Wait, so the first draft you gave me was actually COMPLETELY copied from the book? (awestruck) I don't understand how that is possible.
Him: The first draft is collection of information, and the second draft is paraphrasing and summarizing. I understand this two-step work is what we are expected to do: "Something between" as you said. I never think the first-step work can be used for public purpose. It was given to you in a hasty manner and expected to need additional work.
Me: [Struck dumb]
Me: I am looking through your write up on the [agency]. Much of it is identical to the webpage and it is not properly quoted or attributed. This is plagiarism, and we can be kicked out of school for this, and prevented from joining the bar. This is a VERY serious problem. Are other sections of your paper also directly taken from sources without quotations, without direct citation, and without direct paraphrasing?[third whiff]
Him: [sends back badly paraphrased passage with a general webpage link]
Me: You must provide the ACTUAL LINK. You cannot expect people to surf the web page until they find it. Send the ACTUAL link.
Him: [FAILS.]
Me: You have to be honest with me. I just found another section in the paper that is directly cut and pasted from article that you did not tell me about. I now have to rewrite that entire section that was YOUR responsibility in the FALL. Even where it is cut and pasted it is NOT complete. You need to tell me exactly where you have lifted text from other papers. It is unacceptable for me to be continuing to find plagiarism all over the paper.Truly and without exaggeration, these snippets are the ice cube sized tip of the Titanic sinking iceberg. Over the course of this year I have discovered entire passages of plagiarism lifted off of websites, articles, and textbooks. The parts that were not plagiarized were incomprehensible English. I had to work with him ALL year on TWO separate projects, both 70-80 page research projects on the Chinese and Hong Kong financial systems. I discovered in MARCH that everything I had ever received from him was useless, plagiarized, or flatly made up. The problem is...is that he actually believes he is doing good work. So the harder I whip him, the more CRAP I get from him. I HATE working with him. So I just end up verbally abusing him...ultimately provoking this response after I continue to help him out with his own work.
Him: it is a surprise to me. I reviewed this part twice. I will get back to you later.
Him: I guess the section you mentioned is the part included below. I guess a citation is lost for this part. I did not check that but it is possible. I tried to review and revise all the parts I wrote from early April and I think I did that, because I almost rewrote my part. In fact I did rewrite the whole HKex part, and reviewed other parts I wrote and revised substantially accordingly. But the writing period is a year long long and not continuous, sometimes I have to rely on my memory. and sometimes some citation may be lost in editing... [note, no this doesn't make sense]....anyway, I rewrite that part. [sends a large body of text in the email with a citation]
Me: Actually, that's the wrong citation, and it's not even that section, but it is the section after that. Almost the entire section is directly lifted. [yes, he did the wrong section and sent the wrong citation.]
Me: Please respond as precisely as you can when you receive my questions to your revisions, particularly because I am only doing this tonight because you specifically asked me to review your portions for your LLM requirement.
Him: I truly appreciate that. sometimes I felt like to grab a knife to kill myself when we were communicating.
8 comments:
Orientals suck.
RS
P.S. On NPR last Sunday, they had a segment called "Secret Asian Woman" which was all about how this half-Asian woman could pass for white, and how she was totally having an identity crisis about how she was offended when people asked her what her background is, but didn't know what to call herself, cause first she called herself a half breed, then she called herself an Oriental, then she thought that was offensive, so she had some Hawaiin word, but then she found out that white colonizers in hawaii had used it, so she was more offended, then she went with bi-racial, then multi-racial, then got offendend, then I stopped listening because she was getting whiny and annoying. Long story short, I like the word Oriental, and plan on using it in everday conversation.
HAHAHA he is awesome.
RS: TRUE.
mh: FALSE.
also, this secret asian woman has nothing on my identity crisis. bitch please.
Why the hell do you have a picture of the guy?
Hsien: Facebook. It's 2008, try to keep up.
the question appeared to be "why," not "how."
j
dammit.
Post a Comment