Plagiarism

One of my flunkies is trying to finish High School right now. He was supposed to graduate this past spring, but managed to flunk English. I gave him a lot of grief about that, even using the famous Hank Hill line; "Dammit boy, how can you fail English? You speak English!" He ended up going to summer school and it appears he's managed to flunk that as well.

Earlier this year, he had an entire litany of excuses for failing the first time, none of which included his real reasons, which mainly consisted of video games and other assorted foolishness. If it were girls, or a job, or even hunting and fishing, I'd be slightly more sympathetic because he least he might have something to show for his lack of effort.

Since I like the boy, I offered to help him with his paper. I gave him the use of my home office, my computer and my fairly extensive library. I also offered to proofread it for him.

Well, I've just finished proofing it and I have to say I am more than a little bit pissed at the little shit. I have to give him credit though, I was three paragraphs into it before I figured out that he had plagiarized the entire paper. I don't mean as in lifting someone else's line here and there, he found an extremely obscure account about an engagement the 6th (Regular) Cavalry was in during the Gettysburg campaign and simply copied and pasted it into "his" term paper.

And when I say it's an obscure account, I ain't kidding. It is SO obscure, I didn't think it was even in the Regimental History, which I happen to have a copy of. It merits only the briefest of mentions... less than two pages.

At any rate, after having the run of my library for two days, the little goob didn't even know I had a copy, even though it was on the shelf with all of the other Cavalry books. He was supposed to writing the paper on military equipage, which was part of the reason I offered to help him, but evidently he's decided since Sunday to write this account of the 6th's Skirmish at Fairfield. I would have been more than happy to help him with that too. But no, he's lazy so he decided to cheat.

I called him on it. He denied it, but I had him by the short hairs because he didn't even bother to edit out the picture credits in the text. How stupid/lazy/idiotic is that for you? His current excuse for everything is "my teacher doesn't like me." I told him I could understand why if this was a typical example of his work.

I told him to rewrite the paper, gave him a couple of books, told him what chapters to read and told him to get his ass to work. There is no way in hell that he'll get a passing grade, but I did at least make him work a little bit.

I also called his daddy and ratted him out. He's not going to be a happy boy when pappy finishes with him.

He's over on the brides computer right now typing away. I am curious to see what he comes up with before I send his ass home.

And yes, I am rambling. But that's because I am pissed off. I like the little shit and he's smarter than this, but he's lazy and has f-ed up priorities. I have told him every way I know how to get his shit together or he's going to end up in some low-end job the rest of his life. I think he's influenced too much by his slacker brother and all of his little useless slacker friends. The bad part is, he is smart enough to know he screwed up, but too damn lazy to do much about it.