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Saturday, February 12, 2005

Chp 20. Plagiarism!

Just how do u think I’ll feel when the PGP Chairperson calls me to his office and tells me I am the most talked about student in the faculty lounge? he he he, in a way it feels good coz ur leaving some kinda legacy behind in this prestigious institution. Imagine two IIMB students having this conversation somewhere in the future.

Student 1: “Hey I heard the PGP office wanted to see you personally?”
Student 2: “Yup, guess I got kimaad”.



A couple of days ago, I received a letter from the PGP office.

It started with “Dear Vanlalruatkima…. “

I always wondered why they always address me with a “dear”.

Many of the professors have mailed me “Dear Vanlalruatkima, I am afraid I will have to grade you a “D” because your performance was not up to mark” or “Dear Vanlalruatkima, your presentation was not well prepared, hence I got no other option but to judge you as unsatisfactory”.

Nowadays, whenever I receive a mail from any of the faculties that start with a “Dear Vanlalruatkima”, I know at once that it is bad news its not just about being addressed as “dear” but also the fact that they used my full name.

Anyway, back to the letter I received from the PGP office. It goes like this.

Dear Vanlalruatkima,
The course Instructors of the Managerial Communication-II course have brought to my notice that you have lifted one phrase from the internet magazine without any acknowledgement, in assignment 1 of the MC-II course. As you know, the Institute takes a very serious view of any such incident of cheating by students. The PGP Committee discussed this matter and has decided to give you a zero for this assignment.


WTF! All I did was copy one single sentence as my introduction from the net. And I have no freaking idea how the management found out about it. They must be using some Hi-Tech state-of-the-art software to detect just that.

It really sux. And for that single sentence which I lifted from the net, the institute had a faculty-student meeting just to discuss what kinda punishment must be met by me and a couple of other guys who lifted phrases from the internet without any acknowledgement.

Well, anyway its all over now. A couple of heads had to roll. An example was set. And life is back to normal here in IIMB.

This is the institute’s way of reminding the rest of the students that ethic sense and value is treated with the top most priority here.

At first I was a bit sore at being penalized for such a trivial offence. Comon, it was just one frigging sentence. But then, when I think about it now, yeah, it does make sense. Coz most of us have been copying extracts from articles off the net to add to our own work. And we always get away with it. In India, this is not a serious crime. What the heck, its not even a crime. But in the US of A or any other place for that matter, plagiarism is dealt with severely. Any Tom, Dick or Harry can sue you for publishing anything that’s not yours. Makes me proud to be an Indian

At the end of the day, I have just one thing to say. Thank God the subject where I was penalized for copying, was just a 1 credit course and not 3 credits like the rest of the other subjects!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

This is one of your best pieces!

Mizohican said...

Thankyou sis :)