research project findings...

Working with my group has been fun and doing the actual research has been even better. My group's interviewees have all given common responses to our interview questions. It seems that most of our interviewees struggled with balancing school, work, and extracurricular activities. With so many obligations, our interviewees would find ways to manage their time. It wasn't surprising to see that my interviewee and Suzette's interviewee would make a to do list. However, my roommate, who I intervieweed, took to do list to different level. She would not only make a list, but she would create a time schedule as well. For example by 3pm she "should" have finished Bio hw before doing hw for ethnic studies from 4-5. My roommate may not have a job or any other obligations outside of school, but she still found a lot of things that would keep her from doing homework. She listed facebook, online TV, and the internet in general as distractions. Despite the balancing act between school, play, and other activities, most of our interviewees generally thought plagiarism was wrong and were often unaware that what they did was considered plagiarism. One of our interviewees did admit to letting an older sibling write 1.5 pages [out of a 10 pg. paper] for her. Desperate times calls for desperate measures. The interviewee said she didn't feel guilty at all because she valued finishing the paper+getting a good grade enough to ask for "help." Another interesting finding were the reasons students gave for missing classes, which were "sick" and ironically... staying up late to do work for another class. The common things we found in our findings didn't surprise me as much as the reasons people would give. The interviewee who plagiarized basically told me that the class was ok, but she she didn't really care enough about it to put some effort into writing her 10 page paper. It's interesting to see how academic culture[from missing class to using professor ratings to pick a class] can influence someone's reasons for plagiarizing.

Anyhow I can't wait to see what the other groups have found out and how their research topics factor into plagiarism at SFSU.