Jacqueline Gets Her Geek On

I actually miss my former classmates from the MBA program

They had their faults, but at least they were a lot more proactive about group projects than these undergraduates in my business writing class.

What horrible thing did I do in a past life to deserve being inflicted with so many group projects in this one?

So, another semester, another class, another group project (you can tell from the long blog posts that I'm supposed to be working on something), another groupmate who submits "work" copy/pasted off the internet.  Seriously, UNLV, where do you find these people?

At least this time it probably wasn't a deliberate act of plagiarism. 

The plan was for everyone to find different credible sources and take research notes, which we would then combine and organize by topic.  Then everyone would take a couple topics and synthesize the notes into sections of our rough draft.  I thought that this was a fairly straightforward plan and that everyone understood what was expected of them.

Apparently not.  Not only did one of our group members miss the day the professor explicitly forbade the class to use Wikipedia as a source, but he thought that copy/pasting a Wikipedia article was sufficient "research" and turned it in as the entirety of his "notes".

He did clearly cite at the top that Wikipedia was the source of the information, and he characterized it as just "notes", not a draft, so in my judgment it was not a deliberate act of plagiarism nor an attempt to deceive us about the amount of work he did.  My impression from talking with the guy is that he has never worked on a research paper before and genuinely doesn't understand what's expected of him.

I don't know how he got into this class without knowing this, because the main topic of the prerequisite class is how to write a research paper.  (Plus, you know, some of us learned how to do this back in the 8th grade... but he's a foreign student so who knows what the curriculum was in his home country.  He was probably busy learning how to kick Americans' asses in math instead.)  He *is* in the class now, and in my group, and I have to deal with it.

I am already overwhelmed by the workload of the class (let me serve as a cautionary tale: do NOT take a writing class during a shortened summer session) and I really don't have time to personally sit down with him and coach him through how to find, evaluate, and take notes from online and other sources.  This guy desperately needs to learn some basic English 102 research skills from somewhere, though, if he's going to be useful in our group (or survive the rest of his college career).

So, a bleg: Can anyone please recommend a quick, clear, simple, very easy-to-read and understand online tutorial about how to find, evaluate, and take notes from online and other sources?  Something really short and easy.  (He's not dumb, but he's ESL, and I don't want him to not read it because it wasn't assigned by the professor and appears too long or complicated to bother with.) 

While I'm at it, a related bleg: I am looking for people who have recently lived in or spent time in New Delhi, India, whom my group could interview for our class project.  Background: The project is for my business writing class, and the premise is that we are consultants hired by the human resources department of a multinational corporation to advise them about how to prepare their American employees for transfer to their New Delhi office.  We are supposed to interview "primary sources" as part of our research and haven't connected with any yet.  My understanding is that India is a very diverse and rapidly changing place so I think it's probably important that we find someone with *recent* experience in India and specifically in New Delhi.  Yes, I am being that dork who wants to get it right and not just good enough to fool the professor -- my motivation in this class is skillz not credits.

...

Sigh.  The more group projects I work on, the more I understand why certain professors are always bitching so much. :)

Update: I chatted with him about it and he sent me some real notes a couple hours later.  YAY!  I can tell it was all his own work, too, because of the errors. :)

I have a lot of school work to do this week

If y'all see me blogging a lot (my favorite form of procrastination!) before the weekend, y'all should scold me and tell me to get back to work. :)

25% of UNLV students smoke pot

25% of UNLV students smoke pot, originally uploaded by Jacqueline1776.

That's the message *I* take away from this poster. Also, I'm not sure if it shows in this picture, but someone edited it to read "Do not report using Marijuana" instead of "Do not use Marijuana."

I enrolled in a writing course

I enrolled in a summer session writing course at UNLV, Fundamentals of Business Writing: "Examines the rhetorical principles and composing practices necessary for writing effective business letters, memos, and reports."  It covers not just core writing skills but also business writing conventions, formatting, planning and managing research and writing projects, writing collaboratively, etc.  I'm pretty excited about it so far.

It's the prerequisite course for UNLV's Professional Writing Certificate, which also sounds interesting.  Here are the certificate's courses and descriptions:

Document Design: "Explores fundamental theories and practices of designing professional documents. Considers how design is influenced by genre and rhetorical context. Students will use appropriate tools to design printed documents."

Advanced Professional Communication: "Analyzes a range of professional writing topics, applying rhetorical theories and techniques to specific professional writing situations, especially within organizations."

Electronic Documents and Publications: "Explores advanced principles of information architecture and content development for web-based documents and publications. Students will plan, design, develop, edit and publish in a variety of web-based genres."

The certificate also requires three elective English courses. These look the most interesting to me:

Advanced Composition: "Explores writing and literacy. Students will develop greater awareness of themselves as strategic writers by studying and creating texts for different audiences, purposes and contexts in a variety of styles and genres."

Research and Editing: "Library research, as distinct from experimental or laboratory research, and report writing and editing for students in all disciplines."

Writing for Publication: "Intensive study of the business of writing, designed to serve the needs of the freelance writer. Includes discussion of literary markets and popular literary genres."

Visual Rhetoric: "Study of the persuasive and aesthetic effects that visual elements have on readers/users in print and online documents. Visual elements include typography, graphics, images, color, paper or screen textures, alignment, and multimedia."

Principles of Modern Grammar: "Surveys the structure of contemporary English grammar. Examines the workings of the English language from a linguistic perspective, concentrating primarily on sentence structure."

The prerequisite chains and class schedule of the MS Accounting program are such that I don't think I'll be able to take a full 15 credit load of graduate accounting classes most semesters (the program seems designed with part-time, working students in mind), so it may be possible to simultaneously complete all or most of the Professional Writing Certificate program without tacking more semesters on.

I'm seriously considering enrolling in it because it looks like its emphasis is on the type of writing I am interested in: practical nonfiction that explains or instructs.  I have no interest in writing fiction or "creative nonfiction", which unfortunately seems to be the focus of most writing courses I've looked at.  No Great American Novel for me -- I just want tell people how to manage their personal finances or where to find a good beer in Las Vegas or how to make money on the internet or how to get a date or other useful information and advice gleaned from my own research and experiences.

Spring semester grades

CLASS	NAME	CREDITS	GRADE
---------------	---------------	---------------	---------------
MBA 709 001	ACCOUNTING MANAGEMENT	3.00	A
MBA 715 001	MARKET OPP ANALYSIS	3.00	A-

A- in Marketing?  I don't see how that's mathematically possible.  Everyone else must have flunked the final exam too.  HA HA HA HA HA bless you, UNLV, and your low, low standards.

Edit: I think this calls for celebration... at the Yard House!  Am I right?

Finished with spring semester

I just sent off the accounting project to my partner.  Unless she objects to anything, we're done.  I only need a C and she only needs a B on this project and I'm pretty sure it's good enough for that. 

I'm so glad to be done with the UNLV MBA program.  All I have left is to formally withdraw (I was already accepted into the MS Accounting program for the fall, but apparently I still have to fill out some paperwork to make my transfer official).

I don't have another butt-in-seat class until August 25.  That does not, however, mean that I get to take the next 14 1/2 weeks off!  I have a bunch of undergraduate accounting classes that I need to complete as prerequisites for the graduate-level classes in the MS Accounting program.  Fortunately, I found a AACSB-accredited school (Louisiana State University) that offers them as inexpensive self-paced distance learning classes.  So, I will spend my summer cramming through as many of those as possible.  This should cut about a year off how long it would take to complete my Masters degree if I'd had to take all the prerequisites as butt-in-seat classes at UNLV.

More immediately, I need to run errands and clean my house and do the laundry.  I haven't done crap around here for weeks -- too busy with the end-of-semester death march.

I wonder when grades will be posted.  I know that I'm getting an A in Accounting but I have no idea what my Marketing grade will be.

Drowning my sorrows

Drowning my sorrows, originally uploaded by Jacqueline1776.

with Guinness and liquidity ratios.

To the gallows

To the gallows, originally uploaded by Jacqueline1776.

Update: It was brutal.  I'm sure I flunked the exam.  As soon as I saw the questions I realized that I'd studied the wrong material, in the wrong way.  I could only answer half the questions and just wrote vague bullshit for the other half (if you leave it blank you're guaranteed to get 0 points, but if you at least write *something* you *might* get partial credit mercy points!). 

I will be *lucky* to get a C in the class now.  My only hope of a better grade is if everyone else did as badly as I did and he decides to curve the exam grades.  UNLV has pretty low standards, so it's plausible that a professor would do that instead of giving out a lot of C's and D's.  (Rumor has it that last semester after most of the economics class flunked the final exam, the professor threw the whole exam out and didn't count it for calculating grades.)

I don't know if procrastinating less and studying more could have even helped me in this class.  The lectures consisted of him scrolling through one densely-packed PowerPoint slide after another without much indication of which of the hundreds of terms/concepts and thousands of details he presented were important, or how they related to one another and the big picture.  The textbook wasn't much better.  Apparently I have no aptitude for Marketing because I was never able to see the big picture or structure on my own, and without any outside help to figure that out I was left trying to brute force memorize what appeared to me as just a jumbled mess of crap.  I will have to debrief with some of my classmates and see if they feel the same way -- did the class just suck, or do I suck at Marketing?  I suspect the answer is probably both -- I bet that I did worse than average on the exam, but not by that much.

I'm pretty sure I got an A on the project (30%), and a C or B for class participation (20%).  I got a B on the case analysis papers (25%).  But with an F on the final (25%), the best I can do is around 77% for the class.  If I've overestimated my grade for the project or class participation, I could even get a D.

I should have listened to my better judgment and withdrawn from the class six weeks ago like I wanted to.  In the same amount of time (~150 hours) I wasted since then completing the Marketing class with a C or a D, I could have probably knocked out TWO of my distance learning accounting prerequisite classes with A's.  Even the additional amount I'd have to spend on tuition later for a different elective for my MS Accounting program is far less than what I've probably lost now in merit-based grants by blowing my GPA.

:(

SUNK COSTS VS. MARGINAL COSTS, KIDDIES.  Learn it, love it, live it!  Ignore it and you will suffer as I have suffered.  (If I can't be a good example, at least I can be a cautionary tale, right?)

(Edit: Hubby points out that withdrawing from a class mid-semester could have screwed up my financial aid in other, more costly ways than getting a C will, so perhaps he was right that completing the class was still the +EV move even after my realization that it was going to be a huge time and motivation suck and my chances of a good grade were slim to none.  My reasoning about sunk vs. marginal costs in these situations applies when financial aid programs are not involved, though.)

...

Oh well.  What's done is done.  I'm going to go finish my accounting project now so I can put this semester and everything to do with the MBA program behind me.

I am so screwed Feeling less screwed now Nope, I was right the first time, I was screwed

My Marketing final exam is in 12 hours.

I've been awake for over 24 hours, and thus must spend most of the remaining time sleeping.

I still know NEXT TO NOTHING about "Marketing" as it was taught in this class, despite having studied for this exam for approximately 20 hours over the past 5 days.  I wasn't a very good student in this class, but I did attend almost all of the lectures and discussions and read about half the textbook (yeah I should have read more, but I wasn't getting anything out of it except a cure for insomnia).  I have not been able to find an effective way to study and learn this material.

What's really frustrating is I don't know if starting earlier or studying more would have even helped me here.  I have prepared literally hundreds of little flashcards of definitions and assorted "facts", but neither the professor nor the textbook provided any sort of coherent framework to organize this information around.  I'm not having any luck inventing my own framework either because... well... I think most of it is BS and I don't see how all the BS fits together.  I really, really suck at memorizing large amounts of apparently unrelated, irrelevant information.

The exam is rumored to be quite difficult.  IIRC, he said that it will be around 20 short answer questions.  So, although I think I might have achieved a recognition-level knowledge on some of the material, there will be no multiple choice strategy games for me.

The final exam is worth 25% of the grade.  So it is quite possible that I will get such a low score on this exam that I will only get a C in the class.  Which is awful because so far, other than this class, I have a 4.0 graduate school GPA.

:(

(Note: I'm not asking for advice, suggestions, or other help -- it's too late for that now -- I'm just whining.)

Update: Also, I totally *knew* 6+ weeks ago that I should withdraw from this class since I was leaving the MBA program anyway, but I let my husband talk me out of it against my better judgment because the credits would still count as elective credits for my MS Accounting and he didn't want the time and money already invested this semester to be wasted.  So now it's 150+ wasted hours of my life later and while I'll probably manage to pass the class and get those 3 elective credits it'll be at the cost of a fucked GPA.

So, I am sticking to my guns the next time we have a marital debate over sunk vs. marginal costs. :)

(Note: I'm not blaming Hubby for my decision, it was my call and I made the wrong decision.  I'm just articulating my realization that one cannot let oneself be swayed by faulty economic reasoning, even if it's coming from one's spouse.)

Update II: Well, some good news: My afternoon study group canceled.  This is good news because I've realized that my original idea to get together and quiz each other with flash cards wasn't a very good one and right now my time will be better spent organizing my notes into some sort of attempt at a big picture (and sleeping). 

My first four approaches to studying this material were completely unsuccessful but I have high hopes for my new tack!  I see a B in my future!

Update III: Long-time readers of my previous blog will recall that near the end of every school term I have a period of procrastination leading up to one of these "AIEE THIS SUCKS I'M GOING TO FAIL EVERYTHING I HATE LIFE ARGH" panic attacks followed a week later by, "Oh!  I did much better than I expected, how nice," when grades are posted.  So newer readers should not fret too much on my behalf despite all the dire-sounding whining above.

Update IV: OK, I think I am finally starting to get a grip on the material.  I'm still pretty worried about the exam, but at least I'm no longer in a panic of I STUDIED 20 HOURS AND I KNOW NOTHING MORE THAN I DID AT THE START OMG FREAKOUT.

Update V: The sad conclusion to our tale of woe.

FUCK I HATE PEOPLE PLAGIARIZERS

So, I finished my marketing project slides and have begun work on finishing the accounting project (an analysis of The Gap's financial reports).

It turns out that one of my accounting project group members -- yup, you guessed it -- plagiarized her contribution to our paper!

The other group member and I initially were suspicious because of the three pages she sent us, the third page was written in the first person plural and thus was obviously taken from the company's annual report.  However, the plagiarizer wrote in her original email, "The financial information is in draft form right now," so we decided to give her the benefit of the doubt that perhaps this part was just her research notes and she planned to rewrite and properly cite the information.

So, my reply to her email included the question, "Is what you sent us so far a draft that you wrote or is it notes copied from somewhere else or what?"

She replied, "the first 2 pages i wrote and the bottom is info i found."

OK, so far, so good.  She was not claiming to have written the part that she very obviously hadn't written.  Since I had the much more pressing marketing project to deal with and the accounting project isn't due until the 15th, I put off doing anything else with it for a week.

Well, I just started working on the accounting project again, and since I still don't trust her, I started plugging phrases into Google.  It turns out that the entire two pages she claims to have written herself are ripped off from Hoover's:

The Gap Company Description: She copied this paragraph word-for-word with only the following minor changes:

• replaced "ubiquitous" with "ever-present"
• deleted the reference to poplin
• updated 3,100 to 3,150
• deleted the word "iconic"
• deleted the word "budgeteer"
• deleted the fragment "each also has its own online incarnation"

So of the 112 words in the paragraph, she changed only 13 of them.  This does not count as adequate paraphrasing.

Industry Overview: Clothing Stores: She copied the "Industry Overview" and "Competitive Landscape" paragraphs word-for-word with NO changes.

Industry Forecast: She copied the opening sentence of the "Industry Forecast" section word-for-word with NO changes.

I'm not sure where she got her "Comparison to Industry & Market" and "Top Competitors" tables from, but the weird formatting strongly suggests that they were not created by her in Word (it's a Word document) but were copy/pasted off a website as well.

She does cite the source she ripped off, "Hoover's Handbook of World Business 2008", at the end of her document, but in no way does changing only 13 out of 286 words (thus copying 95% of the source word-for-word) count as "writing" something.

I am so fucking pissed.  Because *I* would have gotten an F on the project too (the professor has emphasized that plagiarism would not be tolerated) if I'd believed her and turned in the paper with her section left as is.  This woman is not some stupid little freshman who doesn't know better, she's on her last 12 credits of her MBA.  She fucking knows better and she decided to take the risk anyway and fuck the rest of us over because she's too fucking lazy to ethically research and write two fucking pages.

I AM TURNING THE BITCH IN.  I'm certain that my other group member will support me on this and we will just complete the project by ourselves.

Update: What really fucking sucks is the plagiarizer is the one who picked The Gap as our paper topic.  I don't want to write a paper analyzing the fucking Gap.  I don't even shop there.  I'd rather do Amazon.  But the non-plagiarizer and I already have 1/3 to 1/2 a paper about The Gap so it'll take us less time to finish the stupid thing than to start on a new company.

Update II: I heard back from the professor: "Thank you very much for telling me this.  You did the right thing in breaking away into a separate group.  There is nothing further that you need to do."  Dude, what are you doing up at 4am?

End-of-semester death march update (blogging will be light for a week)

Tonight: Work on the slides for the marketing plan presentation and try to finish the accounting project. 

The accounting project isn't actually due until the 15th, but I want to get it done early so we have the opportunity to get feedback from the professor and fix any issues before the deadline.  I'm not worried about it because it's very straightforward and I did so well on the exams that I only need to get 71% on the project to get an A in the class (but my project groupmates probably need higher scores so I can't just half-ass it).

Tomorrow: Rehearse marketing presentation with my group, finish accounting project if it isn't done yet.

Thursday: Presentation, followed by dinner with the former coworkers who are attending the presentation (the marketing plan is for their company).  Begin studying for Marketing final exam.

Friday-Tuesday: Study for the Marketing final, pretty much full time.  I am really stressed about this exam because I have no idea what my grade in the class is going into the exam -- the only intermediate feedback was two short case analysis papers (25%) which I half-assed and only averaged 85.5% on.  The rest of the grade is the marketing plan and presentation (30%) -- I think our group is doing well on but who knows how he's going to grade it? -- and class participation (20%) -- again, I think I've participated far more than the average student but it's so arbitrary and I have no idea if he uses relative or absolute standards to measure this.  The final is worth 25% of the grade and is rumored to be very tough.  I didn't get much out of his lectures so I'm going to have to study by self-teaching myself out of the textbook and that will be very time-consuming.  Ugh.  I'm really freaked out about this. :(

Tuesday night: Take Marketing final.  Drink heavily afterwards.

I'd also like to fit in pigging out at the San Gennaro Feast, see a movie with my husband, say hi to Terrence while he's in town (someone gave me the most ridiculous thing and I must regift it to him), and maybe go to the ArtFest in Henderson.  I've been neglecting my local friendships so hopefully I can interest them in going with me to at least one of those activities.

I will have a lot of rested XP waiting for me in World of Warcraft next week. :)

Delightful tidbits about my school

Apparently the men's bathrooms in the business school building are a hot gay cruising spot.  Awesome.

How to be an annoying student

From The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich by Timothy Ferriss:

"For all four years of school, I had a policy.  If I received anything less than an A on the first paper or non-multiple-choice test in a given class, I would bring 2-3 hours of questions to the grader's office hours and not leave until the other had answered them all or stopped out of exhaustion.

"This served two important purposes:

"1. I learned exactly how the grader evaluated work, including his or her prejudices and pet peeves.

"2. The grader would think long and hard about ever giving me less than an A.  He or she would never consider giving me a bad grade without exceptional reasons for doing so, as he or she knew I'd come a'knocking for another three-hour visit."

HA HA HA BRILLIANT!  I am sooooo going to use this.

End-of-semester death march status report

• April 29: Turn in written marketing plan: DONE!
• May 8: Marketing plan in-class presentation
• May 13: Marketing final exam
• May 14: Accounting project due

The written plan was the biggest hurdle, although I think the marketing final exam will be nasty, too.  (I don't have to take the accounting final because I did so well on the other tests.) 

I finally have time to resume work on my distance learning accounting classes now, too.  I need to finish my management accounting class ASAP because it's a prerequisite for a summer semester class I want to take at UNLV, and I need to try to complete all of my distance learning classes by the end of August.

Ding dong, the project's dead!

Which class project?  The marketing project!
Ding dong, the marketing project's dead!

...

Unfortunately, although the paper is finally done, the project isn't really over yet.  It's only sleeping -- regenerating -- waiting to pounce again next week as an in-class presentation. :(  SHOULD HAVE USED FIRE OR ACID.

All work and no play sleep makes Jackie a dull crabby girl.

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and no play sleep makes Jackie a dull crabby girl.  All work and no play sleep makes Jackie a dull crabby girl. 

Assigned a group project? Check your classmates' work for plagiarism!

We are approaching the end of the semester and many students are working on completing various group projects for our classes.

My advice: Check all your group members' work for plagiarism before you turn in your final project.  Do this even if you aren't the person responsible for the final draft!  I've heard of at least two (possibly three) instances of plagiarism on group project contributions by students in UNLV's MBA program this year[1].  Fortunately in each of the cases I know of, the person responsible for compiling, editing, and submitting the final paper was able to recognize and rewrite/cite (or require the guilty party to rewrite/cite) the plagiarized parts before they turned it in to the professor.  If they had been more trusting (or the plagiarizer less obvious) and just turned it in, chances are that the professor (much more experienced in recognizing and verifying plagiarism) would have caught it and the whole group would have received failing grades.

OK, so now that you know you should check, how do you do it?  Unfortunately, I don't have a lot of advice beyond the obvious strategy of entering suspicious phrases into Google and seeing what comes up.  There are paid plagiarism-checking tools, but I doubt that very many students would be willing to invest in those.

I know a few professors read this blog -- do you have any suggestions for free tools and strategies students can use to check their classmates' work for plagiarism?

[1] Futher evidence that MBA students really are the most unethical group of students.  See "Survey Finds Widespread Cheating in MBA Programs", "Wily MBA students lead the cheating pack", and "MBA: The devil's degree?"

Update: So, the possible third instance of plagiarism I mentioned was someone in one of my own group projects and it turns out that she did indeed plagiarize everything.

HOORAY FOOD!

I had to come to campus today for a meeting with my Marketing project group, and to my great delight, as walked back to my car from the library I discovered that there was an international food festival being held in the middle of campus!

The food is being provided by the various student ethnic associations, and is good but not spectacular (most of it is the junk/snack foods of the world).  The prices are extremely reasonable -- $1 to $3 for most items.  I've been grazing on baklava, Chinese candies and cookies, samosa, coconut juice, agua fresca, Arabic coffee, and a burger flavored with Middle Eastern spices.  I think for my next round I'll for for a kebab, some Thai mango sticky rice, and whatever those dumplings are that they're cooking over at the Japanese table.

I hope that this is an annual event.

Update: oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.  I ate too much.

I did write you a nice long blog post...

...about my experience with the UNLV MBA program, but on second thought I should save it until AFTER my semester grades are posted.  So, look for it in about a month.

Sneak preview/Cliff Notes version: I am glad that I am transferring out of here.

Edit: I really should have dropped this semester's MBA classes as a sunk cost while I still could.  But the deadline for that has passed, and thus I am stuck with three more weeks of motivation-sucking bullshit to deal with.  Ugh... back to work now on happy fun project joy.