>As a weird side note, this is how I discovered a pretty fun
>demographic of student. Kids from other countries who aren't
>native English speakers and are therefore not very confident
>talking at length in class, but who, as a result of their
>efforts to learn English and the increased confidence that
>comes from taking the time to craft your own writing have (and
>use) INCREDIBLY impressive vocabularies in papers. It took me
>a few semesters to realize this was a thing, but I see it with
>regularity - a student of absolutely unknowable intelligence
>in classroom discussion who drops SAT words by the dozens in
>their totally unplagiarized papers.

There's a guy I can barely understand from China (well, I have picked up on his accent and can understand him better now), but his emails are INCREDIBLE... not only his ability to communicate technical issues, but the 'voice' i.e. conversational aspects of the writing, humor, etc. It's really impressive and I totally get how that experience would initially lead someone grading a paper to raise an eyebrow.

>And double ughhh. That's not part of the deal. She can pursue
>the issue or not pursue the issue. You don't get to be too
>busy to uncover cheating AND make students suffer for
>suspected cheating. I'm sorry that happened to you.

Man the Dean bailed her out. On some 'hey the professor ain't got time for all this'. I get how you protect your professors first, especially at a huge school where the students are basically statistics.

>Eh. You were right to call it risky, but only if the professor
>is both extremely rigid AND extremely lazy. I warn students
>about going off-book for their research, but the objective of
>any of these classes is to get students to initiate and follow
>through on their own research. Like, that's the fucking
>point.

She was lazy, but being that she was a practicing psychoanalyst with what I sensed were her own emotional issues, I think the 'C' was the only way for the Dean to let her save face and let the student take the L (I guess I was supposed to be grateful that they didn't pursue the plagiarism accusations further)