Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Work Sited

In my morning class, my professor complained that the class was not doing particularly well, because, apparently, we haven't been citing sources in our papers.
I guess this really surprised me because it seemed like such an obvious thing to do to an academic paper you write for a class. If you don't cite, where the heck are you getting your info?
Kelly mentioned that she thought that it interrupted the flow of writing, which I understand. When I was writing one paper and editing another this past weekend, I need to be left alone, play good music (this time, parts of Massive Attack's new album) and just write. Usually, I write my citations before writing, as part of the outline process. That way, I can just insert the citation via copy and paste.
"Not everyone can be a superhero like you."
Maybe this is harder for people than I realize. When I was in AP Biology, a senior girl did a presentation on a type of animal. At the end of her powerpoint, she had a "work sited" page, and I about died. She had no idea that it wasn't spelled that way, which indicates that she didn't cite often, or had ever looked at a style guide (not even Purdue's OWL, which I love.) I guess I figure that everyone is forced to learn basic citing before college, but maybe I'm making an assumption there. I feel like it's usually not that hard to cite, since the information should be in the colophon anyway, and, if you're really lazy, there are apparently websites that will write the citation for you. I've even seen websites that write the citation out for people and put it at the bottom of the page. This isn't that difficult.
This particular professor is really easy about citations and sources. We aren't suppose to use anything other than our readings and lectures to write our papers, and all she demands is that we write "lecture" for anything we took from class, and then basic citation (author, title, yr. published) for readings. Her essays are basically take-home tests; tons of time isn't necessary to get a decent grade.

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