English Final: Letter

To whom this may concern,
I am a student at San Francisco State University, in my English class, taught by Sarah Fama, we were given an assignment about students plagiarizing in SFSU. Through our research my classmates and I have discover some really interesting issues. For this assignment we were split into groups, each group had their own sub topic. Those topics are academic culture, demographics, extracurricular activities, and student motivation. With these topics split, we can all go in depth and share the information with each other afterward. We have conducted surveys and interviews to students who attend San Francisco State. Through the research we have found out that many students have plagiarize before and what made them plagiarize which leads me to this letter. Plagiarism is just a word that students hear all the time from their professors and teachers. I’ve known the word ever since I have been in school but I never truly knew the definition of the word, but I do know what will happen if we did plagiarize. Many students like me only know the basic definition of what plagiarism is and the punishment that we will get if we plagiarize but not many know what is consider plagiarism. Plagiarism is a word that we hear throughout a student’s whole school life. No teacher has ever gone in depth of what plagiarism actually is. There are so many gray areas that a lot of students know of. Most students know what will happen if we plagiarize but what is plagiarism? My definition of plagiarism is using someone else’s work without properly citing them. According to Susan Blum, My Word! Plagiarism means “…the nature of texts and authorship, and the nature and motives of the person doing the work turned in for credit.” As you can see the definitions are somewhat different from each other. The reason for that is because not everyone has the same definition of what plagiarism is, some people may not even have a clear idea of what plagiarism is. Many students including me only know that if we plagiarize we will be in a lot of trouble. I would like to recommend some ideas for San Francisco State for dealing with students who plagiarize and also help lessen students that do plagiarize.
San Francisco State teachers should go in depth with students on what is exactly is plagiarism and types of plagiarism are there so students can be careful with their writing or researching. Some types of plagiarisms I don’t even know about until I learned about it in English class. The different types of plagiarisms are patch- writing, copy from web, copy from another person, re-using another paper from another class, having someone else write your paper, you write for others, fail to cite, and etc. There are many more different types of plagiarism out there. I just named a few to show you the basic idea. Without naming the different types of plagiarism to students, how would they know if they plagiarize or not. “Of the forty four, one answered that they had indeed purchased a paper for an assignment, one checked that they had copied text from the from the internet, six had copied the text of another person, ten had reused writing assignments from their past, three had copied from other texts and failed to cite them, seven students had allowed another person to write their assignment for them, six had written assignments for others, and nine had simple failed to cite their sources. Four students answered the question unsure; eighteen revealed that they had never plagiarized (Chang, 2010, p.4). Though students do know that they have plagiarized and which category it lands into. There are at least some students who plagiarize but don’t understand why it is consider plagiarism. In the study that we conducted in class it shows that twenty percent of the students have fail to cite properly. Is it their fault that they fail to cite? If teachers have teach us how to properly cite this problem will not come up. Students who did not properly cite did not intend to not cite properly. These are accident plagiarism. With so many types of plagiarism are in the gray area, teachers should identify which are in the gray areas so students would know and be caution on what they are going to writing or use.
Rather than just punishing students for plagiarizing, San Francisco state should reason with students rather than just kicking them out of school right away. Many students did not plagiarize on purpose. If a student patch-write and got kicked out of school is kind of ridiculous. There should be different types of punishments for students who did different types of plagiarism. For those who intend to plagiarize of course should be kicked out of school, but for those who did not cite properly can have alternative punishment. Maybe take a class or workshop on how to cite properly so they will not make the same mistake again. For those who re-use a paper from another class, the teacher can make the student redo the paper and on top of that write why they plagiarize for their punishment. With these ideas it can help students learn their wrongs rather than just kicking them out of school, without knowing what they did wrong, in the future they will just continue in doing what they did wrong because they did not know what the right way is. Having a workshop or class for students to learn the proper way of citing or what exactly is plagiarism can help a student grow and will not make those mistakes again.
Many students have other issues in life beside just school, having homework on top of homework it can be very stressful for students. According to the research we did, “With 40% of the 44 students working approximately 20 hours a week and 60% participating in a form of an organized student activity, it’s easy to say that students at SFSU have busy schedules. The survey revealed that work, extracurricular activities, and going out have negatively impacted schoolwork.” (Abdon, A. 2010). The result shows that many of us do have a life and have other things to do beside homework. With homework on our mind and having to work at the same time is very stressful. And time flies by when doing other things. With the busy schedule we have, homework will be the last thing on our minds, and the last thing we will do. Like me, I work part time and go to school full time. Jogging school and work is really hard, but that is life. I work nights and have school in the morning. I would get off work around 10 to11 o’ clock at night. By the time I start on homework it will be 12 in the morning already. There are many times when I do feel like re-using a paper or even asking someone do my homework for me. Since I know the consequences, I didn’t there to. It is really tempting during those times to actually plagiarize. Students don’t plagiarize on purpose though there are some that do but for those we don’t intend to do so is because either they don’t know much about plagiarism or because of the time limit they have plagiarizing is the easiest thing to do at the moment.
San Francisco state should have strict enforcement of telling students what plagiarism is. Students know what the different type of plagiarism is the more unlikely they will not plagiarize. Even if they do their SFSU should have different kinds of punishment to punish students rather just kicking students out of school. Enforcing the definition of plagiarism and not just the punishment students will have plagiarism in mind and would maybe think about it before actually plagiarizing. These are just my ideas that maybe can help the school and the students from plagiarizing or just lessen it. Thank you for your time and hope it was helpful!

Sincerely,
S. Chang




Work Cite
Blum, S. (2009). My Word! Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press.

Chang, S. Keil, T. Maldonado,R. Truong,N.Wilson,T. (2010) To Plagiarize or not to Plagiarize,That is the Motivation. English 114.04,Spring 2010, San Francisco State University.

Abdon, A., Miraflor, C., Del Valle Nieva, A., Erfe, R., Yuen, V., Rodriguez, A. (2010) Extracurricular Culture. English 114.04, Spring 2010, San Francisco State University

USU! Aggies!!

I am soooo happy!!! USU! i got accepted to USU! will be leaving some time in July or in the beginning of august. I can't wait. At the moment i am talking to the advisor to see what classes in order to finish over there. I am soo excited!! besides that i will miss working... with my wonderful co-workers! they were all soo supportive. Tho i have been sooo tired lately working and the stupid promotion. I am so glad today is the last day for it. I don't think i can take it anymore. Mother's day is coming up!! taking my mom out to dinner tm night since i have work on mother's day. -____- it will be mom, me, and kaylee since dad n brother will b in oregon for the weekend. sister in law will b at work. anyhow, i just don't know what to do with the housing thingy... there so much houses to choose from. lol i guess when i go over there for orientation i have to see which one works out. plus it seems really cheap... 1,000 split with 6-8 people i think its worth it. LA... i miss LA! it was a fun weekend and doojoon was sooo cute!! tho i think last year was much much more fun than this year. but we went to more places than we did last year. Hopefully next year will have better artist tho this year wasn't bad. hopefully BIG BANG!!!!! will go! finish watching g-dragon's concert it was good miss big bang can't wait til there big show concert comes out ima so get it! thats it for now... time for work xD

Some interesting finding that i found really weird is that there are people out there that have never plagiarize. Before i did this research i have always thought everyone would of plagiarize at least once in there life. Not on purpose accident or anything but there are still people who haven't. Unless they are lying.

My college experience

Being at SFSU for almost two year now... is an experience that i did not expect. My first year at SFSU i like it, have classes that were really interesting and met a lot of new people. But my second year... is so not what i expected. Can't get any classes that i need, im not a full time student nor a part time. With the budget cuts and everything its so hard for me to even get 12 units. No teachers would add anyone. This made me think about taking a semester off, but i already pay for it might as well deal with it.
In My Word, Blum talks about how the application for students at Notre Dame was difficult and there were lots of competition. This made me think back to my senior year of high school. My high school was small and had a bad reputation,but this made my class motivated to go to good school to show other schools in the city that we can go to school with the education we got from this school. The application process for us was hard, since most of the people at my high school was mainly low income students, there were lots of times that we couldnt pay for the application fee because of our parents income. But it is somewhat a good thing for college.
Also reminds me when the month of college acceptation letters were coming. MY GOD that was the most stressful month ever. Some people were happy to the college they got into and others like me didnt like the rejection letter. SFSU was not the school i wanted to go to. Since it was close to home, I might as well. My first year was crazy, went to lots of party and try to entertain myself since im in the city. I bet the students at Notre Dame has different kinds of experience than the students at SFSU. It seems like Nitre Dame's students seems wealthy, so they must have a maybe a better education or more focus than students here. It also might be different for me since i pay for my education and work at the same time to pay for it, its more difficult for students like me to focus and work at the same time. Since the Notre Dame's student are mainly upper middle class, they might not have as much stress as students here do.

STRESS!

omg i hate this so much.... my only day off i couldn't get shit done. how much i hate this. i wish i can drop the class so i can be less stressful. my whole break is only for one class n one class only. i can't even look over my midterm because of this class. grr how much i hate it. instead of learning the stuff i need i am learning how to fail n give up. one thing is not done the next is coming. then everything is stack on top of each other. how am i gonna manage to finish everything? with family issue, work, n this class. it is my fault to have all these problem. spring break... suppose to go somewhere but no... now im trapped at home n doing hw. how fun! i wish i never taken this class. someone else maybe should of taken strang again. at least he can help me. UGH!! im stressed out!!!

readings

Some reading i've been doing for fun would be.... i havent been reading lately lol but some reading i did was twilight... lol its a really good book n i'll continue to read the other ones when i have the time too and plus the movie is coming out. i do a lot of reading like fan fictions. those are really entertaining when theres nothing to do.
A recent reading that i did for another class was pretty interesting to read. The book is call "Eat A Bowl of Tea" by Louis Chu its a really funny book, its hard to understand since its basically kind of like a translation of chinese to english. the dialog in the book its really weird but interesting and funny. Even the title is a bit odd but overall the book is really entertaining.

wikipedia

hm... wikipedia a source for academic writing. hm... i have no idea which side to be on. for one thing, i know myself that i use wikipedia for my academic writing sometime especailly when i don't understand what a certain topic is. Plus, it is much easier to understand than other website. I guess, wikipedia should be a starting point, just to know the basic knowledge of a certain topic. Still Wiki is not a site that i truly trust, i usually check wiki first and then go to other sites to get more in dept of what wiki is trying to say.
But then again, there are some cons to wiki being an academic source. though, it does have references after a post have been posted up, but someone can easily change the post. It maybe legit in some senses but might as well just to go those sites to check the topic out itself.
to be continue.....

blog roll

so on that side of my page ---------------->
there is a list of blogs that i read almost everyday.
The first two on my list are about the k-pop industry like news about the artist that is translated into English. The second one is a about jewelry, this girl made really pretty necklaces, earrings, bracelets, and etc. I bought several items from her and i like reading about whats on sale, and what she made and what she did recently. THe next one is about asian fashion, whats in and how people dress in other places. The last one is about my favorite band, big bang. News about them and people just talk about how much they like their new album and etc. Ok those are the blogs that i read daily.

Performance vs Authentic Self

hm.... I do agree on some parts of her meaning of performance and authentic self. However, some of her words might be a little harsh. Just like when she said how performance self are fake. That is not necessary true. It’s just that performance self are more into themselves more than authentic self, whereas authentic self seems more natural. Through, her definition to me it seems like when teens are entering high school where people try to find a place for them to fit into. They either want to be in the performance (popular) side or the authentic (more of non popular) side. However, as we grow up we will find out which side we belong to or maybe be in between both, which I think most people are, not much of a performance self or authentic self. Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but at least for me. I am in between performance and authentic. I am not more side with either one.
To me I am in between performance self and authentic self, I don’t think I am more of either one. I am who I am; I don’t change my personality when I am with people who are close to me or strangers. I still act the way I am. After typing I am not more of either one, I stare at the book, and thought maybe I am more of one than the other. Haha Maybe I do lean more toward authentic self, I like to do a lot of things my way, and I don’t like to follow people much. Just like in high school, every teenager has tried to fit into a group to make them well known or be popular or hangs with the popular crowd; however, I became friends with both side of the crowd. The nerdy one and the popular ones, I had my own group of friends that are unique in their special ways. Among my friends, all of us have different personality and neither of us likes to follow what others do. We do things that we believe that is right and those we like to do.
After reading the article with the teacher getting fired because of talking about one of her student’s religion, I kind of think the teacher am kind of ridiculous in a way. Yes, it is her personal social network and it is her freedom of speech but knowing that she is friends with the student or the student parent shouldn’t she re think about what she writes on her status. Maybe sometimes people got to be performance self at times to keep away the truth but other times it is not necessary. In a way both the parent or the student and the teacher is very wrong in both ways. The parent shouldn’t even be checking up on the teacher’s status in the first place. Though when a status is posted everyone can see but can’t the parent just pretend not to see it or why friends with their children’s teacher are anyways. Yea, the teacher could have just talk it over with her friends and still keep her job but her habits won’t change.

"Something Borrowed"

                     After reading the article the first thing that came to my mind was wow, so glad that wasn’t me. Haha. I think it is wrong for Byrony Lavery to use someone’s life and make it into a play without that person’s permission. What is the difference between stealing someone’s identity? To me, it seems like the same thing. Though, Lavery did use it to create something new, fresh, and interesting for people to see but still it was wrong of her to just copy without Dorothy Lewis’s permission. If I was Lewis and my life has been copied and used as a play and heard about the play from a third party since I didn’t know about it, I would be really mad and upset. I think most people would be. Knowing that my life is being shown to many people and yet I know nothing about it. Plagiarism can ruin someone’s life, though it didn’t really ruin Lewis’s life but it still have an effect on her. Like in the article it did say that Lewis is scared that people may think some part of the play is what she really do in real life, the play can ruin her reputation. Then again, Lavery was creating something new, she twist some parts of Lewis’s life to make it more interesting and more exciting which she just borrowed or got her inspiration from Lewis’s life. Though, there are many parts in the play that was similar to what Lewis did in real life and her study but most of them were opposite of what happen in real life or Lavery twist it. Yes, she did borrow Lewis’s life without her permission but she did create something new and it wasn’t a boring play. It was a play that everyone actually loved. So in a way I believe that Lavery somewhat did Lewis wrong but Lewis can’t be truly mad at Lavery.

Another part I think Lavery did wrong is that she credit the victim, that Lewis used as her study and was talked about in her books, yet Lewis’s name was not mention. We talked about this in class, I feel bad for Lewis, she put so much effort into interviewing and studying these victims, and out of nowhere came this play and those victims are credit and yet she wasn’t. Though, she interview them for her study since Lavery already credit the victims might as well credit the person who interview them.There are so many types of plagiarism, no wonder it is so complicated to keep track about it.

I thought the part about how artist or musicians plagiarism too because of parts of the song sound the same. There are many songs that have similar parts and sound alike that doesn’t mean they purposely copied another’s person’s music. Since I am really into Korean music and there are so much rumors of so and so copy this so and so, so that person is going to be sue. The article had me thinking that it is not necessary to actually go to court and waste people’s time and money because a couple of keys are alike. I just think it is really stupid to sue someone because of couple notes are alike. They can find other ways of resolving it.

ESSAY???

What is an essay? hm... what is an essay? seriously what is it? before I might answer it as a 5 paragraph paper that is assign by a teacher to see what we think of a book or article. hm... maybe half of that is true. Essay is never something I really want to do, unless the topic is something i am interested on. Just like in my senior year for high school in my ap english class, my teacher assign many books for us to read. I remember there is this one thick book that everyone hated because the words were small and the chapters were long. I thought i was going to be like everyone else who hated the book instead i like the book so much that i read ahead many times. The book is call "Great Expectations" by Charles Dickens. I forgot what was the prompt for that essay that we have to write about. But that was one of the essay that i have so much ideas for. I was really into the book, so when it came to the essay, it was fun. I had a good grade on that essay but i struggle a lot just to gather all my ideas together.I also know why i hate essay because i always get stuck on some part and don't know how to transition it. I remember back in my english class again, there was this one time where my english teacher was sick so she couldn't make it to class. She left the substitute teacher an in class essay for us to write. Before the substitute came in, one of my classmate took all the paper that was related to the in class essay and hide it. So during that class we didn't write an essay yet we just sat around and talked. When  my teacher came back she was mad that we didn't write the essay and blame the substitute for not giving it to us. That was a funny day. But yea here is what essay means:

So on Wikipedia it says that an essay is "....usually a short piece of writing which is quite often written from an author's personal point of view. Essays can consist of a number of elements, including: literary criticism, political manifestos, learned arguments, observations of daily life, recollections, and reflections of the author. The definition of an essay is vague, overlapping with those of an article and a short story."
There are many different forms and different meanings for an essay, it can be short and it can be long. But i realize that when I first knew about "essay" it was just a 5 paragraph essay, however, as we grew up it seem to add more meaning into the form of "essay."

The verb definition of essay is "an attempt and to try," from dictionary.com. When I read the definition of essay the verb one, I was surprise! I never or even thought about the verb meaning of essay. It goes right along with the noun meaning of essay though. No wonder teachers been telling us to at least just try to do your essay or do our best. Just trying our best is writing an essay already. haha.

HOLLYWOOD BOWL 2010

OMG!!!!! the tickets!!! This years the tickets went by with an blink of an eye. I couldn't get them but was suppose to, luckily Jenny got the GB tickets. The site crash right when it was time the tickets went on sale. I was on the site was about to refresh it when it was 9:59 but stupid me click the wrong button and went some where else going back to the KMF page it crash! It sucked so much n ppl on soompi was complaining like crazy. But anyways im excited its that time of year again!!!!! So Jenny and I are planning to leave on April 29th at 2:35 in the afternoon and coming back on May 2nd~ i can't wait to go to Korea Town to do some shopping!!! i am sooo curious to know whose coming this year. Last year the theme was Above and Beyond~ this year is "The Year of the Idols" there are many rumors saying that Big Bang and 2pm are coming. Which made people even more crazy, if big bang really goes.... i think i will be too happy to sleep! lol

Any who, after half a day with thee boyfriend went home and did some hw and kinda got bored since it wasn't time to go to work yet. I was being dorky to tally what was people's choice of whose coming to HB. Here is the list in order:
1. 2pm
2. Big Bang
3. Shinee
4. Super Junior
5. 2NE1
6. SNSD
7. Beast
8. MBLAQ
9. SS501 & FT Island
10.F(x)
So that is the top 10 that people picked to come. Everyone on that list i have at least one song from them or the whole album. Well of course Big Bang and Super Junior i have their concert! lol I just can't wait til i go to LA again since this year we going their earlier to rome around LA and do some shopping. Oh yea Olivia will be going too. Hopefully she doesn't embarrass us. well thats it for now. Gotta talk to thee boyfriend and sleep.

Goodnight San Francisco! =]

~Sherry

Plagiarism

Plagiarism is a word that I have heard of ever since I was young but never really knew the exact meaning until later when I got into high school when I sort of understand what it meant. Through the book "My Word," Susan Blum gave out a lot of samples of how people portray the word plagiarism. I thought it was interesting and how some people like Martin Luther King Jr. plagiarized too. So I really want to know what the line is or boundaries for plagiarism are.

In the introduction of the book, I like how Blum describes teenagers as being the wordiest generation ever. "They email, blog, and text message day and night. In some ways this is the wordiest and most writerly generation on a long while." when I was reading this part, I thought it was pretty funny, interesting, and yet true at the same time. It is funny because it is true how we text an email and Twitter a lot, but I never expected us teens today to write more than those of the other generation. Blum also mention how there is so much going in a teen's life that it is hard for us to actually sit down and think about each word we type and say is plagiarizing at all.

It is true that taking other people's work and taking the credit for yourself is wrong.  But citing normally people don't learn it until maybe they hit college. Just like me I didn't know the proper way of citing until I was a freshman in college. Yet I still don't know the "right" way of citing sources. Hopefully the book gives me some idea of citing the right way. It is interesting how Blum did her research, also knowing the fact that many intelligent people have also plagiarize on some way. Chapter 1 gave me a bit more understanding of what plagiarism is and yet in a way confuses me at the same time. Going back to my previous paragraph, I still don't know what is the boundary or line for plagiarism, which part is in the grey area and which part is not. 


Sherry

SPRING SEMESTER

how i love to be back in school NOT! though, winter break was kinda long in a way that i did wish to go back to school to see all my friends but then again i wished i had more time to do my own thing. the whole winter break i literally just worked. everyone who came back wanted to hang out but i was too busy with work. by the time they start school again i had time to hang out and everyone was back to school already... how sucky is that. but at least i get to see vivian before she went back to santa barbara. had a really fun time with her just like old days.
Vivian and me best friend since thee 8th grade. tho both of us kinda went different ways and lost touch couple of times but we still manage to have a good relationship with each other. n Vivian i will definitely go to Santa Barbara to party with u lol 

it was my grandma's birthday last Sunday. its been a while since us cousins got together. but still missing ben. hopefully one year we will definitely get a pic of all the us. difference between the last cousin pic was that ben was in it n shirley wasn't instead, auntie Cindy was in it to replace Shirley. Also, Justin is in this one. the newest family member we have. n also watching Kaylee grow in each picture.

time to sleep
gnite

So its been a while now since i last blog... its 2010 now and hopefully i have a new beginning. like everyone said 2009 isn't all that great. no excitement at all. 2009 is sooo last year lol. So for the past... 7 months i have been working at moonstar... in the beginning no one really talked to me or ask me to go anywhere. mayb i was embarrassing... iono. but these couple of weeks or maybe a month or so i've been getting closer to them people. everyone is really nice and friendly.. n guys... its the typical me saying if a guy talk to me they like me. I don't even understand why my brain functions that way. maybe because i never had someone who like me for me n not fell in love with thee o so sweet personality. lloyd doesn't count im actually trying to look for someone my parents would actually approve of. since i know for sure lloyd isn't someone they will approve. plus i know for a fact that lloyd n i isn't going to last with our schedule soooo packed...