Plagiarism & Consumerism

So about half of my seniors decided to C&P information directly from the internet into their research papers. From Eating Disorders and Moosheart to Gun Control and Body Art, I have seen more information shamelessly stolen from www.wikipedia.com and yahoo.answers.com (which of course they knew aren't even reliable/acceptable sources) than any teacher should have to endure. And then two of my juniors decided not to go to the high school for their Prairie State/ACT testing yesterday and today, even though I've been reminding them for over three months. One student called to ask if he could attend Ombudsman even though he didn't test. I asked him why he skipped and he said he had no excuse. As much as I'd love him to at least attend Ombudsman, no way was I going to get myself mixed up in that mess. That is just something he's going to have to work out with the high school! What this all boils down to is that my students are not paying attention to my daily announcements, so I am going to start quizzing them on the announcements on the Life Skills portion of their programs. ::insert evil laughter:: }:-> This has seriously been one of the most tiring/frustrating days of my career thus far. I so wanted to rip someone's head off! Luckily, I made it through the day without inflicting mortal wounds on any of my protege.

Then I come home to Matt, who is stressed out because he still hasn't heard from HR and the guy he'll be working with wants him to start helping with training (one of the duties associated with his NEW position, which he hasn't yet been officially offered). A car package is supposed to be a part of the deal, so Matt's trying to decide what kind of car we should get. We're thinking some kind of Infiniti, but the ones we like (with leather, navigation, and AWD) are a little more than we'd like to spend. We're going to test drive some tomorrow, anyway. It's just hard to jump into a car payment without first seeing the job offer and all the specifics. The job officially starts between May and June, so we should have all the answers soon enough. Well, to be honest, getting to the bottom of this couldn't happen soon enough!