Color me disappointed, but somewhat amused

http://japho.com/how-to-dye-your-hair/

I’m always disappointed when I discover that one of my students has submitted a plagiarized assignment. But the one I got last week actually made me laugh a little.

The assignment directed the students to write a set of instructions.  It could be for anything, from preparing a dessert to replacing a fuse to constructing a space station.

Not surprisingly, two of the ones handed in were about cooking and one about fuse replacement. Nobody tackled the space station, though. I guess NASA will have to rely on their own engineers for that one.

As I read one student’s instructions, however, I thought they sounded very familiar. In fact, I almost knew them by heart! The instructions began:

1. Mix Color

Put on coloring gloves

Remove the flat cap on the Cream Color Developer

Remove cap off the Ammonia free colorant bottle and carefully…

“Hmmm,” I thought. “How many students would use the word ‘colorant’ ?”

I entered the instructions into a search engine on my laptop, and got my answer.  I shook my head in disbelief and even laughed a little.

The Revlon ColorSilk hair coloring directions uses the word colorant, along with the rest of my student’s instructions. No wonder they sounded familiar – I use the product every six weeks to touch up my hair roots. And since I’ve been using those instructions longer than my student has been alive, I was pretty sure they weren’t the original work of my student and that I’d identified another plagiarized assignment.

“It’s bad enough to make a mistake of plagiarizing, but to add the mistake of submitting something your instructor might be familiar with – what are the odds of that?” I asked my husband.

My husband commented: “Your students must think you’re too young to color your hair, Jan. That’s a compliment. I guess.”

Maybe so, but it’s still plagiarism.

F