A few days ago, I got an email from a high school student, asking permission to use my "The Prophet's Hair" paper as evidence supporting an in-class essay that he wrote that his teacher marked down.
My first question: my paper from British Literature II (sophomore year) was easily accessable on the Internet?
I did a quick search on "The Prophet's Hair" (exactly like that), and I was on the second page of results. Immediately I knew what had happened. Before I uploaded any of it, I inserted no robot meta tags onto each paper. They worked, however, I apparently created some very descriptive paper titles, like "Sacred and Secular in the Prophet's Hair." Well, no kidding, then that somebody found the paper, because I didn't include a special meta tag on my actual portfolio page. Now one is there, but it'll be another 30 days or so before all of my random papers remove themselves from the web.
Naturally, I'm worried about plagarism. I work hard on my papers, and don't want anyone else to copy/paste me. Even at that, I'm just a college student, formulating an idea...I could be way off base, people!
Anyway, my high school student. I told him that he'd be better off just talking with his teacher, and not bringing in a stack of papers as "proof." Especially if it's my paper. Plus, he didn't really tell me what he wrote, and why it would be wrong. He just accused his teacher (in a well-written manner, I might add) of confusing the Rushdie story with The Lord of the Rings. Having not seen that particular cinema masterpiece, I had no clue what that meant. I also suggested that if he really wanted to use my paper, he might be best served by reading up on my works cited page, and going by them. Anyway, in his response, he sounded mildly annoyed, and said that he wasn't planning on plagarizing me. I hadn't thought he would, as he already wrote the paper, but whatever. I hope it went well for him.