I enrolled for Fall classes this week. I'm taking a Victorian Novel and 6 hours of residency in order to stay a grad student. What a racket they have, charging students just for being there without any classes. Anyway, I'll take the exams sometime in November and my primary field is Victorian, so the class will help. I know most people don't take any classes during the semester they take comps, but I'm one behind because my first Ph.D. semester I didn't have a TAship and had to pay myself, so I only took two classes.

Goodbye to Terry Schiavo. Sorry, but I should never have known her name, let alone have her all over the news. That was a personal matter and our government yet again made me ashamed by politicizing the case. Especially Tom DeLay, who didn't hesitate to pull the plug on his own father years ago but is all high and mighty now.

If you haven't heard about this plagiarism case making the rounds of the Internet, go to www.aweekofkindness.com/blog and read about it. I could easily go on and on about this topic, but I have to say that as an instructor and a student at once, anyone who tries to find a shortcut to work really pisses me off. I have a lot of work and I bitch about it, but later when I look at those papers and perhaps use the research I've done on my dissertation, I at least have the satisfaction that it's my own work. Plus, if you don't do the work, you don't have the knowledge. Do you want people in potentially sensitive positions or health care fields, or even lawyers who didn't do their own work? How can they help you if the diploma they have is bogus? It just points to an increasingly easy attitude toward plagiarism, in which people don't see it as cheating but "getting over" on a teacher. It's bullshit and this girl instigated all her own woes. As far as my own students are concerned, I am usually able to tell the difference between their own writing and writing from other sources. You usually get that way if you've been teaching a while. But I don't mind the anti-plagiarism software out there and students are not savvy enough to change their plagiarized parts to conform to their own style. It's pretty easy to point out those who've worked on their papers and those who've "had a little help."

Does anyone have any other instances of bad things happening in threes? I've written a paper (already, so I'm not looking for help or plagiarized sources!) about the number three indicating bad things and all I can think of is that celebrities seem to die in threes. Any other thoughts?