Muse back!
August 27, 2007 / Monday
Bear With Me, I Need To Waah
It's okay for me to apply for something and not succeed. If someone else was better, or if I simply wasn't good enough, so be it. I don't mind working harder to succeed the next time.
That said...
Last year, I applied for a fellowship at school. I knew it wouldn't be easy, but I felt I had a chance. I didn't get the fellowship, but that was okay. I'd tried my best, and I figured that the person who got it must have been better somehow.
Earlier this month, I attended our monthly student presentations. This is the same series I presented at last month with pink donuts as props. There were some decent presentations, and one excruciatingly painful presentation. Quite frankly, it was the WORST PRESENTATION I'VE EVER SEEN. The speaker just stood there in front of everyone reading from a printout.
A few days later, some tiny part of the back of my brain remembered the speaker's name from somewhere. The thought faded and returned several times over the next couple weeks.
Today, I finally remembered to look it up. As that tiny bit of brain had suspected, the presenter of the WPIES had been the recipient of the fellowship I wasn't good enough for a year prior.
This makes me wonder, what did WPIES do to deserve the fellowship?
Whatever it was, it'd better have been damned stellar.
• • •
On a whim, I downloaded the WPIES PowerPoint and looked at the notes. I Googled a sentence from one of the slide notes and found an article with two full paragraphs of what had been read to us. Was the article included as even a reference? No.
Performance and leadership my ass. Whether I applied for that fellowship or not, this person should NOT have received it. I don't care how many contributions they made to the program, or how much financial need they had. That uninspired, unrehearsed, partially plagiarized presentation that we've had two years to prepare for should be reason enough for disqualification.
That's just fucked up.
August 27, 2007 04:45 PM | Rant/Whine:School
Comments
Completely f'ed up. *place mega-rant here*
Is there any way to get an official reason on the way the decision was made or is it a closed door, "'cause we said so" kind of thing?
Posted by: Mike at August 28, 2007 08:55 AM
They never even announced who they awarded it to. I knew only because I asked.
Heh, yes, mega-rant is right. I had to trim this post down some to make it readable...
Posted by: Viv at August 28, 2007 09:24 AM
i think the "officials" should know that 1. their selection process sucked, 2. the this lack of integrity is going on under their noses, 3. soopahviv has many supporters.
Posted by: i, andrea at August 28, 2007 01:59 PM
They actually had issues with and tried to address plagarism in the past. I've had teammates who have tried to do it, and it was actually something of a battle to make them understand that it was not okay to pass off someone else's work as our own.
As for the fellowship, I haven't thought about it since the selection was made. I'm now curious as to why they selected that person, but I feel it's difficult to pursue the issue without coming off as a sore loser. Plus, I don't think that pursuing it would be worthwhile, and I really don't care to see anyone lose anything.
We're all graduated now. I needed to vent, but I'm also happy to just move on.
Posted by: Viv at August 28, 2007 04:25 PM
Plagarism is not cool! If you think this will bug you a year from now, write a letter.
I didn't get the fellowship in Art History I wanted because compared to a guy in my group, I didn't have as high of GRE scores in math. My prof wigged out on the phone to the grad school administrator, yelling "Its art history! We don't use math!" Cue two years of being penniless. Different situation but it still bugs me.
Posted by: Scully at August 29, 2007 04:54 PM
That so bites.
(I keep thinking the title says, "I need to wash." Which maybe makes sense because you need to get his icky I So Totally Suck And Didn't Deserve It vibes off ya.)
Posted by: Jennie at August 29, 2007 05:38 PM
Nah, it won't bug me a year from now. I just needed to vent.
I do need to wash, but that's only because I just came home from hockey. :)
Posted by: Viv at August 29, 2007 10:10 PM