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[Aqizzar]

Introductory thesis statement and summary, definition of the argument and problem, main argument point one, main point two, maybe main point three, analytical extrapolation, conclusory restatement and summary.  No personal pronouns or argumentation, supportable objective statements and implications only.  Three to nine credible sources, in-text quotations where available, and end of line citations.  Times New Roman, 12 point font, four to seven pages with double line spacing, and an MLA documented bibliography.

I believe that's the simple term paper format we're all accustomed to - the sort of basic research and analysis paper I've been churning out a half dozen of every year since the 4th grade.  Given a definite topic and an innate familiarity with the material, I can write these in my sleep.

Part of the, rather inspired, learning structure of a course I'm in now requires class members to anonymously grade other people's papers.  However, the professor hates the school web-software for this function, so he just has us download the entire class' catalog of papers and grade the one we're assigned.  Out of curiosity I've been reading through the others, and holy crap.

Single page papers.  Esoteric fonts.  No citations, or even sources.  Broken grammar and incomplete sentences.  Personal, biased, falacious argument.

This is a junior-level college economics course, and out of 40ish papers, about five are literally unreadable, and at least half are borderline passing at best.  And those are just the papers people bothered to turn in.  I know familiarity with English language and standardized paper writing aren't the problem - I'm in this class, I know these people.  How could this many people be this far into the education system without knowing how the hell to BS a term paper?  It's not like it's hard.

[Duke 2.0]

 Some  would attribute to laziness. Perhaps one or two who don't take things seriously and are joking with whoever grades these things.

 But from what you tell me, it sounds like plain 'ol cracks in the educational system.

 Gaps are still called cracks, even if they are larger than the object they are cracking right?

[LegoLord]

I am stunned.  Although, I recently read that cheating (not BSing) is surprisingly high in students that get to college or take high-level courses in high school (at least in America).  Perhaps they are used to being able to, and some circumstances did not allow for this this time?

[Muz]

Students in my previous uni were like that. Lol, it's been a joke among some lecturers that if it's well-written, there are only 4 or so people who'd have made it, with me being one of them. The others would copy off that source. What most people did was copy-paste from the Internet, and sometimes so badly that you even see letters cut off and things like underlined words, different fonts, blue words. Plagiarism wasn't shunned there, so they got away with it.

It is not hard to BS a paper. I wrote my ethics & strategic leadership paper on Dwarf Fortress, in a very strict uni, and I got a distinction for that paper

[Karlito]

My Dad's a college professor and he constantly complains that his students never learned how to write a paper.  And my previous three English teachers have all had to teach how to do it, all the while grumbling about what a crappy job last year's teach did.  So, I think its something that people just don't seem to pick up.

[Ampersand]

I BSed my way through most of Advanced Placement English 3 and 4. Even Speech. I once wrote a speech during the period I was supposed to present in, and managed to be the only person to get a 100 score. BSing isn't hard, if you know what the end result is supposed to look like.

[Tahin]

Well this is certainly interesting to see here being as how I'm supposed to be writing my English term paper right now.... Eight pages double-spaced, MLA, etc.

It's great fun.

[Awayfarer]

4th year English major
3.8 gpa
I will be graduating with honors in Fall 09

And I still don't perfectly understand how to write a paper. Now, I think my ability to write is a little more polished than some others, but the slew of intricacies of MLA format have never stuck. Since my memory is basically garbage I keep having to look things up each time I write a paper.

I wonder if people take a look at all of the format requirements and just say to hell with it? Not that that excuses people who can't even figure out which font to use, or are ripping off others work.

[Cthulhu]

I never BS assignments.  If I really can't think of a way to do it well, I'll worry myself straight to the deadline and never get it done at all.

However, I am quite good at very quickly making up hilarious lies that are complex enough to evade detection by the average Joe.  It makes me really good at games like Malarkey.

[Creamcorn]

I'm having some trouble understanding one of your points, the BS one, does it have something to do with "bull shit?"

That aside and if it is true I will say that I try my best not to bullshit BS, anything. Of that usually means that I need to rewrite any assignment more than one time but oh well, I feel that it's worth it in the end.

[Aqizzar]

I don't mean "bullshit" as in "make-up", so it's not really the proper term.  I mean more churning out an adequate paper that, most importantly, meets the universally agreed upon and pervasive paper writing structure.

I don't pretend to write good papers.  I do write papers that meet the requirements, because I consider the bare minimum to be more than enough.  Which makes me pretty damn lazy.  Which in turn means that there's a bunch of people in an advanced college course who don't even have that tenuous a handle on writing ability, if it's bad enough for me to take notice and ask "were you even trying?".

[Sowelu]

As someone who's been on both sides of the fail-stick, man, it's your civic duty to beat kids with it as hard as you can.  If they're not keeping up, fail the living crap out of them.

You think term papers are bad?  You should see the horrors that those same students can churn out in a programming course.

[Tahin]

You think term papers are bad?  You should see the horrors that those same students can churn out in a programming course.

*shudder*

[viskaslietuvai]

It always confused me that I turned in papers similarly to how they are described (as they are supposed to be) in the original post, and I felt they were okay, not great, and then I get a 95-100% grade on them. Now I know. That blows my goddamn mind that people can't just slap some citations together and make them appear related. This shot my confidence up, as I'm about to embark on a pursuit towards a degree in economics. I'm shooting for a Masters and now I feel much better about my chances.

[Idiom]

I blame the removal of corporeal punishment. There's no motivation. Need to reinstate things like levers, magma flows, tall cliffs, and sealing them off with no food or drink. But then again, that never seemed to make the nobles learn any faster, so there may be another cause. Like old fashioned laziness.