Meme Thing

Got this from keldjinfae_moon. She assigned me a letter and I listed 5 or so songs from my play list that began with that letter. I could have included the Fountains of Rome or the Festivals of Rome by Respighi, but otherwise there's not a lot that begins with F.

1) Find me in Bed -- Invade My Privacy (Original London Cast) -- Jacqueline Dankworth
2) The Floater -- Jazz from Peter Gunn -- Joe Wilder Quintet
3) Factory -- Lost Boys -- The Flying Pickets
4) Father Sun -- Tell Me Why -- Wynonna
5) Fanfarneta -- Tant Deman -- Le Cor de la Plana
6) Feel Good Time -- Charlie's Angels Full Throttle -- P!nk
7) Fruit Tree -- Five Leaves Left -- Nick Drake
8) Funky Bahia -- Encanto -- Sergio Mendes, will.i.am, Siedah Garrett
9) Fields of Gold -- Live at Blues Alley -- Eva Cassidy
10) For What It's Worth -- Buffalo Springfield -- Buffalo Springfield

Anyone else want a letter?

My Evening

I agreed to judge a poetry competition for the Center where I tutor.

One of the kids used five lines from an old (we're talking from my childhood) pop song in his poem. I asked him if he knew the song, and he said no.

I marked him down for his presentation because he forgot two lines of the written poem. The other judges marked him higher because he'd attempted to memorize his piece rather than reading it.

It was a shock to me when the other two judges put him in the top three. I made it clear that even if the plagiarism was unconscious, and I have done that myself (I admitted it as soon as I realized that I'd done so. It was embarrassing, but not telling the responsible people would have been worse.) his winning would be unacceptable.

One of the other judges got very upset with me. She accused me of having an agenda against the boy. Since our other two picks for the top three overlapped with each other and the third judge, I think we should just have dropped it there. It didn't get dropped. It got acrimonious. One of the worst comments she made was that the song in question was a white song (for the record, so was the judge) and that he therefore wouldn't have known it.

This isn't someone I usually work with. I couldn't let the kid win with a plagiarized poem. We ended up selecting one of the other top three. Both of them were original as best I can tell.

Afterward, one of the girls who acted as an emcee, came up to me and said she couldn't believe he'd flat out lied when I asked whether he knew the song. They'd learned it together in music class.

I'm heartsick that the kid is going to get into trouble, but I couldn't let him win even if the plagiarism were accidental. It was wrong.

Finding out that he lied made it worse. The other judge now hates me even more for having been right about his knowing the song.

He's usually a good kid, from my limited experience with him. I think it's better he learn this lesson now, particularly as several of the high schools we give recommendations for are honor code schools where something like this would be an automatic expulsion.

My cheeks got hot when I was arguing with the other judge. She couldn't understand my point at all. She was right that I had an agenda: it was that no one be rewarded for stealing another's words or ideas even if the theft were unconscious.

What would it teach him or the girl who was emceeing (or any of the kids, for that matter) if he'd won?

What would happen next week when he went to the regionals and someone else perhaps recognized the same words I did?

Why do I feel so awful about the other judge hating me?