I went to Jabłonka this morning to the targ. I wanted to buy a zoom lens. I had talked to the camera guy there a few weeks ago, and he said that he’d have one for me. Well, he couldn’t find one. So I started back to the bus stop empty handed. It was a little before nine. I was thinking there was a bus at nine — no, the next one wasn’t until ten. I was irritated because like an ass I had forgotten to bring anything to read. (Rule of thumb when traveling in Poland: Always have something to read, for you’ll do a lot of waiting.) I was so irritated at the prospect of losing a whole hour that I paid 12 z to take a taxi back home. That’s exactly ten times what it would have cost by bus. Well, ten times, and an hour less. I’m coming to realize that time is much more valuable than money. The fool who said “Time is money,” got it backwards.

I had him stop just before getting to my apartment because I didn’t want anyone to see me getting out of a taxi. Someone in the gmina saw me with my computer and made a comment, “Jesteś bogaty,” (“You’re rich!” of course), so I didn’t want anyone seeing me pay ten times what I could have paid if I’d simply waiting for the bus. I guess it’s a bit silly to go around worrying what other people think, but I don’t want them to resent me for waltzing into the village and making more money than the average person here (which I do, though not by much).

4:36 p.m.

I finished checking the journals today. There are still a few who have not turned them in, though. I was both relieved and disturbed to find that Iwona also copied some stuff out of a book for journal entries. It relieves me because now I don’t have to face Tom alone. He can be belligerent and I was expecting to take hell from him for “reading” the journal. Now I can address the whole class about the problem (without mentioning names, of course). The down side of this is that I would not have expected Iwona, of all people, to have done such a thing. I’m sure she only did it because she felt she couldn’t write that much on her own; I don’t think it was pure laziness as much as a lack of self-confidence. The funny thing is, Iwona copied her stuff straight out of the book (including the bit about Paul Newman).

What will I do about it? I will talk to the class and present my idea (although it will not be up for vote, like that made it sound): I hereby reserve the right to read any suspicious looking journal entry to determine whether or not the student in question actually wrote the entry him/herself. I will not read the journals for pleasure, but I feel that it is necessary to make this small adjustment. I think I might say that if I determine that anything has been copied from a book without proper acknowledgement (in other words, plagarized), that person will get a zero for that particular journal grade. It’s harsh, and it’s demanding, but I don’t want any slacking on this. Plagiarism is a serious issue, even in a seemingly minor case like this.