ACADEMICS AND THE PURSUIT OF GIVING CREDIT

WARNING: RANT ABOUT TO ENSUE. FEEL FREE TO SKIP IT.

I love to read Scot’s blog. But this post is what bugs me most about my education at the higher level. I know he’s just asking a question, but at the core, I think at least 50% of what my professors care about is who said what first and the flow of an idea being sited like some kind of genetic history.

It’s just my opinion- which you may only quote if you cite it properly using only the specific quoting method MY syllabus requires…. APA is not going to work. And I personally just don’t think whoever “Turabian” is, that he or she should not be able to make up his or her own method to torture students…. So my method involves saying this: “I found this on Brian Berry’s blog post dated _____ and called “________”. Or you can skip it all together… cuz evidently all the Bible writers did. If they wrote today, I think they ALL- every last stinkin one of them would have been fired from Academics for not citing their sources, plagiarism, and stealing some of their ideas from other cultures and not saying so. I mean Luke gets away with one statement about the integrity of his research and the purity of his intentions and then bammo… he’s good. And he’s one of the few who actually bothered to even tell us he was the specific author in the first place. I mean, can you imagine what would happen if I turned in an anonymous history paper without a bibliography today and then said it was Holy Spirit inspired. HA. Now that’s awesome. I think the Holy Spirit would get fired too.

SIDE NOTE: Here’s my public thank you to the way Rob Bell did his Bibliography and End notes in his book “Velvet Elvis”. Thank you for doing so in a way that is readable, personal, makes sense, and is genuine.

OK.. RANT NOW OVER. I’M SURE I HAVE A BIBLIOGRAPHY TO GO WRITE.