There have been and always will be those who try to game the system. The academic system is no exception, and probably since the time Plato and Socrates gathered students around them to discuss the philosophical verities there were those in the group who calculated how they could creatively prune what the master teachers asked them to do and substitute for it what they were willing to do. Today, when teachers ask students to research and to write, they often encounter situations where their assignments are circumvented. Asking for original and documented final products, they are given material that is presented wholly as the student's own, but which has been, in ascending order of turpitude, erroneously or incompletely cited, inadvertently borrowed, purposely taken and recombined (known in some circles as "patchwriting"), or, as the ultimate offense, purchased from an outside source and presented as one's own work. All of these, whether done in ignorance, by mistake, or as part of gaming the system, fit loosely under the rubric of "academic dishonesty" and are often lumped together under the term "plagiarism." Within schools, colleges, and universities, these actions are also typically labeled in moralistic terms and punished accordingly. In this article, the author shares her own stories of student plagiarism and discusses what an instructor can and should do.