Ao, Need Help On Plagiarism

[ThePatriot]

This has to be answered by tonight. I got my chemistry report on dyes back, with a big fat 0 on it, and the words plagiariam crossed all about the top. She underlined one little 14 word paragraph starting sentence, and gave me a 0 claiming i plagiarized the entire thing. I know i did not, hell tonight i finally got to looking at my sources, only that one god damned sentence is exact to one sentence on the webpage, it was late and i couldnt get started thinking. I am wondering if this is grounds for plagiarism? The entire rest of the report is of my entire doing, and i am going to try and haggle my way out of it tomorrow, we will see now wont we, but this is so unfair, she expects a new report and a paper on plagiarism by tomorrow, and frankly im not going to do it, this is just not right, she throws the world plagiarism around too easily. Because i made it all neat she thinks i copy and pasted the whole thing, bah.

[obsolete898]

What grade are tou in. If your in collage then that's a definate daffy no no. You must always sight your sources. If it's in high school, then you should be able to get it overturned.

[Rueben_the_wanderer]

It doesn't have to be word for word. Did you simply rearrange the sentences in the sources?

[DaosBeoulve]

Plagiarism can simply be using someone's ideas as your own, be it word for word, or simply taking their idea. If you're wondering what exactly would constitute this, have a look at this website.

Vandy Honor Code

That's directly from the Vanderbilt Honor Code. Vandy has one of the strictest honor codes in the nation, and all the profs take it VERY seriously. Even coping one sentence can get you a 0 in the class, and possibly even expelled(though, for only one sentence that would be somewhat of an extreme measure). I always make sure to cover myself and site sources, even if it is just a lab report or just homework. Good luck with everything.

[Miscue]

This touches very close to home...

I have sitting in front of me a 5 year old paper that I wrote in high school.

The grade on the front is a 60%. There is a message on the paper:

"This is a lovely critical analysis with a few references. However, this is not a fully developed research paper including results of investigation of primary and secondary sources which are, of course, given credit for their words and ideas.

Brian - plagiarism abounds. I know you know better."

I didn't plagiarize anything. She confused my command of the English language for something I had found in a book. The profound ideas were my own, in fact I challenged her to find a publishing that resembled mine. I myself could not, which is why I dedided to write what was in that paper to begin with. She did not believe me capable of producing what I had written - plagiarism she thought.

I told her she was wrong. I demanded for her to prove it - she side-stepped the situation. I took it to the department dean, he threw me out of his office. The principal told me to go see the dean. I could do nothing.

Of course an on-going battle ensued. She did her best throughout the rest of the year to make me regret my challenge to her. I barely passed. But she did do me the favor of not failing me like she 'should have' for plagiarism - as she continually reminded me. She did me a favor.

I won't go into details - but something in me popped and I fell into depression for the first time in my life because of this and had a difficult time functioning for several years off and on. Since then it is easy for me to fall back into that, and I've had to deal with it throughout college. Right now everything in my life is going great, and I am happier than I've ever been and it's getting better. It took me 5 years to find this.

This effects me still today and I would imagine will for the rest of my life.

Here is my advice to you. Make sure you are right before you do anything. If you did something questionable, however small, then I don't know what to tell you. Otherwise, do what you can to fight it. Get your parents involved, I should have done this but was embarassed about the situation. Also take into consideration that you might not win or the teacher may retaliate against you throughout the year. If this happens, try not to worry about it and let it go. If you have a hard time dealing with it, find someone who can help you. It's a million times harder when you have to deal with it by yourself.

-Brian

[FooTemps]

Q, I know how if feels for plagurism. My friend copied my assignment 2 years ago and I took a trip to the principle's office. I was lucky that my friend admitted to copying my paper. I failed my paper and got a detention. Another time, I was with some friends working together and our principal busted my buddies for copying papers. At first she suspected me to be doing the same thing but I put my paper away and laid my head down. When I looked up my principal was busting us for something we didn't even do. She let me off easy but I tried to bail my friends out. Not plagurism but she presumed we were cheating!

[MantisMag]

well unfortunately if you quoted without putting quotation marks that is plagiarism. anything that isn't documented exactly the way it's supposed to is plagiarism. if you had the citation at the end of the paragraph though then i think your teacher was a bit extreme.

miscue- sorry to hear about your problems. that used to happen to me all the time but i never fought it because they didn't take off that many points. they just took off 10 pts or so for "improper citations". eventually i gave up trying to document properly and just gave sources for my own ideas. i put the source for the material i drew my conclusions from as the source for my ideas. it wasn't worth the hassle to me to try and explain that they were ideas that i came up with after reading the material. you've gotta play the game. as distasteful as it may be just give them what they want and get the heck outta there.

[DaosBeoulve]

Miscue, not to bring attention away from The Patriot, but I know just what you're talking about. I had a VERY stubborn history teacher my freshman year of high school. Got one of my papers back on the history of Alabama(yeah, real interesting topic, let me tell ya), and she had counted off for 'apparent plagiarism'. Being kinda new to most of my class mates (I had went to elementary school with all of them, but went to a Magnet school for middle school, and thus most didn't really know me anymore), I faced a tough battle. She didn't believe I could write that well, nor that I didn't copy some things directly out of a book. Luckily, I had the advantage in my situation. We had to write the paper during class-time one week. We were allowed full access to the library but could use no outside sources other than what was present in our library. Needless to say, the topic I chose had VERY few resources (only two books and one magazine topic, actually), so I went to the library, got them all and showed them to her. She eventually gave me full credit, but made the rest of my year VERY tough... Even accused me of cheating on two tests...

I got my validation though. My senior year, right before graduation, I went and put the paper back on her desk that she had accused me of plagiarism on. Beside it, I put a copy of my acceptance letter to Vanderbilt, along with a note thanking her for challenging me so much my freshman year. I feel bad now though, because my brother has her, and she was SUPER hard on him the first time he had her because of me... I just don't think teachers like that have a place in the classroom. I can understand if they can find exactly what was copied, and cite examples, but she couldn't, and I beat her on it. Being accused sucks. It made me feel like I had done something wrong, even when I knew I absolutely hadn't, and even had the evidence to back me up. There's still that lingering in the back of your mind... I've gotten to where (time permitting--I'm in college--I finish papers 5 minutes before class sometimes) I go back and check and anything that may even be questionable as to whether it was mine or not, I cite.

[Miscue]

That's good to hear. I've had sort of my own form of validation. I met someone - who I'd like to think of as my closest friend - and she has had her share. I know for sure that we would not have been able to connect or maybe not have even met had the situation been different. If that was my cost to know her, I got the deal of a lifetime.

Well anyway... good luck to you ThePatriot.

[TigerMan]

Is this teacher an understandable and reasonable lady? If so simply go talk to her again, now that the time is passed and you should have calmed down by now, and simply explain to her what you did and why you did it. Tell her if she looks throughout the rest of the paper she will find no other things such as it. Talk to her in a calm and mannerly way, don't get irritated or ticked off as it can do more harm then good. If she still does not accept it and starts getting real smart alecky, then leave and tell your parents. Explain it to them and tell them what is happening. This is better to do now so they know what is going on and they can help and talk to the teacher. Good luck.