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Vigilans
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01 Dec 2008, 2:55 pm

I'm wondering if anybody else has been in the situation I find myself in today. I received back a research essay I wrote, referenced and in general worked very hard on. Its 2,000 words with Chicago Style notation, and I followed instructions to the letter. However I received the essay today and my teacher is accusing me of plagiarizing it because she doesn't believe its my writing, despite the fact that it has every other hallmark of my writing style within it. I'm now facing a lot of bad music as plagiarism is taken very seriously. I did NOT plagiarize this essay! I also demanded that she provide me with evidence that I plagiarized in the form of a work that appears similar or the same to mine, which she has not. I don't really know what to do or whats going to happen, however I am very concerned as plagiarism equates with a failure of that class and other disciplinary repercussions. I don't think she can make the claim that I plagiarized this work without some sort of proof so that's about the only defense I have right now. Any thoughts or advice?



gina-ghettoprincess
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01 Dec 2008, 3:04 pm

Say, "Are you insinuating that I'm not smart enough to have written it?" and if she says yeah, I reckon that could be slander. Maybe, I'm no expert.


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01 Dec 2008, 3:10 pm

I suppose I could try that, but I'm not eager to antagonize this teacher, despite her obvious ignorance.



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01 Dec 2008, 3:37 pm

being accused of plagiarism is huge.... take it with the head of the school or something because this will scar your record....tell the head that she accused you without proof...you asked her to give you proof and she hasn't...its a serious claim and you worked hard on this paper, you didn't plagiarize, etc.....



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01 Dec 2008, 3:43 pm

I am a university teacher, and I know how to spot plagerism. It is normally easy to spot if the style of the students writing suddenly changes or if you get a feeling of Déjà vu when marking. What you next do is to check every thing you have marked for that assignment in the last few weeks. I have caught a few students that way. The real killer which irks me big time is when I find wikiepdia being recycled in a plagerism case, the first place I look these days is wikiepdia and then a yahoo search on a key phrase from the text. These two methods give me the source for many cut and paste plagerism cases.

If you spot a plagerism case then the only sure way to get it to stick is to either get a confession from the student or to produce the source article. Otherwise you might suspect the student but you can not prove it.

If I was you then I would do the following, as the teacher might strongly suspect you but even while they are unable to prove it a lot of bad feeling might exist in the mind of the teacher.

Prove that you wrote the thing in the following way,

Do you have your draft, hand written would be best ? if so show it to the teacher.

Also show them the literature research which you used, show them the copies of the sources which you used. Let them know that you did the running and that did gather the information required for the essay.

Also ask if it is one part of the eassy which the teacher has doubts about. Then you will know what you are dealing with.

I am hopeful that you are telling us the truth here, if the teacher is still on your case then PM me and I will get back to you.


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01 Dec 2008, 3:46 pm

There's a piece of software they use at the college I work at which searches through using the internet and a large number of sources and gives a percentage of the work which matches said sources. I don't know what it's called or how accurate it is though. You could suggest they try using such a thing.

I think I might have been accused of plagiarism before. It's very, very unfair when you've worked so hard on it. I think it was because it was, for once, something I could actually be bothered making an effort with, so it seemed to the teacher that I had copied it. Shows how well they actually know the bilities of their students :roll:


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01 Dec 2008, 4:03 pm

Woodpecker wrote:
I am a university teacher, and I know how to spot plagerism. It is normally easy to spot if the style of the students writing suddenly changes or if you get a feeling of Déjà vu when marking. What you next do is to check every thing you have marked for that assignment in the last few weeks. I have caught a few students that way. The real killer which irks me big time is when I find wikiepdia being recycled in a plagerism case, the first place I look these days is wikiepdia and then a yahoo search on a key phrase from the text. These two methods give me the source for many cut and paste plagerism cases.

If you spot a plagerism case then the only sure way to get it to stick is to either get a confession from the student or to produce the source article. Otherwise you might suspect the student but you can not prove it.

If I was you then I would do the following, as the teacher might strongly suspect you but even while they are unable to prove it a lot of bad feeling might exist in the mind of the teacher.

Prove that you wrote the thing in the following way,

Do you have your draft, hand written would be best ? if so show it to the teacher.

Also show them the literature research which you used, show them the copies of the sources which you used. Let them know that you did the running and that did gather the information required for the essay.

Also ask if it is one part of the eassy which the teacher has doubts about. Then you will know what you are dealing with.

I am hopeful that you are telling us the truth here, if the teacher is still on your case then PM me and I will get back to you.


Thank you for the advice, I can assure you I am telling the truth, I have never cheated or plagiarized in my life. I don't have a handwritten draft, it is on my pc unfortunately, but I do have a handwritten outline on which I listed each point I was going to discuss and next to the point, a list of books or articles I used to support it (all of which are primary or secondary sources, Wikipedia is a joke...). I'm going to bring this to my teacher in her office tomorrow along with several other research essays I have done to provide an example of my writing ability in other courses. To be completely honest, I find this whole affair rather disheartening, as instead of supporting my skill, the faculty is instead throwing accusations at me. Are most college students really this bad at writing?



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01 Dec 2008, 4:19 pm

Well good luck with the teacher.

When you go to see them try not to "push the bee hive over", start off in a nice way.

Most university teachers have had nightmare students to deal with in the past, if you go at them hard and nasty then you will just end up as the next horror story which will be swapped in the tea room or senior common room.

Try not to keep going back with little bits of material relating to your essay, try to make it one meeting where you show all the paperwork which relates to your essay. If you found any sources which you choose to reject and not use, then you might want to bring them along as they might help show that you did your own litertature search.


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Diagnosed under the DSM5 rules with autism spectrum disorder, under DSM4 psychologist said would have been AS (299.80) but I suspect that I am somewhere between 299.80 and 299.00 (Autism) under DSM4.


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02 Dec 2008, 4:50 pm

Does your school use TurnItIn.com? You teacher may not, but someone else in the building might. Talk to the teacher/principle/department head about having your essay submitted. it will compare the words in your essay with that of everything on the internet. if a segment of eight or more words matches something on the internet, it will be marked. It'll give the teacher a clear idea of whether or not you copied your essay.



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02 Dec 2008, 6:46 pm

Vigilans wrote:
I'm wondering if anybody else has been in the situation I find myself in today. I received back a research essay I wrote, referenced and in general worked very hard on. Its 2,000 words with Chicago Style notation, and I followed instructions to the letter. However I received the essay today and my teacher is accusing me of plagiarizing it because she doesn't believe its my writing, despite the fact that it has every other hallmark of my writing style within it. I'm now facing a lot of bad music as plagiarism is taken very seriously. I did NOT plagiarize this essay! I also demanded that she provide me with evidence that I plagiarized in the form of a work that appears similar or the same to mine, which she has not. I don't really know what to do or whats going to happen, however I am very concerned as plagiarism equates with a failure of that class and other disciplinary repercussions. I don't think she can make the claim that I plagiarized this work without some sort of proof so that's about the only defense I have right now. Any thoughts or advice?


Upload and run the document through a plagiarism checker. it will check all online sources. This does not prove that it isn't plagiarized it just helps your case a little.

Otherwise I also received a bad grade in a class for misunderstanding an assignment. But she gave me a poor grade on another assignment (which was worth more, but not related to the assignment I misunderstood)(It was a team assignment and she said she didn't think I "contributed enough"). And then the college supported her.



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02 Dec 2008, 7:22 pm

Vigilans wrote:
Are most college students really this bad at writing?

Yes.

You would not believe some of the garbage I've read in papers I've graded. I have also caught people cheating who didn't even bother taking the other person's name off of the assignment. It's sad, really.

But yeah I would bring in any work that you did. Also I would probably take the initiative and go to the dean or the teacher's superior and show the work you did. The outline you mentioned is a perfect example.


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02 Dec 2008, 9:41 pm

Kirska wrote:
Vigilans wrote:
Are most college students really this bad at writing?

Yes.

You would not believe some of the garbage I've read in papers I've graded.


Seconded. As an employer that used to interview recent graduates of the local college, I can tell you that plagiarism runs rampant here. Time after time we'd interview graduates that couldn't tell us a single fact about the topic of their senior thesis. We'd get so frustrated with them that we would actually say to them "Ok, tell me anything about your topic. Anything at all. Tell me anything" and they would have nothing to say. These aren't shy people either - perfectly fine at answering other questions about themselves. My business partner would finally just explode, tell them to get the hell out, and to never come back. Its just awful that these kids are actually given a degree.



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02 Dec 2008, 11:19 pm

I ran into a lady in one of my classes who was on her 2nd Masters program and had just figured out wikipedia is not a citeable source.



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03 Dec 2008, 10:35 am

^ XD thats bad
plagarism is serious. Try to get it sorted out quickly using the above advice. They stolle all my ideas *huff*


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03 Dec 2008, 2:37 pm

Well I took care of it, everything seems to be fine now. I suppose it also helps that I am a good student and have a fairly friendly relationship with the teacher. She assumed I plagiarized or paraphrased un-cited sources because she found I didn't have enough in-text references. However, I provided her with my research and my outline, which includes every point I made in my paper and the sources I was going to apply to them, after which she handed me back my research paper and told me to put more citations in and hand it back later today. So I'm pretty happy that worked out, thanks for the advice everyone.

Ouch, Wikipedia as a cite able source? I used to do minor vandal edits there when I was bored a few years back. I would usually change minor geographic information or birth dates, which at the time would sometimes take up to a week to change. With the knowledge that mischievous tasks like this were possible I haven't had any real academic support for Wikipedia. Not to mention that but I think the page on 'Lightsabres' is actually longer then the pages on real swords, or other ridiculous stuff like that...



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03 Dec 2008, 8:53 pm

Vigilans wrote:
Well I took care of it, everything seems to be fine now. I suppose it also helps that I am a good student and have a fairly friendly relationship with the teacher. She assumed I plagiarized or paraphrased un-cited sources because she found I didn't have enough in-text references. However, I provided her with my research and my outline, which includes every point I made in my paper and the sources I was going to apply to them, after which she handed me back my research paper and told me to put more citations in and hand it back later today. So I'm pretty happy that worked out, thanks for the advice everyone.

Ouch, Wikipedia as a cite able source? I used to do minor vandal edits there when I was bored a few years back. I would usually change minor geographic information or birth dates, which at the time would sometimes take up to a week to change. With the knowledge that mischievous tasks like this were possible I haven't had any real academic support for Wikipedia. Not to mention that but I think the page on 'Lightsabres' is actually longer then the pages on real swords, or other ridiculous stuff like that...


I use it when I am lazy for general information on topics I know nothing about. If my curiosity is peaked then I switch to other sources.