Damn School

[TD_Diarrhea]

Well, here's my problem; my assistant principal had me write a 7 page paper on religion over the summer because I failed my theology course. I wrote the paper and passed it in no problem - that was earlier this year back in July. A week after I passed the paper in, she contacts me asking for resources because she believes I plagarisized. I'm shocked at the accusations of plagiarism, as I had wrote the paper myself. Regardless, I provide her with several of my sources.
5 months go by, and not a word from her in regards to my paper; so I assume that I'm all set, and my paper is cleared. Just a week ago, a religion teacher approaches me in the hall and informs me that she just finished speaking with the assistant principal who is still crying plagiarism, despite me providing her sources. The religion teacher also tells me that I'm being assigned another assignment over Christmas break (to compensate for the allegedly plagiarized summer assignment.).

Just 2 days ago (Monday) I had a short conference with the assistant principal about my grades; after we finished discussing grades, she briefly commented about my summer assignment saying (and I quote!) "Your religion paper was... no. it was too detailed; too wordy for kid" I tried to say something, but she dismissed me. She's also described the paper as being "too high quality."

There are two things - that I can think of immediately ( I in this situation that seriously peeve me.

1. Her accusations have deteriorated from plagiarism to a simple 'This is too high quality you're not good enough!'

2. She's made no attempt to do a cross-examination, and hasn't consulted me directly about the paper.

3. What she's said; "Too wordy for a kid" "Too high quality"

4. Honestly, I did write the assignment; I wrote the paper over the course of nine days; I (for once) worked my ass off on an assignment for school.

Anyway, just posting this here because I wanted second-opinions on the situation, as I have no one else to talk to about this.

I intend to have a discussion with her about the paper tommorow after school. She's managed to actually make me angry; which doesn't happen too often.

[fido123]

Can you upload the essay for us to read? There are tools online that will tell you whether a paper was plagiarized or not.

[poochieCREAM]

Well you shouldn't be worried if you know it's purely your own work. Tell her to cross examine the paper with other teachers and to actually investigate if you'd even plagiarised. If she doesn't have anything, well that'd make her feel like a dumb ass.

Why does she doubt you, are your grades low..?

You could get your parents to write and sign a leter, saying that the work is authentic, and that they supervised you etc etc. But your principal sounds thick in the head lol.

[dore]

If you wrote a properly formatted paper then there is no way you should be running into this problem. Plagiarism doesn't necessarily mean you stole phrases verbatim from an outside source, it could mean that you didn't properly cite which ideas were taken from outside sources and which came from you.

Obviously, I can't judge without seeing the paper, but if you didn't have proper citations (both in-text and in a bibliography/works cited/etc) then you can still legitimately be accused of plagiarism.

[DotKritic]

Originally Posted by fido123

Can you upload the essay for us to read? There are tools online that will tell you whether a paper was plagiarized or not.

There's a website, too. Lemme see if I can find it.

edit: http://www.plagiarismdetect.com/

There are other websites.

edit2: Turnitin.com, iThenticate.com and plagiarism.org

[TD_Diarrhea]

Hey. Thanks for the plagarism website. I'll check it out.

[awein999]

oh wow that's lame, sure makes me feel better about my bs saturday school that I have in a few weeks. I'm sorry dude, hopefully you can reason with her.

[One Winged Angel]

sup, exact same thing happened to me on a 'civics and careers' culminating activity five years ago...teacher gave me a 50 on the dot saying that my choice of diction was far too advanced for a tenth grader, so he assumed I plagiarized half of it and cut my mark in half (which is by far the most hilarious marking method I've ever heard of), but I didn't argue it because I didn't give two shits, civics and careers lol etc.

your teacher/principal/whoever is obviously a dumb fuck if she's making this accusation based solely on shit like LOL TOO MANY SYLLABLES PLAGIARISM!!!!111!1 but I'm sure you'll be fine if the paper's yours, just might take some time to drill into their heads that THERE ARE SOME PEOPLE THAT FALL ON THE RIGHT SIDE OF THAT DISTRIBUTION CURVE

[MrRubix]

I'd upload the essay here so we could see it, but I doubt that's going to happen.

Usually a cry of plagiarism isn't done without warrant -- but usually it's pretty obvious to tell if something wasn't written by a given student. If you've provided your sources and they can find no real evidence that you've been plagiarizing (and believe me, there are many ways to check), then they can't reject your paper for "being too good."

There were kids in high school who weren't very "into" the class and would usually say **** that indicated they had no idea what was going on. These same kids would usually steal ideas directly from Sparknotes/other websites and weave them together with weak transitions and pass it off as a paper -- such papers would obviously come across as not really being their own. They'd usually get caught. I'm not saying you're one of these students, but if you basically took entire paragraphs or blocks of ideas and merely reworded a few things, it'll all still come off as being plagiarized.

Again it all really depends on the essay, which we can't see here. If you absolutely did not plagiarize, then fight it to the death and take it to a higher authority if possible.


OWA: Yes, some people do fall to the right side of the bell curve, but usually this implies that there are other consistent factors to such a student regarding a paper. If those factors aren't there, it usually indicates that the paper wasn't original.

[UserNameGoesHere]

That really sucks. I thought this was going to be a generic "I hate school" "too much homework" etc but this seems legit.

Unfortunately it's basically a you vs. them scenario and they hold the authority. Just try your best to convince them you didn't cheat, it's your own work, and you've cited your sources. Unfortunately (and ironically) there are a lot of idiots in the American education system, and these are the ones who are supposed to be teaching or otherwise encouraging learning. Often they encourage mediocrity instead.

[Garquillex]

This happened to me twice. The first time the teacher had me write an essay after school to prove it. The second time she (a different teacher) accepted it after an in-class essay.

I'd be angry at the teacher if she blatantly insulted my intelligence like this. My English has always been several years advance.

What you need to do depends on the manner in which your essay is advanced. It sounds like your essay is laced with descriptive words uncommon in your age group, so you could always try writing a short essay under supervision as I did.

[TD_Diarrhea]

I've used several plagarism checkers, and I've come up negative for counts of plagarism. This might explain why she's stop calling plagarism, and is simply saying 'too good'.

[MrRubix]

Well they can't simply reject your paper if it's legitimate and you just happened to do an exceptional job -- definitely fight that to the death if that is the case.

[TD_Diarrhea]

Well, Rubix, I'm taking it and going to argue tommorow. Thanks for the input, guys.

[Izzy]

If they don't prove it's plagiarism then you are good to go.

[UserNameGoesHere]

I wouldn't exactly say "to the death", but do what you can. Is this a public or private school? If the principal is uncooperative you may have to get your parents to take it up with the school board. If that doesn't work, and you're really determined, you could take it to court but that may be costly.

It's a shame so much of the educational system is entrenched with people who do anything but educate.

[MrRubix]

In the defense of the educators, a lot of people DO plagiarize, and that's not teaching anyone anything. Sometimes people just have a lapse in judgment and may make a mistake, assuming someone has cheated when they haven't. But if TD has genuinely made his own work, then he should stick by that story and not settle for some alternate assignment.

[TD_Diarrhea]

By the way, this is a private catholic school.

[DossarLX ODI]

Last year when I submitted my history paper on the Rwandan Genocide, TurnItIn said that I took phrases off another student's essay online (which I absolutely did not but it came up).

You said you provided the teacher with sources, but you didn't tell us which site you used or what she got as a result. She may have seen highlighted phrases if it was on TurnItIn. I definitely agree you should confront your teacher about this though, because teachers tend to deny things.

[fireking550]

Originally Posted by MrRubix

In the defense of the educators, a lot of people DO plagiarize, and that's not teaching anyone anything. Sometimes people just have a lapse in judgment and may make a mistake, assuming someone has cheated when they haven't. But if TD has genuinely made his own work, then he should stick by that story and not settle for some alternate assignment.

First off, if you really didn't plagiarize this essay you should argue against having to be assigned a secondary assignment just to prove your worth. I can see where she is coming from though if you failed the class why all of a sudden are you doing so good? After they check using the numerous plagiarism checkers however if nothing turned up they have no right to deny the paper as your own legitimate work.

And Rubix i am going to disagree with you (this seems to be a common theme i am noticing) on the topic that plagiarism teaches you nothing. And no i am not talking about copying and pasting stuff from a website and passing it off as your own word for word that is stupid. The technical meaning of plagiarism is : "the unauthorized use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one's own original work." I am mainly speaking of the close imitation in the following. This is where people usually laugh at me. All ideas have been represented in some form or another at one time or another in some form of media/literature. The reason we are reading about this author is because he has done it the best, why would taking his ideas and using them be bad? My school has a strict plagiarism policy in which if you are talking about a revolutionist (such as Robespierre from the French Revolution) you better put in quotation anything that even sounds remotely close to being a pro revolution concept. Most personal input is his ideas just using less fancy wording and less technical terms which leaves me with the questions, what is the point? If i call a poodle a poodle but someone says i can't, i have to call it a dog their really is no logical sense in that. These essays are not going to be sold for money, they by no means are going to be published. Copying word for word is certainly bad, but the close imitation part is what bothers me. No ideas in the modern world were not expressed in the past so we can't really have original ideas and since the definition of plagiarism does not include "the intent of" i questions, what is not plagiarism?

Honestly i felt liking going on a short rant and these forms are the perfect place because no one here knows me =D