I am currently 16 years old and I am a junior in my high school. I feel extremely guilty and I feel extremely worried about my future. Yes, I cheated on one of my english assignment. It was a film review and I was not confident that my answer to one of the question was enough to satisfy my teacher. To cover this up I exactly copied a similar answer online from a PDF file and made some few changes. I felt worried when I was turning it in but I doubted that he was going to find it out. However, my teacher sent me an email saying that I plagiarized and I felt mad. It was a fake madness, full of guilt. I replied to him with more lies. I felt worried and stress out that night. I regretted copying the answer from online but I had no other choice. I knew that I was going to get a 0 on the assignment and I was scared of that. I thought I had a better chance by lying to him and showing him the report from Grammarly. Since the essay was in a pdf file, Grammarly can’t really detect it as a plagiarism. The next day I lied to him when I first met him. I said, “I am being extremely honest and I did not plagiarize”. I felt dumb and mad saying this since I knew that it was only going to make the situation worse. I lost my words when he showed me the essay that I used online and I was speechless. I could feel that my teacher was waiting for the moment for me to be honest. I kept acting that I didn’t know anything about this but I knew at that moment, I got caught. I gave up. I told him everything, the truth. He told me that I won’t get a rewrite or partial credit and I didn’t argue. I told him that I will try my best on the rest of the assignments to get a B- in the class. He seemed cool but I could tell that he lost all the respect from me and I also knew that I wouldn’t be able to get it back. Luckily I only got a warning so it won’t be recorded on my official transcript. It is my first time experiencing these kinds of feelings but I know for sure that it will be part of me forever. For a second, I got worried about my future. What if I can’t become successful? I have no idea what to do. I feel guilty and I feel like killing myself. This was my first time every copying someone’s work and getting caught. I am not going to do it again but I really hate how this guilt is still inside me. I don’t know how to get rid of it. Do I deserve it?
Sorry for the grammar. My mind is in bad condition right now
If you truly feel this bad, then just let this be a lesson to you. All of us mess up at one point or another. Just remember this moment and move on. It’s part of growing up.
For quite awhile, teachers have had access to technology that identifies instances of plagiarism. Yes. you did make a big mistake. In fact, the bottom of this page has an ad for a grammar and plagiarism checker. Beyond the cheating, you attempted to lie your way out of something the teacher had clearly discovered. That certainly complicates the entire episode. You may not get a severe penalty now, but you identified yourself as untrustworthy in your actions and responses. I suspect you will be under increased scrutiny at school.
Unless you cheat again, your success or not in life does not depend on the current episode of plagiarism. Please think about what you did. You were concerned that your review would not meet your teacher’s standards. Perhaps, your own work would have been acceptable. Instead, you took a big risk and ended up with a zero. Wouldn’t it have been better and more emotionally satisfying to get an honest C rather than get a zero on the review and damaged your academic reputation with the teacher.
Cheating through plagiarism, copying answer’s off another person’s test, using another student’s homework to complete your own and all those other big and small ways are foolish ways to get around academic challenges.
In addition to stealing, cheating is just plain stupid. What makes you think that other student’s have better answers than you, you won’t be caught so cheating is acceptable if you aren’t found out, you will be held responsible at a later time for something you didn’t learn now and yet the information appears in another class or college, cheating successfully can perpetuate cheating, etc. Learning is the road to success!
You have learned a very valuable lesson and now understand why it is never o.k. to plagiarize, cheat or lie. Better to have feelings of shame and remorse, than contempt towards your teacher for uncovering your deception. To quote Sir Walter Scott, giving credit where credit is due, “Oh what a tangled web we weave, When first we practice to deceive!” I think a sincere letter of apology to your teacher that reflects upon your new found wisdom might help you to move on with the resolve to never find yourself in the same situation again.
Well I never plagiarized before so I really didn’t know how. Luckily the school said that this will be my first warning. I learned my lesson and I will make sure that I won’t ever cheat again.
I had a somewhat similar instance to you in 8th grade. I didn’t do my homework so I was copying another persons work when a teacher came over and took both the papers. I got the one student out of trouble but I got a detention. I have never borrowed another students work out of fear since.
I guess we should both be grateful though that we got caught early and not in college.
Honestly, you seem to understand how severe it is to copy directly.
While I feel pretty confident you won’t again, I see two uncomfortable consequences of what’s already happened:
In spite of understanding the potential consequences, you plagiarized anyway.
You decided to lie to you teacher, despite obviously feeling deeply opposed.
Please don’t lie to any authority figure; even an otherwise strict teacher can be a wonderful ally. If you feel anxious, contact them via email or in class and ask targeted questions directly on the source. Somewhat understanding their interpretation will likely help you know what they want you to look for, and may give you a foundation for analysis.
Keeping clean, purposeful lecture notes may also help glean key points for writing assignments. If necessary, ask a peer what they got out of any pre-assignment discussion!
Also, please try to figure out what drove you to do this stuff. If you have any history of anxiety or acting out under pressure, you could consider talking with your parents/teacher/other important authority on easing stress in your life. If not, you should probably try stress-relieving activities independently (like yoga or something).
good luck, yo, and be careful not to let your anxieties drive you to poor choices in the future. giving you a low-er stakes place to get these yayas out is pretty much the ancillary purpose of our school system, and this incident should be a lesson for your future plans in academia, the business world, and maybe even relationships
I had a bad experience with plagiarizing a paper last semester and learned my lesson. Since then I’ve also realized I should double check my work BEFORE my professor does just to be extra careful. I found something called copyleaks that will actually scan your whole paper for you and show you all of the sources you used and the percentage each was used, which is pretty cool. If your professors will only allow a specific percentage or sources this is a great plagiarism checker.
The inevitable conclusion of the day: Next time check for plagiarism with alternative tools before submitting your assignment, not after. There are tools which could detect similarities in different types of documents, including html and pdf - for example, Unplag. If you listen to my advice, you could prevent situations like that.
And don’t blame yourself - now you’re experienced enough and won’t cheat again. As Stephanee Killen has said, “Life is the best teacher, just as it is. It is the toughest teacher. It won’t tolerate slothfulness for long. It’s always throwing some difficult problem your way and then seeing what you will do with it.”
The least you could’ve done to not plagiarize was read the review and use the ideas they mentioned to motivate your own thinking. It’s a film review, so it’s not like you would be pressed with time for reading a book. You could’ve spent 2 hours watching the movie, 15 minutes or so reading reviews and drafting possible critiques and arguments, and then banged out the essay in less than an hour. No guilt, no anxiety, no 0.
That being said, you learned your lesson with minimum consequences. You’re lucky you only got a 0 on the assignment. In college you could be expelled.
Next time, be honest upfront. In fact, don’t plagiarize at all!