plagarism?? will this hurt me in applying?

Student615
Sat, 28 Jun 2008 09:14:52 +0000

Do find out whether there’s any record of this. If not, I see no reason to create one; if so, I still don’t think you need to worry much. If things did happen as you say, then it was an unfortunate but innocent situation and you can explain it briefly in an addendum (not main essay). Be warned, though, that in your current telling, your teacher’s actions/reaction sound unreasonable enough to make me wonder what you’re leaving out. That may be completely unfair to you, but if you do have to discuss this, you’ll want to work on a different way of explaining the situation (minus any references to the teacher’s insanity).

If it does end up that there’s a record (which I doubt, from what you say), talk to your guidance counselor about how best to approach this. (S)he might prefer to include an explanation in her own recommendation rather than have you make note, or perhaps both would be best.

Either way, don’t worry. This is probably a non-issue, but at worst, it’s an explainable and, IMO, under the particular circumstances, forgivable one.