Hello,
Are there any place where I can find previous papers done by students who took the same class? If not, would it be ok to ask students who took the same class before me to share his or her paper? I just want to see the big picture, first. Would this be a violation of honor code or something like that?
You can try to find old material by searching your class/professor in Google and seeing what comes up, but the chances of finding something will depend on the class and assignment itself.
It would be a violation of the honor code only if you plagiarized the papers in any way and turned them in as your own. Simply possessing a previous student’s paper is not grounds for cheating unless that is specifically outlined in the honor code.
Short of Google searches or talking to people at your school, not really. While this isn’t cheating or a violation of an honor code or anything like that, I think it’s tip-toeing pretty close to the line. Ultimately it won’t likely be of much help anyway. The written content must be your own. The only things that an old paper could really help you with are formatting and style, which the professor will cover anyway.
Why not ask the professor for some samples?
If your professor is any good, they will have different requirements and not be recycling the same assignment.
Some assignments WORK, and work well.
Those assignments are repeated until they stop working. It’s certainly worth asking.
You can probably just ask the professor for one that he thought was really good. If he didn’t save one ask him if it’s okay if you find one from a student who took the course before, but it should probably be fine.