<p>Current undergraduate student, Long story short, I had a lapse in judgment and used someone's lab report to help me write mine. I am now being accused of academic dishonesty. :( I know I shouldn't have done it, despite the hell week I was going through, I know no excuses. </p>
<p>What's going to happen, how will this affect me after graduation? Am I just doomed for life? Do I just talk to the dean?</p>
<p>You aren’t doomed for life. </p>
<p>How precisely did you make use of “someone’s lab report?” </p>
<p>Did you copy the structure for instance? Or did you copy and paste the lab report into your document and then printed it and submitted it? </p>
<p>Depending on your extent of use of the lab report in question, I would formulate my approach to talking with the Dean of your college. </p>
<p>Maybe it was a misunderstanding? or was it deliberate? That depends on the information that you have not supplied to us.</p>
<p>The structure and a few paragraphs reworded (apparently not enough) into my own. I suppose in that sense, it was deliberate. I guess I just wasn’t thinking… </p>
<p>I was just alerted today by my professor that he will be submitted a report to our Academic Integrity office, and told me I will need to talk to the Dean. Likely case is that I have to write a paper on academic integrity, attend a seminar but I think it will go on my record?</p>
<p>I dunno… honestly… </p>
<p>At my school, any act of academic dishonesty will result in an F in the course in question at the least; being expelled or removed from the college as the worst consequence.</p>
<p>I don’t think I can help you any further as I think your school handles these cases differently from mine.</p>
<p>Once in Bio, someone copied my lab report. The report was based on a museum visit, we went in the same group, he asked to look at mine to compare notes, and he plagiarized the whole thing without my knowledge. He was caught, got an F for the course, was put on Academic Probation, and it shows up on his record.</p>
<p>The following semester, he was caught cheating again - another F and Suspension for 1 semester, another notation on his record. If he’s accused of cheating again, he will be expelled. </p>
<p>You can probably look up your college’s Academic Dishonestly policy online, but if it’s like my college’s, yeah it’ll show up on your record.</p>
<p>Not that any type of academic dishonesty is good, but on a relative scale (compare your situation to the guy in pinkstrawberry’s post, for instance), what you did was not the worst kind of cheating. The most dangerous types of cheaters are the ones who deliberately and systematically seek to earn grades that they don’t deserve (buying papers, stealing answer guides, involving a ring of students, etc.). </p>
<p>From the tone of your posts, it seems like you made a mistake that you now earnestly regret. When you talk to the Dean, just be sincere and accept whatever the consequences are. You’re not doomed for life.</p>
<p>At worst, you fail the course. It happens.</p>
<p>At best, you just get a 0 on the thing you turned in.</p>
<p>Yeah, I’m with them, be honest and hope for the best.</p>
<p>Thanks for the words guys.
Yea, no way am I ever ever ever going to do anything remotely academically dishonest in the future. </p>
<p>However, I really want to know how this affects me after graduation. Does this effectively eliminate any kind of post-undergrad schooling? Will this follow me into work places?</p>
<p>If you get removed from the University, it will be very difficult for you to do a lot of things LMAO.</p>
<p>I had a friend who had someone else take a test for him and got caught.</p>
<p>They both recieved something called an “Unforgivable F” on their transcripts, which I can only assume would severely hurt post-grad efforts.</p>
<p>When you talk to the Dean, just be honest and candid. Don’t make him/her fish for answers or offer up excuses. Be direct when you answer his/her questions and make an effort to apologize.</p>
<p>Don’t just say, “I know, I’m sorry.” Say I want to apologize for what I did, it was wrong and I’m ready to be completely honest with you regarding the incident.</p>
<p>Be honest with what you did. At least that will demonstrate to the dean that you learned something from the incident. And, additionally, that you are mature enough to deal with the consequences.</p>
<p>I don’t know how it will affect you long term.</p>
<p>However, you are clearly taking responsibility for what you did right now.</p>
<p>If you keep doing that – if you keep being willing to explain what you did without making excuses or minimizing it – and if there is no second incident and you are able to explain what you learned and why there is no second incident, I cannot imagine that you wouldn’t be given a second chance by most people. If you are going to graduate soon and you are worried you might want to look into something academic you can do before applying so that you have a longer track record of good behavior after this incident.</p>
<p>But you know what would probably really carry a lot of weight? A solid letter of recommendation from <em>this</em> professor. Can you take a second class with him and do everything right, including going to office hours to talk with him? That’s not something that will be easy to do, and most people wouldn’t do it. Most people would either be embarrassed to face him or angry that he turned them in. But as I say, you come across as someone who is taking full responsibility, so I think that you probably could manage it. And if you convince <em>him</em> – the person (besides you) who knows best what you did wrong and who took what you did seriously enough to turn you in – that you are a good and honest student and that you made one mistake that is out of character for you, and if he is willing to put his reputation behind that assessment, I think that would say a whole lot to anyone reading the letter.</p>
<p>I’m adding something else here. Academic dishonesty is a really big deal to me. It’s probably a bigger deal to me than it is to most people who post here. It undermines the whole attempt to learn about the world. So I’m not minimizing what you’ve done at all.</p>
<p>There are some fields that demand extreme amounts of reliability and it’s possible that you’ve just lost access to those fields. I don’t know, and I don’t know how important that is to you. And if someone discovers a pattern of repeated academic dishonesty, that can – and should, I believe – result in you losing access to a lot of other fields. I don’t believe that Jan Hendrik Schön should ever have funding to do research again, and since his PhD has been withdrawn I don’t think I’m alone. Also, if someone discovers a failure to take academic integrity seriuosly it can – and should, I believe – result in sanctions. I’m glad Andrew Wakefield is no longer allowed to practice medicine in the UK, I’m glad his <i>Lancet</i> article has been withdrawn, and I wish more people in the US took the results of his GMC hearing seriously.</p>
<p>But most reasonable people understand that people make mistakes. We have all made them. And when the mistake isn’t too bad – not only haven’t you done what Schön or Wakefield did, but you haven’t killed anyone or molested a child or anything like that – and especially when the person is young, and the person acknowledges the mistake, learns from it and doesn’t repeat it, I believe that most reasonable people are prepared to give someone a second chance. That includes most of the people who are going to have any reason to look at your transcript.</p>
<p>If I were you I’d be prepared to explain what happened – again, not making excuses and not minimizing what you’ve done, which is hard – and what you learned from it and that you never have and never will do it again. I wouldn’t assume that, unless you had been hoping to enter a field in which honesty is supremely important, this incident will limit your opportunities in life so long as it is out of character.</p>
<p>Well. I’m talking to the Dean today. Hoping I don’t falter with my words too much… and get my apology in straight. Thanks for the help guys.</p>
<p>Speaking of dishonesty, did anyone hear about the Columbia University valedictorian (of the non-traditional division, I might add) that stole a 5 minute joke, verbatim, for his commencement speech from that one B-list comedian?</p>
<p>Columbia gives the kid a slap on the wrist, if that.</p>
<p>I, however, think it’s just as serious as any other sort of plagiarism, and that this incident should be a big embarassment for Columbia and this kid.</p>
<p>Academic dishonesty charges means that law school is out of the question.</p>
<p>There’s still a chance for law school. Law schools know that after making the kind of mistake the OP did, some students do permanently change.</p>