<p>I'm a student at the University of Central Florida and I'm majoring in early childhood education. In one of my classes I had to write a paper about a type of diverse student. I chose junior rheumatoid arthritis, mostly because I wrote a paper about it with a friend in one of our high school classes (two or three years ago, I don't remember). So basically I took out a lot of things and added to it and turned it in. </p>
<p>Now I'm being accused of plagiarism for the paper. I used turnitin.com for this paper (not for the high school one). I talked to my friend that I did the paper with and I guess she used it and added on to it for a paper in college last year (she goes to another school) and that teacher used turnitin.com which I guess turned out okay because for the paper in high school we didn't use turnitin.com, we just wrote it and got our grade on it. </p>
<p>This is my first time getting into trouble at college and I'm meeting with my teacher in a couple days to talk about it. So I have no idea what to do. I'm worried that I'll get into a lot of trouble and my friend will as well. </p>
<p>Some teachers allow you to use prior works, others don’t. The fact that you wrote a paper with someone else complicates it. Tell the truth. What you did could be considered plagiarism by some teachers and not by others.</p>
<p>FWIW, a HS friend of my daughter’s posted her own work on-line and when the teacher Googled it, the site where she had posted it popped up.</p>
<p>If you copied certain sentences word by word from websites, that would be consider plagiarism. You would have to paraphrase and then put down the reference. If you added stuff in and paraphrased and used that website only as a reference, it shouldn’t be plagiarism. If the paper you did in high school was the result of a collaboration between you and your friend, that still should not be considered plagiarism unless the work had stuff in it that was a word for word copy from a website. Talk to your teacher about it.</p>
<p>It’s correctly cited and everything. I’m just worried about the fact that my friend did the paper last year and it was on turnitin and since I did it and used turnitin I’m being accused of plagiarism.</p>
<p>First, tell the truth. People get in more trouble lying to cover themselves than they do for the original problem. Imagine being cleared of plagiarism but expelled for lying about it.
Go to the meeting prepared to show what you did. Take the high school paper. Take a letter from the friend with an explanation. Better yet, have the friend mail a letter directly to the teacher to show a bit of neutrality. And review the syllabus and school policy to see if prior works are allowed. If they aren’t, say you didn’t know, you were wrong to not read the policies, and you are sorry.</p>
<p>Wow, that sounds like a terrible situation. The only thing you can do is tell the truth. And don’t feel bad about it, regardless of the outcome. It was your paper to begin with. You don’t need to feel like you did anything wrong here.</p>
<p>I agree with the other posters that you need to tell the truth here. You wrote the original as a co-author, so why can’t you use the data again? If you have the original then you should show the work to the teacher when you have the meeting. You could even try to get a letter or e-mail from your friend that you can forward to your teacher explaining that she also used the original paper to write another one for college.</p>
<p>I am wondering how closely you stuck to the original paper. Did you use some of verbatim? Dis you use most of it and then just add some to it? It sounds like you were trying to cut corners and use an old paper as a new paper. Basically your plan of going the easy route has backfired completely.</p>
<p>Using a high school paper and trying to pass it off as a college paper is not going to win you any points at any time. Even if it did pass without the plagiarism charge it won’t get you any gold stars in college. Tell your teacher that you learned from your mistake and the next time you use iffy material as a reference make sure you rewrite it differently.</p>
<p>Academically, reusing prior papers is considered plagerism by my business school. IMO, it’s even worse that two of you originally wrote the paper and you did not give your co-author credit. </p>
<p>ALso, your teacher gave you all the assignment to learn from it and put in the work (which you did not). </p>
<p>However, as long as you are honest about the situation, you’ll probably still get a low grade on the paper, but I’m confident they won’t fail you or anything - especially if you’re a freshman or sophomore. It’s reasonable to assume that you did not consider it plagerism, and since the only ill intent they’ll see is you trying to avoid work/research. </p>
<p>Don’t worry about your friend at the other school. Your teacher is concerned about you not her. And no reason to disclose your friend’s name.</p>
<p>Just fess up to your teacher, you’ll likely get expelled but you have to learn to live with consequences. You may have blown your shot at college and your future in this life, but in your next life I’m sure you’ll be more sincere about it.</p>
<p>If it’s your first offense and you own up to what you did, you’ll probably get away with a failing grade on the paper and a stern admonition not to do it again.</p>