<p>Hey guys,
I'm very, very likely to be suspended for a full year for violating the academic honor code. The hearing is next week but Dartmouth is super strict regarding cases of my kind. Precedent is penalties of suspension whether or not the transgression occurred with malicious intent. </p>
<p>I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what to do with myself in my time off. My GPA is low-ish and I was majoring in Economics/Finance. My parents are immigrants who can't provide connections or leads for me about resume-building things I could do in that gap year (And I expect it'll be much tougher for someone in my unique situation to find them independently). I will be living in NYC so there's a large market but I'm not sure where to start looking. </p>
<p>I feel <em>so</em> mentally and emotionally drained right now, and I haven't broken the news to my parents. Many of my friends will graduate this coming June and I wont' be there to send them off. When I do come back my friends in my year will be way ahead of me in their academic paths. I'll most likely break off my relationship with my boyfriend because I don't feel comfortable asking him to wait for me, and I'm not sure I want him to. I'm looking at a year of feeling lonely, isolated, and conspicuous, and desperate. Has anyone been through a similar situation and could offer words of advice? I feel committed to doing the best I can do but cannot help but feel super lost.</p>
<p>The formal charge is “failure of citation” for a homework assignment. (Computer Science code–I had used parameters from a file available on the course website. The professor admits this wasn’t the intellectual part of the assignment but there is suspicion that my actual coding was influenced by other files available on the same webpage)</p>
<p>You mention suspicion. How can they suspend you for suspicion? I have a big problem with this if they are going to suspend you with no proof. If you did in fact do it, then that is one thing and you need to take your punishment. But, if you didn’t you need to fight the “charges”. Is there anyone who can advise you on how to proceed through the hearing?</p>
<p>Sounds like another way to say “plagiarism” to me. Still, my own experience writing code is that I copy as much as I can (unless there’s an explicit copyright notice forbidding use of the code) with no thought of that being wrong, just the way programmers work and learn. It’s thought of as not reinventing the wheel. A program is not a novel or a history. On the other hand, it’s a little different in a course, I imagine, but why have something publicly posted on the class webpage that couldn’t be used? </p>
<p>So you can come back in a year? Just tell your parents that, assuming that’s the case, and it should take a little of the shock off. Maybe you can just tell others you’re taking a year off to get your head straight before going back, working to see what life in the real world is like. True enough, in its way. My son had an enforced vacation due to a few too many F’s, and he definitely matured in that year off. He lived at home, was lucky to have a pretty interesting job in a good situation. I think the job made all the difference in the world. Good luck. You <em>will</em> get through it OK.</p>