<p>Hi, I'm currently a high school junior. Time was running out, I needed sleep, and I made the decision to copy off of this girl's work. What's worse is that it was just a homework assignment....it will practically do nothing to my grade compared to my essays and tests. She noticed that our assignments were similar; she wrote a referral and she said we are going to have to talk to the assistant principal. This crushes me. Will this hurt my chances? It was a stupid mistake. I regret it so much and I feel so HORRIBLE for the girl I copied off of! Initially, I wasn't even going to copy off of her. I just wanted an idea of how to answer the questions. I kept hesitating while copying her answers (there are signs of it on the paper where some of my answers were a little off...) but I thought about it and did it anyway. I really am not this kind of person. It was just something I did and I regret it...so so much. Do UCs in particular look at these records?</p>
<p>I am getting mixed responses. If it does hurt, I have failed my family. I have failed my dreams of benefiting the Vietnamese American community. I try so hard with this as my motivation. Now my friends and family will think I am a cheater and that my grades are not legitimate. This is NOT true. I get less than 4 hours of sleep a night. I never, EVER do these things but I guess I felt more at ease with a homework assignment…even if I got 0/50 I would have the same grade in this class. I can’t get over the fact that this is a HOMEWORK assignment!! Compared to my high essay and test grades!! :(</p>
<p>Apologize to the girl, to the teacher, and to the principal. Take the punishment. Offer reparations of some sort, like perhaps helping the teacher with something (yes, the teacher was wronged too in this). Don’t do it again. Ask if it’ll be included in your official academic file. Chances are it won’t be mentioned in your transcript AS LONG AS it never happens again (in which case they’ll have to inform the colleges about it.)
Generally speaking it’s better to write anything rather than copy it off someone else.
However, why are you sleeping 4 hours a night? Of course you needed sleep… You should have at least 3 hours more every day. </p>