We need to be practical in the whole self-plagiarism thing.
For college app essays where the prompts are nearly identical: “What in your personal experience will bring value to the student community at XYZ University’s Honors College?” Absolutely. It’s just good time management and makes sense to do your best work once.
Repetitive “Tell me about yourself” essays that so many middle and high school teachers assign at the beginning of the year as a homework grade? Again, I say absolutely reduce/reuse/recycle. They aren’t looking for critical thinking here. I think my daughter has been re-editing the same doc in google docs since 6th grade for this one, just modifying as she goes based on the specific teacher, prompt, and growing life experiences.
Frankly, beyond those two, I’m struggling to come up with an instance where it would have even made sense in DDs high school career to self-plagiarize. Maybe I need a specific example – DD has always stacked her schedule with STEM-focused classes beyond the required English/Lit/History, so maybe she hasn’t taken enough lit or creative writing classes for this to come up?
Our HS has finals Dec 19th (full day), 20th and 21st (half days). Then they are off until Jan 5th.
Can you all keep your D in your thoughts (or prayers or whatever you feel most comfortable with)? This breakup with BF has hit her really hard and I think that there are more issues going on with her than I first thought. It is going to be a very stressful two weeks and I’ll take all the help I can get (even if it is from my fake internet friends )
@ca1543 It is such a serious, life-controlling issue. My ds is severely dyslexic. I am pretty sure if he had gone to ps his life would be completely different. He didn’t start really reading (not sounding out every single word) until 4th grade. He didn’t start reading on grade level until 5th grade (at that point, he was already taking alg. I had to read him his word problems.) Conventional ps SN wisdom is that kids not reading on grade level in 3rd grade will never catch up.
By the time ds was in 8th grade, he was functioning on an advanced high school or college level across the board. I have ps SN teachers who have tried (unsuccessfully, unfortunately) to share his story with their administrators bc kids in their schools have rigid tracking and it is practically impossible for kids do get out of a track. At this point, no one would even know ds ever struggled with anything other than his spelling is awful and he reads slowly. We never had him approved for any accommodations and he even did all of his standardized testing wo accommodations.
Yet in a different school scenario, he would have been locked into an incredibly poor fit academic scenario. That makes me simultaneously sad and furious for kids pigeonholed in our broken system.
@stlarenas Good thoughts coming from me for your D. It doesn’t help right now, but she will probably appreciate having the opportunity to just be her own person when she starts college. No matter the relationship, having a significant other (or not) changes how you look at things, in my opinion.
Interesting discussion regarding self-plagiarism! S hasn’t had much opportunity to just re-use the same app essay – either there is a difference in the prompt that makes editing necessary or the word counts are different. Just last night he was trying to tell me he shouldn’t apply for an honors college because his existing essay that answered the prompt was only 250 words and the new one required at least 400 words. (It was like he was speaking a foreign language – I’ve never had trouble filling up a word count in my life!) :))
I’m not sure I ever considered it wrong to self-plagiarize in college. I don’t think I ever did it, but I was a communications major so surely the opportunity was there. Good points made above though. We may also have to have a holiday discussion about it with D14 and S17.
@dfbdb Nice to hear your D is performing well under pressure. The HNCBHP is S’s last essay to write for now. He is so tired of writing essays that I don’t have any hope his will be as awesome as your D’s.
Congratulations to all on the recent acceptances and fingers crossed for a lot more good news this week!
If I haven’t said it already, HUGE congratulations to those who have received good news! And fingers crossed for those waiting for this week’s ED’s.
@thermom, it sounds like your daughter has a great perspective. If only she could bottle & distribute it could help a lot of kids (and parents)!
Congratulations to you son for his accomplishments, @Mom2aphysicsgeek!! His journey is inspiring.
Oh, that’s so hard, @stlarenas. This is such a stressful time and brings so much to the surface. You are both in my thoughts. And I think we are only semi-fake friends. For example, if any of your DC’s ended up attending a school in my area I would definitely be on call to help out for any reason. So that’s something, right?
For S17, we should have one EA decision by Friday, and another could be posted anytime. I’m trying to limit my portal checks for that school to 3 a day, LOL. His only acceptance to-date is to Purdue for engineering. Last three apps STILL in development, but S feels like he’ll have time to finalize everything and get them out well before Christmas.
Holiday break for S begins this Friday and he goes back on Jan 3rd. D15 flies home tomorrow!! Haven’t seen her since August. For those of you thinking about sending your DC far from home, don’t panic. It probably sounds worse than it is. With texting and Facetime we keep in touch almost daily. We opted not to fly her home for Thanksgiving because last year she got really sick after all the travel - just in time for finals. The days leading up to T-day were hard, lots of second thoughts, but the president of her school has a huge Thanksgiving dinner open to all who stay and it was pretty incredible. Her BF and roomies came back early to attend a big football game on Saturday, so she ended up fine, healthy and with a head start on studying for finals. And now we can use the $$ we saved to do something fun over her break.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek What an inspiring story about your DS. And, incredibly frustrating as well. So many kids struggle with the public school system in so many ways, whether it’s learning disability, social issues or any number of other things. The one-size-fits-all method just doesn’t work, and it’s showing.
@stlarenas I’ll keep your D in my thoughts. I remember how hard that first high school break-up was. It seems like it is your whole world at that age. Add the college application stress and I think it would be overwhelming. It’s good that you notice it and can take care of her. Please keep us posted on how she is doing.
@dfbdfb - Note in the first sentence I said “Self-plagiarism is only bad if you do it with the pretense of presenting it as original work for a specific purpose (e.g., as a requirement for a class).”
So if a kid hands in a paper he/she had written for a previous (or a concurrent) class in lieu of doing new work for your class, that’s bad. BUT, if a kid takes all or part of what he/she has worked on previously and applies it to what he/she has been learning in your class, turning it into a longer treatise, that’s just fine.
For example, if a student comes to you and says, “I wrote a paper on XYZ for ABC class which, based on what I’ve been reading for your class, I’d like to expand upon by looking at 123,” and. in so doing, turns a 5 page paper into 10 page paper or a 10 page paper into a 20 page paper, I do NOT consider that self-plagiarism (and nor does my DH who is a college professor and who has indeed had to deal with students plagiarizing).
As I said, that is how a paper you write for a class can later turn into a scholarly article in a peer-review journal, which can later be reworked and turned into a dissertation or a book. How many PhD dissertations are later published as books? Is that self-plagiarism?
Re-working and expanding on previous work you’ve done is common – and absolutely acceptable – practice in academia and in life as long as you are upfront about what you are doing and not doing it in lieu of what is expected of you.
As for the college and scholarship application essays, anything you write is fair game and yours to reuse as you see fit.
** Self-plagiarism ** @dfbdfb I’m with the students here. This is really a thing you can get caught doing?? I guess I I’d call something like this double-dipping. (One assignment covered for two classes) If the essay fits the prompt again, why can’t it be re-used. I can for a class, what you wrote for X prerequisite cause isn’t acceptable, you need to write something different. But I don’t see why a persona can’t re-use their own words. In my D’s world at art school, they are encourage to as I say double-dip, she might work on one project and it different aspects of it would count for more than one class.
In published journal papers and the such complete plagiarism of a whole papers can break the publishing terms. But using parts from an old paper, particularly if you reference it correctly. And I know professors, re-work papers that never got accepted anywhere and submit them to other locations. When is it a new version of the same paper, and when is it self plagiarism?
But in the real-world people self-plagiarize all the time. And I’d defiantly expect it in college essays.
Congrats or consolations on recent decisions. Onward and upward (to quote @Dave_N).
QOTD: So, there were some interesting music comments yesterday. I would like to offer a followup QOTD. All you have to do is post the Song Title and Artist for one ‘guilty pleasure’ song you came to know due in some part to your DC. A single song that you like to listen to. Any genre.
** Seniors getting out of finals ** Is this really a thing? And is it really a good thing. Aren’t seniors learning how to handle college, and most university classes involve a final that makes up anywhere from 30-50% of their grade. Both of my son’s AP classes didn’t have a final last spring, but it turned out the teacher did use his score on the AP to increase his grade. My son is the type of kid who without a huge amount of studying typically does better on tests & finals and it brings up his grades. HONESTLY. Finals at his school can only count for a max of 15% I wish it was more.
@twoforone99 Is your kid failing? No? Let him self advocate. Honestly the teachers don’t want to hear from the parent of a senior. What is he going to do in college. Trust me the college professors would laugh if you tried to self advocate there.
winter break: D has exams this week and then has two weeks off. She really needs some time to rest and recharge.
music: D17 loves classical music; D21 prefers 80s music and musicals. I grew up in NJ in the 70s-80s, so Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen were both among my favorites back in the day.
self-plagiarism/double dipping: Most of D’s prompts ended up being quite distinct so it was a non-issue.
@Mom2aphysicsgeek Congrats on your son’s grades in his toughest courses. And thank you for sharing his story of his different path. It’s a great example of why homeschooling can be the best option and that cookie-cutter approaches to education can fail students who don’t fit neatly into a particular category.
** QOTD follow up: ** Here Comes the Sun - Beatles/George Harrison. Made me cry with sadness AND joy any time I heard it during S19’s cancer treatment. I smile and stop to listen whenever I hear it. S19 is my sun.
@curiositycat333 --eh, yes and no. I used to think the same thing. I can’t speak for other kids, but trust me…the IB kids know how to take cumulative tests and the end of course tests or “papers” for those are required. They practice frequently. She’ll be fine. She took a two DAY math test last year. They frequently do big Bio and History tests that are cumulative in order to keep them prepped for their big end of year exams that are required for the IB Diploma.
She will actually take her IB Bio mid-term and also her AP Calc BC mid-term…but the GRADE is exempt for her which is huge in Texas.
She has made it this far and is in the top 2%. In May, being in the top 2% is a big deal. Right now it is all about protecting the rank. That could be right or wrong but it is what it is at this point.
@stlarenas - sorry your D’s had a rough couple of weeks. Wishing her strength and happiness.
And we’re NOT fake friends! I, for one, would like to take a page from the “in loco parentis” thread and say that if any of your C17s (or other years for that matter) were to end up needing help/support in an emergency (or non-emergency) in my neck of the woods (So Cal - San Diego area), you can sign me up!
Semester exams this week here, as well as notifications from some schools…perhaps the exams are actually a good distraction, if that’s even conceivable…lots of swirling commotion at the school with kids getting in (and not) at Stanford, CalTech, etc in the last few days. :-S
With S17 for every test score release I either stayed up late or got up early to check the scores when they were first available.
With S19, it’s blow-the-pacifier-to-sterilize-it moment.
I forgot about it and just checked his PSAT score.
Boy, my kids got good test taking genes from us.
This year’s PSAT doesn’t count. I hope he does as well as this next year so that I can research some NMS scholarships. :x
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