<p>Sr. year of high school, in my fiction/creative writing class, I wrote a narrative. The assignment then was to write a story that reveals something about yourself- could be some life changing event, something personal, etc. I wrote a 2-3 page story about how writing and english changed my life and why I wanted to pursue it as a career.</p>
<p>Now, freshman year of college, and my first assignment for my Edu class is to write a piece or narrative about why English is important to me.</p>
<p>I would like to reuse my high school story, maybe tweak a section and I know I would definitely change the ending.</p>
<p>Can I do that? my moral strings are pulling me back, saying I'm plagiarizing. Yet it's my paper, and I'd be changing probably half of it. The reason I want to reuse it is that it sums up PERFECTLY how I feel. If I had to write a new one, which I can easily do, it would not express my feelings as well as my high school piece.</p>
<p>I would not call it plaguerism, but most courses and assignments have the implicit and sometimes explicit requirement that you don’t use old work. I doubt any teacher is going to give consent if you ask if you can dredge up a high school paper and use it, even if you revamp or tweak it. </p>
<p>There was a thread on using the same paper for two classes taken in the same term. My feelin is that if those running the course permit it, fine. But if not, no can do.</p>
<p>If they don’t explicitly say that you can’t use work from previous courses, then I don’t see a problem. You can’t plagiarize yourself. It may not be allowed based on the professor. But it is not plagiarism.</p>
<p>I agree. I wouldn’t call it plagiarism, but I would ask the professor whether he or she minds your taking this approach. I know the saying, “It’s better to ask for forgiveness than permission,” but in this case, I wouldn’t take that advice.</p>
<p>I explicitly tell students not to do this (to me there is a difference between this and a substantial extension and revision of work from a different class, which I happily allow). It’s written in my syllabus and I remind students that I consider this sort of thing to be a violation of academic integrity. However, I know that many of my colleagues do not discuss specifics. In a lot of cases I like to ask forgiveness instead of beg for permission, but when it comes to academic integrity issues, even if there is no explicit prohibition against this particular act–ask your professor anyway.</p>
<p>Remember–many colleges have general academic honesty/integrity policies that go beyond the scope of a narrow definition of plagiarism</p>
<p>You can’t exactly plagiarize from yourself. Plagiarism is using another author’s work as your own without crediting that author. Your own work is your own work, so you can hardly plagiarize yourself. </p>
<p>However, this falls under the broader spectrum of academic integrity. In general, reusing a previous paper is considered a violation of academic integrity. Whether you will be punished and if so, how severely depends on your school and professor. I would not do it if I were you.</p>
<p>There are many institutions that WOULD in fact call this plagiarism. You are using something pre-existing to avoid having to do the work yourself. There is another “branch” of plagiarism called “self-plagiarism.” I’d suggest looking it up.</p>
<p>I’ve heard of a couple instances at my school where people actually have gotten in trouble for recycling a paper. </p>
<p>I’m sure plenty of people have gotten away with it though too.</p>
<p>They could call it plagiarism but it cannot possibly be plagiarism because it’s not appropriating “another” author’s work and calling it your own. You are the sole owner of both bodies of work in question. I am not contending the fact that you could very well get into serious trouble for doing it, but I’m just saying that it cannot be called plagiarism.</p>
<p>At my school this is considered "self plagiarism " I ,know a student who received an F in a course because he re-used an old paper, even though he changed a good portion of the piece. If you have to ask you know you probably shouldn’t be doing it. Even if its not considered plagiarism at your institution re-using work likely breeches some ethical or academic honesty policy at your school. The only way you can be sure is if you ask your professor, none of us here can tell you if they’d accept the work. As others have said its better to ask in advance than apologize later…</p>
<p>It’s still plagiarism. If you want to go by the dictionary definition, then fine, I guess it’s not…but real life is not a series of words and situations as they are defined by the dictionary.</p>
<p>When you are assigned a paper, you are supposed to be doing original work SPECIFICALLY for that paper. If you recycle an old paper, you are using pre-existing work, instead of doing NEW original work for the assignment in question. That is plagiarism. You are also presumably doing so without acknowledging the fact that you are using a prior paper by yourself as a source for the current paper. You still have to cite your sources, even if the source is yourself. Notice how writers cite their other papers, if they are referencing other research they’ve done? That’s because they have to document their sources.</p>
<p>This if course begs the question, why are you in college if you don’t want to do the work? College is about learning, and pushing yourself. You aren’t going to learn anything by recycling a pre-existing paper.</p>
<p>Honestly, I find it silly to say that it’s in any way wrong to rehash old work to do a new project. In this day and age, we should be encouraging people to save time and resources by assessing what they already have instead of getting or making something new.</p>
<p>comfortablycurt - No, what you described is not plagiarism. It is generally termed “multiple submission”. If you already acknowledge that it is not plagiarism by a strict definition of the term, then I think we’re done here. I’m not arguing that it is not wrong or even that it is not punishable. I am simply arguing that it is punishable under “multiple submission”, which is a violation of academic integrity. My own institution distinguishes these two offenses and punishes both equally. UCLA also draws a clear distinction between the two because, once brought before the board, one could make a solid argument that one had not committed plagiarism. Therefore, the charge is multiple submission.</p>
<p>Obviously this definition and dividing line is going to vary from school to school. Self plagiarism is a very real idea though. Google it, and you will find tons of information about it. My school considers “multiple submission” to be plagiarism, so, you can say that it isn’t, but according the administration at my school, it is.</p>
<p>You can argue about dictionary definitions of the term, but the vast majority of the time a dictionary is not going to explain the entire concept of any given word, especially with more complex issues like plagiarism. If someone wants to live by an ethical code that comes for the dictionary though, that’s all them.</p>
<p>That is my very point - I believe this is a case of misnaming something. For instance, I could call my beat up pick-up truck a Ferrari and I could even convince everybody else to call it a Ferrari, but that does not change the fact that it’s not a Ferrari. Nevertheless, if I hit anybody with it, it does not matter if it’s a Ferrari or a beat up pick-up - the punishment is the same.</p>
<p>Creative writing is a different situation though. It’s like an art class. You shouldn’t use the same piece of artwork for multiple assignments because it ignores the entire purpose of the course. Whereas reusing old work in other subjects doesn’t ignore the purpose of the course because the purpose of the course is to teach you something. If you already learned that something in a different course, you shouldn’t be required to redo work for something the other course taught you.</p>