<p>Hi I'm currently a high-school student and recently I just took a summer poli sci course at my local community college. There I met a lot of nice people except for the professor. He gave us extra credit which was a assignment to go to the city council meeting and take notes. There I met a fellow classmate who didn't know English much so I helped him and told him what they were saying and what to write. So the next class day the professor saw both of our papers and accused us of cheating. I explained him the situation then he changes from cheating to saying it was an individual assignment not a group work. I found that stupid because I was just helping the guy who didn't know English and happenly he wrote down what I was going to anyways but it was worded into his own style so that wasn't even cheating it was helping. I can't believe I get punished for helping someone out. Any feedback?</p>
<p>On note the professor both gave us a 0.</p>
<p>I think you should let this go. </p>
<p>You learned a lesson about being too helpful to other students. You didn’t get any extra-credit points, but you also didn’t suffer any academic penalty that lowered your grades from required assignments. (I’m always a little surprised when there is extra credit in college in the first place.) And, looking at events as you described them, I don’t actually see how the professor was rude. I see that he told you your help went too far, for which reason he denied you the extra credit. That seems to me like “honest.” Was he sarcastic, or cursing and calling you names when he told you?</p>
<p>It was extra credit. You weren’t really “punished” - you just weren’t awarded any extra points. On another note, it seems like the other guy copied down what you were writing exactly. There’s no way you would have the same notes unless he wrote down exactly what you were. Perhaps it was him doing the cheating. But it doesn’t matter at this point. I think the professor would have taken into account that you went to the same meeting and so should have similar notes to a degree. If your papers were similar beyond that, he has reason to believe dishonesty.</p>
<p>If the guy who didn’t know English did his own work and wrote jibberish, at least, it was his own work.
Your intentions were honorable but the prof saw it differently.</p>
<p>Welcome to college.</p>
<p>rate my professor . com is your friend. Seriously, you can avoid the pain of taking a rude or horrible professor your whole college life if you use that website.</p>
<p>Of course, the trouble with Rate My Professor is that a prof could get tagged as “rude” because he did something like…oh, I don’t know, denying credit on an extra-credit assignment to two students who submitted the identical paper.</p>