Feel like my college career is over...

Last semester was my first semester at college. Although I did well in most of my classes, I failed chemistry, which dragged my GPA to a 1.9.

I have been doing well in my classes this semester. Except, I just received an F on one of the three essays (which count for 2/3 of your entire grade) because I was accused of plagiarism. I am not sure if I have been accused of plagiarizing from a site or another student, but I am very worried. The professor allows us to do one redraft of one of the essays--I have no used one up because my first two essays were good.

I am going to talk to him after class tomorrow. But what if he doesn't believe me? If I don't redraft the essay, i will fail the class because essays are a huge part of the grade. I feel like it is always just one class that brings my GPA down, and I will jst have to give up... I don't know what I'm asking for, but I just needed to get it out. I feel so depressed and hopeless. :(

First year is always a tough one. I would definitely speak to the professor about the plagiarism. It might be that you made a mistake with references or some such - if you forget a footnote or a quote credit, for instance, that could be considered plagiarism, could it not?

If his reasoning is viable and it will not effect your final grade in the class, there can be no harm in making the correction with a redraft.

Take heart, ML, and don't give up.

when you talk to your professor, you can find out if you're being accused of directly lifting a passage from some other source, or if you're being accused of borrowing a major critical or theoretical idea and not attributing the origin

just express your willingness to work with the prof to resolve this because you don't approve of plagiarizing either.

*hugs*

College careers can never be over! there are always ways to fix things....

If you completely fail out, you can go to community college...get your grades back up...and return. Or, after X number of years they have academic forgiveness where they wipe everything you did from your record (so you start fresh). Yea, you might finish a year or two later than you would normally like....but at least you can get a nice degree with a nice GPA and move on with your life.

Thank you all for your support...

I am worried because my professor is one of those cocky, pompous professors that calls his students dumb. He is also very hard-headed, but I am hoping that I can convince him that I did not mean to be academically dishonest.

And thanks Lorik. I had no idea about that academic forgiveness thing. I know my parents would not support either of those ideas, but I guess there are always loans.

Teachers are just the start of the line when you have a problem.... i have gone over my teachers head countless times (haha). If they do something i think is unfare...i talk to them first...and then when i dont hear what i like, i go right to the head of their department (and after that i go to the deen). If you know you didnt do anything wrong (majorly wrong, like ripping a paper off of some site or something) then theres nothing to fear from moving higher up to fight your case.

Haha, I even take arguments to the department if i think the teacher is giving me a lower grade than i deserve....or even just being a jerk (in one of my computer classes, my teacher had a problem with me being on the internet after i had my work finished.... we sorted that out *grin*) . Maybe I'm just a troublemaker? har har

Sounds like he is exactly the kind of guy to call forgetting a reference credit plagiarism. You'll be able to figure it out and correct, I'm sure.

ML,

my sister in law went through something similar with her spanish professor (who jsut happened to be the head of the whole department) the semester before she was supposed to graduate.  It was the last class she needed to complete her major, and she could not take it with another teacher (she hated this one).  The teacher accused her of plagarism and was going to fail her in the class, despite not having ANY proof at all.  my SIL fought the school and agreed that since it was her word against the teachers, that she would write a new paper and submit it to a bias free professor from another institution. 

This is a little ahead of your situation, but don't feel like you have to drop out right away.  There are plently of options.  I agree with everyone who says that you need to ask your professor for exactly what he is calling plagarism and have him show you what you did wrong.  If it's completely accidental (ie: something other than entire paragraphs lifted from another source sans credit), since your a freshman they'll probably let it slide with a warning (might have to rewrite the paper too ).  If it turns out that you just end up failing the class, you could also petition the school to retake the class (with another professor if possible) next semester and have them replace the F with whatever grade you would earn.

Don't give up right away.  My freshman year was so bad I ended up transferring schools and moving halfway across the country, but I kept on going and am graduating (on time) in just a few weeks.  Talk with your academic advisors and ask them what you can do to improve your GPA, and good luck with your professor! Let us know how it turns out...

One thing to think about is adding some fluff to the tough.  Some may think it is cheating but it does help to keep your GPA up and it also helps to give you a break so that you arent so stressed out.  My first year was tough and my son's first year was tough too.  He had some trouble committing to the classes and working/staying focused, just like I did.  This year he is more on track and is planning to go to a university next year.  I graduated from a Master's program (a "few" years ago - lol). All is not lost.

Fluff could be adding a couple classes of something you are good at and then one hard one (maybe two).  Examples for me would be language classes or art classes.  I can always wrap my mind around this stuff with a natural effort.  Add the hard class and the natural ones feel like vacation and dont eat too much into your study time for the tough one. 

Chemistry is a hard class.  There is a lot of thinking in that class that people just arent used to doing or have little experience in.  That is a class that definately needs a little fluff around it.  Just so you know.  I work in medicine.  I barely passed chemistry.  My second semester of it I failed two major tests.  The final I studied so much for that I had chemical formulas taped all over the walls of my apartment.  I managed to actually pull an A out of it.  I have no idea to this day where that A on that final came from, other than the test was comprehensive.  perhaps I had learned the stuff from before - finally.  This teacher was a bit more pleasant and helpful.  She said that if I got an A on the final then I must have learned something and she worked with me to get a C in the class.  Sorry your teacher doesn't sound that cooperative.

Anyway, the point is that I work with chemistry every day now and I am very good at what I do.  I have gone through graduate school and did that with aces.  That low GPA that first semester/year did not affect my life or ruin my college carreer.  Be a bit more strategic (and I hate to say this) but work harder on the tough stuff by adding more study time or trying a different more intense study techniques.

I know it doesn't work for the hard teacher.  Its a general pep talk rather.  I hope it works out to your benefit.  It hardly ever hurts to ask and it often helps to approach people directly.  Good luck.  All is never lost!

lewiskimlc I am pretty sure that approach would work best for me. But, my parents don't want me takin ANY fluff classes. They want me taking only pre-requisites for my major so I can get into grad school as soon as possible.

I have tried talking to my mother about this, but she just just ends the conversation with, "You're not trying hard enough." I used to get very good grades in highschool, but college is much more difficult. My parents don't really understand because my father went to law school and my mother became a nurse. neither had any problems graduating.

Original Post by loriklorik:

Teachers are just the start of the line when you have a problem.... i have gone over my teachers head countless times (haha). If they do something i think is unfare...i talk to them first...and then when i dont hear what i like, i go right to the head of their department (and after that i go to the deen). 

Exactly what I was going to say (though probably with different spelling ). I once had a teacher try to take a full letter grade off on a 25 page paper because I used MLA instead of Chicago style citation. I went straight to the department head (it helped that I already knew him pretty well) and asked him to fix it. While he cannot simply change one of his teacher's grades, he can make them an offer they can't refuse. In this case the anal-retentive teacher was an adjunct anyways so he simply told her she could change the grade or stick to teaching exclusively at the **** local community college rather than our top-30 university.

Point being: there is always someone higher up who is willing to listen to reason.

check to see if there is "freshman forgiveness" at your school.  Quite a few of the schools, both large and small, allow you to retake a class that you earned a bad grade in as long as you dont have too many credits and the grade either replaces it or averages with it.

You will be fine!  And just remember-- honey catches more flies, so try young and stupid before smart and agressive with the prof.

My professors drilled into our heads about using proper citations so we wouldn't be accused of plagiarism. Perhaps that's something you should do some research on. I highly doubt another student accused you of plagiarism... the professor probably saw it himself in your paper. Honestly, I don't think high school teaches students how to correctly write papers and NOT plagiarize. We had a whole class on this our freshman year. Professors were so tired of students coming in and not knowing how to write at all. 

Talk to the prof and offer to rewrite the paper if there is some misunderstanding. Be sure to learn proper citations. 

And with regards to your parents, you are the one who registers for classes... not them. The only thing I saw different between high school and college was there was no babying of students. I was in the honors program which required 80+ pages of reading and 2-3 essays every night. I'm by no means a straight A student but I didn't find college that much harder and I worked full-time. Just learn time management. 

does your college kick you out immediately?

At the university I went to, there is this thing called academic probation.  Basically you cannot go under the min. gpa for 3 semesters in a row or else you get kicked out. I think the min. gpa they set was 2.0. Still that gives you 2 more semesters to bring up the gpa. Plus, we were allowed to retake up to 4 (? cant remember the exact number) classes. I asked the academic advisor once, and she said that in all the years she's worked there (10+), shes worked with many students helping them get off the probation, and that she only had a handful of students actually get kicked out.

The college wants your money, so I think they'll try their best to help you stay there. Talk to your academic advisor regarding the situation.

it should be obvious, but in case it's not, i will say it (and this is not specifically directed at the OP, but to anyone in school)

now that journal articles are available in full text databases at college libraries, if your professor thinks a sentence or paragraph in your paper have a markedly different style or tone from the rest of your writing, it is as easy as pie (easier than pie, actually) for them to search for that sentence or paragraph in the database.

boom.  you're busted.

it's not like in the old days when a teacher might be suspicious, but could in no way search all the thousands of possible hard copies of journals where you could have lifted a passage.

Purdue's Avoid Plagiarism Site

And without giving away any secrets, a lot of colleges (and recently even some high schools) are employing plagiarism detection systems, sometimes multiple systems.

So be careful!  Academic integrity is critical.

That's exactly why my profs were such hardasses about it. The first time, they would just pull you aside and say, "Hey... maybe this wasn't intentional but you need to fix it."

I've been to that plagiarism site before, too. It can be helpful. 

Muttlover--- At my uni we had grade replacement. If you failed a class you could retake it twice and the passing grade would replace the failing grade. I thought this was pretty common at uni. Check and see if you have it to retake chem. 

I went and talked to my professor. He said that because he saw outside sources in my paper (things that weren't mentioned in his lecture) he assumed that I plagiarized. I thought doing additional reading would earn me brownie points. Boy was I wrong. :P

He is going to let me redraft the paper, and I couldn't be more relieved. Thank you all so much for your suggestions and support.

Original Post by muttlover:

I went and talked to my professor. He said that because he saw outside sources in my paper (things that weren't mentioned in his lecture) he assumed that I plagiarized. I thought doing additional reading would earn me brownie points. Boy was I wrong. :P

He is going to let me redraft the paper, and I couldn't be more relieved. Thank you all so much for your suggestions and support.

 It sounds like he assumed correctly if your sources weren't properly cited.  Chalk it up to having been a good plan but with poor execution.

Sounds like you've been having a crappy first year. I comepletely agree with lewiskimic, though. Take some fun classes! That's the best part about early college years--no matter what you take, there's a very good chance it's fulfilling some sort of requirement. Keep in mind, often times you need a broad range of credits outside of your major, meaning that whatever credits you're counting towards your major requirements won't be accepted for the general credit reqiurement.

Also, just remember: most professors WANT you to succeed. They have office hours, as do TAs/GSIs (if your school has them), and most of them bitch about people never showing up. If you ever feel like you're falling behind and need help, TALK TO THEM. They will most likely do their best to assist in whatever way they can.

Original Post by muttlover:

lewiskimlc I am pretty sure that approach would work best for me. But, my parents don't want me takin ANY fluff classes. They want me taking only pre-requisites for my major so I can get into grad school as soon as possible.

I have tried talking to my mother about this, but she just just ends the conversation with, "You're not trying hard enough." I used to get very good grades in highschool, but college is much more difficult. My parents don't really understand because my father went to law school and my mother became a nurse. neither had any problems graduating.

what your parent's don't know won't hurt them ;-)

Original Post by muttlover:

lewiskimlc I am pretty sure that approach would work best for me. But, my parents don't want me takin ANY fluff classes. They want me taking only pre-requisites for my major so I can get into grad school as soon as possible.

I have tried talking to my mother about this, but she just just ends the conversation with, "You're not trying hard enough." I used to get very good grades in highschool, but college is much more difficult. My parents don't really understand because my father went to law school and my mother became a nurse. neither had any problems graduating.

What is your major? Most of them require electives. (phys ed or religion or art, etc.) There is an elective class that I know of at some schools that is called "stress management" and another the helps you study better and learn how to manage your time (usually a freshman introductory course.)

Truthfully, my parents say the same things sometimes. But I try to remind them that college is different. Moving away from home and living in a different place adds stress. Regardless of your grades, you should make sure that you are happy being in school and with your major.

I'm in my second year, and it is waaaaaay better than last year. Freshman year was the hardest for most people I know. i hope it works out!