Hi all!
So, I have been working so incredibly hard for the past four years to get into a graduate program for Audiology. I'll have stellar letters of recommendation, a pretty good GRE score, volunteer and work experience in the field, and a relatively good GPA.
But, my spring semester of sophomore year of school was a rough one - without going into too much detail, I had lots of mental health issues and it overwhelmed most things in my life, and unfortunately, my grades during that semester suffered greatly. I made the grave mistake of using a previous paper I had written from an earlier semester and turned it in for one of the courses I took that semester. Since my school used an online database to check for plagiarism, it of course came back as partially plagiarized. Regardless of it being my own work, I was charged with academic dishonesty and was given an F in the course. To say that the rest of my semester was a disaster is a bit of an understatement; my GPA for that semester is FAR below what my GPA was in every other semester I had before that, and after it.
To get to the point - I am absolutely horrified at the idea of telling future grad application panels the reason for my F. I do plan on lying about the reason for the F, but I also don't want all of my hard work to be overshadowed by this stain on my transcript. In the semesters following that horrible time, I only received A's and a few B's, so my GPA was able to rebound a bit.
I just want to know if anyone has any experience with this, or any thoughts on it. I already realize that I messed up, so only helpful replies, please. Thank you all for any help or advice you may be able to provide.