I can never do anything right!

[tachik]

I'm also confused myself I am just trying to explain what I've heard and seen, without any biases/assumptions about the other people. Anyways, thank you GeoDUDE and everyone for trying to help

[tachik]

Update: No penalty!  Please close this thread. Thanks everyone!

[Eigen]

We don't close threads just because the initial discussion is done. 

Glad there were no penalties, but did you get worked out the root of the misunderstandings? I don't think most of us were worried about penalties for this (since it was informal work), but rather that similar issues could cause you a problem down the road. 

[tachik]

I don't know if I should talk with the prof about this. Everything was properly cited. During our meeting, she could not point out plagiarism issues within what I wrote. When I got notice of the decision, there was not even a summary of what we've discussed.

Edited November 5, 2015 by tachik

[MonstersU-Terp]

3 hours ago, tachik said:

During our meeting, she could not point out plagiarism issues within what I wrote.

Ok you've stated this over and over again, and people here have repeatedly asked you to clarify. I'm glad everything went ok but it doesn't seem like you really learned anything at all. I have a hard time believing your professor wanted to discuss plagiarism with you without having any concerns. You must have done something somewhere that was wrong. It doesn't mean you're a bad student, we all make mistakes. But it's your responsibility to own up to your mistakes so that you can recognize how to improve.

[fuzzylogician]

3 hours ago, tachik said:

I don't know if I should talk with the prof about this. Everything was properly cited. During our meeting, she could not point out plagiarism issues within what I wrote. When I got notice of the decision, there was not even a summary of what we've discussed.

I'm glad this was resolved in your favor, but I don't believe that you were accused and it came to a formal departmental procedure without any reason. I take your repeated lack of ability to provide any details about this incident as indication that you don't really understand what happened or why. Since you didn't get any clarification, now is the time to schedule a meeting with the professor and ask for clarification of why she suspected you in the first place, and what you can do to avoid this ever happening again. This should be a learning experience for you, because if you don't fix anything, I think there is a great chance of this recurring. And if they continue to suspect foul play and initiate formal procedures, eventually they will not be as patient with you. So, you need to understand why this happened and how to make sure it never happens again. 

[tachik]

Advice please - I emailed my professor to thank her for understanding about my draft, but her reply was: "I also want to talk to you about the draft you gave me for my course. The fact that I did not make a formal charge does not mean that I consider it your work. I am simply giving you another opportunity to show me what you can do on your own". What does this mean? I already attended a facilitated meeting with her, 3rd person, and my witness....and she had decided that there was no plagiarism.....but she still wants to talk? Btw, the draft was shown to her for next summer. It was not submitted as part of her course.

Edited November 7, 2015 by tachik

[GeoDUDE!]

14 minutes ago, tachik said:

Advice please - I emailed my professor to thank her for understanding about my draft, but her reply was: "I also want to talk to you about the draft you gave me for my course. The fact that I did not make a formal charge does not mean that I consider it your work. I am simply giving you another opportunity to show me what you can do on your own". What does this mean? I already attended a facilitated meeting with her, 3rd person, and my witness....and she had decided that there was no plagiarism.....but she still wants to talk? Btw, the draft was shown to her for next summer. It was not submitted as part of her course.

I don't think you are giving enough information for us to help you. You are clearly not telling us what you know \. 

[knp]

Let me break this down for you. People are trying to help! But you are being too vague and brief for us to assist you. For starters, you keep trying to explain in two sentences or less. That's just not enough information! It would help if you tried again under the following criteria. 1) Make sure your description of the situation is at least two hundred words long. Twenty words hasn't been doing it, and we can keep reading twenty-word posts for infinity and it still won't be sufficient. 2) Having trouble writing a longer summary? Try answering the following questions. All of them. Other posters, this is just a start, feel free to add more.

• What sort of program are you enrolled in? A research PhD? A master's degree? A more professionally-oriented program, like something in education or business or public policy? Please give a general idea of your field: I don't need to know that it's economics, but "a PhD in a social science that runs experiments with people" would help. Are you enrolled in courses? Do you also have internships? Will you be required to write a thesis for graduation
• What's your educational background? Was your undergraduate institution accredited and in-person? Was it in the United States? Was your major the same as the subject you're in graduate school? Have you ever done independent research before? Have you assisted in a lab before? Have you written any papers over 500 words? Have you written any papers over 1500 words? Have you ever had to write a paper where you had to cite a source you found on your own, rather than writing a paper from a pre-set list of sources?
• What on earth is this paper? You have managed to describe a type of paper that nobody here recognizes. Please try again. Is it a course assignment? Will you be graded on it? Is it a research proposal? If so, what is it a proposal for? What's the deadline? Who supervises and/or evaluates it?
• What objections have your TWO professors communicated to you about this paper? When you asked why you had to meet with them about potential plagiarism, what did they say? I don't care if you don't think it makes sense, or if you don't think their objections count as evidence. The closer you can reproduce what they said, both at your meeting and in any relevant emails, the better we can help you.

[fuzzylogician]

3 hours ago, tachik said:

Advice please - I emailed my professor to thank her for understanding about my draft, but her reply was: "I also want to talk to you about the draft you gave me for my course. The fact that I did not make a formal charge does not mean that I consider it your work. I am simply giving you another opportunity to show me what you can do on your own". What does this mean? I already attended a facilitated meeting with her, 3rd person, and my witness....and she had decided that there was no plagiarism.....but she still wants to talk? Btw, the draft was shown to her for next summer. It was not submitted as part of her course.

For heaven's sake, it means plainly and exactly what she said. She still thinks you plagiarized, and she is giving you another chance to prove otherwise. She does NOT think that the meeting you had resolved the matter. I don't understand how you could possibly not be getting it. Stop saying that she has decided that there was no plagiarism, because she is TELLING YOU, not even hinting, that she thinks that there is. 

Also, she is saying this is an assignment for her course, not for next summer. So that is yet another discrepancy between what you say and what the situation appears to actually be.

knp lays out some good questions; why don't we start with those. 

[tachik]

Thanks everyone for not giving up on me. It just seems so very strange to me. The professor asked so many questions at the meeting, and I answered them to my best ability. After the meeting, the professor had about 5 days to decide. I then received an email from the academic integrity department that my professor officially decided that there is no academic misconduct. But now the prof is objecting again? The draft was not submitted as part of her course. It was submitted prior to the first assignment for her course. The draft was just an idea for next year (my program has an optional research project that each student can do). At the moment no documents have been signed since I still have to find my own supervisors and advisors to sign them. I am also not published, but have worked on assignments for various research courses in the past. Never had issues with those.

Edited November 7, 2015 by tachik

[fuzzylogician]

35 minutes ago, tachik said:

Thanks everyone for not giving up on me.  ... The professor asked so many questions at the meeting, and I answered them to my best ability ...

Ok, I officially give up. You did not answer a single question knp listed or give us any information that could help us help you. I am done trying, apparently it's a waste of my time.

[knp]

Let's try this again in bigger letters.

You are in danger of being expelled from your university for plagiarism. Not for this assignment, because your professor has given you one pass. But since you don't understand what you did wrong, you are going to make this same mistake that you had two professors object to, again. 

Would you like us to help you? If you have any instinct of self-preservation, please see the questions in my previous post, and answer all of them. If you don't figure out your problem (whether online or offline), you are DEFINITELY GOING TO BE EXPELLED FROM YOUR PROGRAM BEFORE THE YEAR IS OUT.

[St Andrews Lynx]

At my university: if an instructor thinks that a student has plagiarised or cheated on an assignment then they can initiate a formal complaint to the Academic Integrity Office, but they also have to provide evidence that the student plagiarised/cheated. In some instances this is difficult. For example, if a student downloaded a pre-written essay from a website and submitted it as their own then all the instructor would need is a link to the website/online essay in question. However, if a student took a 15 minute bathroom break during an exam then the instructor might suspect that the student was in the bathroom looking up answers on their smartphone, but unless the instructor caught them with phone in hand then they couldn't prove that cheating occurred, but the behaviour would strike them as suspicious. 

This is what I suspect happened with you. You submitted an essay that made the instructors suspicious. If you aren't a native English speaker then perhaps the writing style was unusually fluent. Or maybe the wording sounded like it was copied from another document. Or it is very different in tone from your other writing samples. However, the instructors can't provide more than their suspicions, so a formal charge can't be pursued. You need to do as your instructor asks, and make sure that your style of essay preparation, drafting and proof-reading are radically different (and firmly in line with your university's academic integrity policies) from your earlier attempts.

Are you Chinese? I ask because there are some very different cultural norms in China regarding "academic integrity" and "what is cheating". 

Edited November 7, 2015 by St Andrews Lynx
Better sentence structures.

[GradSchoolTruther]

The whole "cultural norms" stuff is bollocks, especially at the graduate level.

[tachik]

The complaint was just from one professor. And no, I'm not Chinese. As I have mentioned before, the professor did not bring out evidence during the meeting of whatever sources she thinks I have copied from.

Edited November 7, 2015 by tachik

[pro Augustis]

It's great that she did not bring out evidence and that you have not been expelled, but that is not protecting you for the future. What exactly did she say? What in your essay made her think it was plagiarized? That is the crucial question. Why does she think that your writing was not your own? 

[fuzzylogician]

3 minutes ago, pro Augustis said:

It's great that she did not bring out evidence and that you have not been expelled, but that is not protecting you for the future. What exactly did she say? What in your essay made her think it was plagiarized? That is the crucial question. Why does she think that your writing was not your own? 

We have done our best but tachik doesn't seem to want to help him/herself. I think it's time to stop replying and let this thread die.