Academic dishonesty problem....

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univkid

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Im a freshman and I am put in a very weird/troubled situation.
Our school's policy is that if you get 2 stipulations, you get an academic honesty record on your transcript.... and that did happen to me... but in a somewhat unfair/weird way.

1) so the first time i got my stipulation was because of the clicker. Our school uses the clicker to take the attendance and for a little quiz throughout the lecture for the participation points. What happened was that one of my friend wanted me to do the clicker for him. I couldn't say no... (peer pressure of course...) and took it and did it for him. But i got caught using two clickers and i got my first stipulation. it was alrite so far since that does not go into my record....

2)but the second stipulation was given to me like a month after i got my first one... and this wasnt really related to cheating either. My lab partner copied my lab without my knowledge, and our lab turned out to be extremely similar. In fact so similar that the calculations (including parenthesis,etc) were exactly the same..... and the teacher gave me another stipulation because I supposedly let him copy.....

In both cases, I did not really directly cheat. It's more like i was peer pressured on the first one and the 2nd one.... i dont even know wat to say.....

I don't know if this is going to go into my record yet. I still need to talk to the dean and the professor,etc about it. But i have a feeling that this will probably go into my record....

Would this severly hurt my chances of getting into any medical school? (as you can see, i didnt really cheat in both cases....)

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Im a freshman and I am put in a very weird/troubled situation.
Our school's policy is that if you get 2 stipulations, you get an academic honesty record on your transcript.... and that did happen to me... but in a somewhat unfair/weird way.

1) so the first time i got my stipulation was because of the clicker. Our school uses the clicker to take the attendance and for a little quiz throughout the lecture for the participation points. What happened was that one of my friend wanted me to do the clicker for him. I couldn't say no... (peer pressure of course...) and took it and did it for him. But i got caught using two clickers and i got my first stipulation. it was alrite so far since that does not go into my record....

2)but the second stipulation was given to me like a month after i got my first one... and this wasnt really related to cheating either. My lab partner copied my lab without my knowledge, and our lab turned out to be extremely similar. In fact so similar that the calculations (including parenthesis,etc) were exactly the same..... and the teacher gave me another stipulation because I supposedly let him copy.....

In both cases, I did not really directly cheat. It's more like i was peer pressured on the first one and the 2nd one.... i dont even know wat to say.....

I don't know if this is going to go into my record yet. I still need to talk to the dean and the professor,etc about it. But i have a feeling that this will probably go into my record....

Would this severly hurt my chances of getting into any medical school? (as you can see, i didnt really cheat in both cases....)

These are both CLEAR examples of cheating. You earned them both.

The first you blame on your friend but the fact is YOU did it, not him. Peer pressure is irrelevant. You made the decision. You pay the consequences.

In the second, it's really your word vs. your lab partner's. The instructor has to go with what is obvious -- someone cheated off someone. You both fail. That's how policy is written. The integrity of your work is your responsibility. You must have given your lab notebook to your lab partner after doing the post lab. That is CLEARLY in violation of typical lab procedures. The truth is that no student should ever need to see someone else's lab notebook, since you both should observe and write down results separately. Nevertheless, sometimes it is convenient to look at one another's notebook during lab; however, there is no reason you should have given your notebook to someone else during or after doing your post-lab. That is clearly a form of academic dishonesty.

As an instructor, I would have failed you on the assignment and written you up as well. At my school, if the 2nd offense occurred in the same dept as the 1st (i.e., so we were aware of both), the dept chair would have notified me of the situation and you would have failed the entire course and met with the dean to discuss possible expulsion from the institution. No questions asked.


Simply put, it is not clear you "didn't cheat." It is, however, clear that you, at minimum, did not use good judgment and probably did cheat.

If it goes down as an IA (which it sounds like it is if you are meeting with the Dean), then yes, it must be reported to medical schools and it will most likely ruin any chance you would have had at further consideration for admission. It is rare for someone to be accepted to any professional or graduate program with cheating on their collegiate record. At many institutions, those actions could easily have you removed from the institution and being expelled for academic dishonesty typically bars you from being accepted to another undergraduate institution. At this point, you really should be thinking about even being allowed to complete your degree moreso than trying to get into medical school. Your pattern of multiple episodes of academic misconduct within less than one semester is not likely to be taken lightly.
 
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That sucks, though the first was completely your fault. Second, I'm not with apumic in blaming you, though the prof's hands are tied in that situation. Maybe your lab partner can vouch for your story. These kinds of things don't look good at all, but since you're a freshman, I'm sure there will be some leniency so long as you don't get in trouble again. It could be worse, it could be something like plagiarism, or getting caught cheating on an exam. When it comes time to explain what happened on the second, I'm guessing it would probably not be in your favor to blame your lab partner unless it's on the record that they were the one's who copied your work. To the school, your story will sound like a lie/excuse.
 
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If you continue to be in denial that you actually did commit academic dishonesty, you have almost no chance of getting into medical school.

What they are looking for is that you learned something from the experience.
 
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These are both CLEAR examples of cheating. You earned them both.
Your pattern of multiple episodes of academic misconduct within less than one semester is not likely to be taken lightly.
I didn't read his entire post, but if he's caught twice in one semester he's either a really bad cheater or he cheated multiple times before getting caught. I never gave my post lab numbers to partners because I knew my partners were too stupid to comprehend that copying info is a form of dishonesty.

OP, I used to have a friend who was like yours ("do this assignment for me..." and then go into a speech about how I "owed" him for various things). I stopped being friends with him because he had no moral backbone and was extremely annoying. Don't stick behind these "friends." They don't care about you at all.
 
That sucks, though the first was completely your fault. Second, I'm not with apumic in blaming you, though the prof's hands are tied in that situation. Maybe your lab partner can vouch for your story. These kinds of things don't look good at all, but since you're a freshman, I'm sure there will be some leniency so long as you don't get in trouble again. It could be worse, it could be something like plagiarism, or getting caught cheating on an exam. When it comes time to explain what happened on the second, I'm guessing it would probably not be in your favor to blame your lab partner unless it's on the record that they were the one's who copied your work since the school will assume the worst, and your story will sound like a lie/excuse.

I think a lot depends on the institution. At mine as well as my UG, students sign an agreement to abide by the academic integrity policy. Violation of that policy is a violation of what the institution stands for. If someone is caught cheating in these smaller ways, it is likely they are cheating in other ways as well. I've caught students doing things similar to what happened w/ the OP and what I do really depends upon my assessment of whether the misconduct was intentional or not. If it seems their misconduct was totally unintentional, I'll probably either make them redo the assignment or just give them a 0 for whatever section was copied (and have a discussion with them about what would happen if I were to report this and how future lapses in judgment make that outcome much more likely to occur -- basically, I'll scare them a bit with the hope that they'll keep the consequences in mind to avoid any accusations of cheating in the future). OTOH, if the students appeared to be outright cheating, I and probably most faculty would pursue the official routes. In the OP's case, it appears the professor and lab instructor both chose to pursue the case as an academic integrity violation. What I described is a typical process things would take if an instructor at either my UG or the school I now teach at initiated the academic integrity investigation process.

Truth-be-told, if I were aware of the OP's first blunder when I saw the duplicate lab, I would not be inclined to believe the OP's story that "my lab partner somehow found my post-lab lying on a table in the library while I was looking for a book and quickly wrote down all my calculations and answers and then slipped away unnoticed all before I got back." Doesn't that sound a bit far-fetched to you? Even an otherwise "perfect" student would have a hard time pulling a story like that off.
 
the first situation is clearly cheating.

the second situation sounds suspicious, and considering that you already have a record of cheating, i'm having a hard believing that someone copied your lab without your knowledge. i think a professor or instructor would feel the same way.
 
Either this is a really, really clueless kid with moral issues, no backbone, terrible friends, and an unclear definition of what academic dishonesty is, or we have all just fed a troll.

I vote the second.
 
Vote the second as well, since this is also in predent
 
OP, please don't stress anything.

If there is anything that I have learned within the past couple years, its that:

TIME HEALS EVERYTHING, if it goes on your record take some time off and do some good deeds and you will be fine. They did and look at them now.

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Ben Franklin says, "He that lieth down with dogs shall rise up with flees."
 
I understand that you're a freshman and still young and what not, but you have to take consequences for your actions.

Peer pressure is not an excuse to cheat. Unless this person was threatening your life or blackmailing you, you always have the ability to say no. Don't want to lose the friendship? Well from the way I see it, that person wasn't a good friend in the first place, to put you in a situation where there was a potential to get in trouble.

The second situation sounds fishy to me. How could the person have copied the lab without your knowledge? I'm extremely protective over all of my homework assignments, and if a friend asks to "just see" something, I never ever EVER just give them the assignment. Unless this person managed to come into your room and steal your notebook/laptop while you weren't there, I'm not buying it.

With all that said, although you did diminish your chances, all hope is not gone. You're still a freshman so you have time to prove that your actions were just momentary lapses in judgement.
 
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