Hello everyone.
I'm a pre-dental student at a small private school. I'm currently a senior, and I'm getting ready to apply to dental school once I graduate on May 2023.
As you have guessed by the title of this post, I made a huge and embarrassing mistake: academic dishonesty.
Let me explain what happened.
It happened during the Fall semester of my junior year. I was taking an introductory religion course at that time, and I genuinely enjoyed the class. There was a book review assignment. For the assignment, I just had to choose one book and write a book review about it. It was very simple, but due to my laziness, I started the assignment 3 days before the deadline. That was when I realized I had made a big mistake. The book that I chose to read wasn't available anymore. I started to feel great pressure from this. Maybe I was blinded by this pressure, so instead of emailing my professor about my situation, I searched for a summary and a book review. I found them, and I wrote my book review based on these two online sources. My professor noticed the similarity, and she told me this was plagiarism. In the end, I was given academic dishonesty with a penalty, which was a grade deduction to C+.
When my professor told me about this, I was very embarrassed and sorry because she trusted her students including myself, but I let her down and gave her disappointment. I couldn't believe I'd done such a shameful and wrongful action. I wanted to make up for my mistake, so I decided to take her next course in the Spring semester. I worked and studied as much as I could, and I was able to earn an A+ for that course. After that, I had a meeting with her, and we talked about what I've learned from her courses and from my mistake. We were able to see that I've changed ever since the incident. She decided to write me a letter of recommendation for my dental school, and I'm very thankful for it.
Even at this moment, I am very remorseful for my action, but I'm grateful for the lessons that I learned from it.
However, I believe reality is cruel and sometimes no-mercy. I'm certainly aware that having academic dishonesty on my application is a huge red flag. Is my chance to get into dental school gone? Do I have no chance at all?
I'm a pre-dental student at a small private school. I'm currently a senior, and I'm getting ready to apply to dental school once I graduate on May 2023.
As you have guessed by the title of this post, I made a huge and embarrassing mistake: academic dishonesty.
Let me explain what happened.
It happened during the Fall semester of my junior year. I was taking an introductory religion course at that time, and I genuinely enjoyed the class. There was a book review assignment. For the assignment, I just had to choose one book and write a book review about it. It was very simple, but due to my laziness, I started the assignment 3 days before the deadline. That was when I realized I had made a big mistake. The book that I chose to read wasn't available anymore. I started to feel great pressure from this. Maybe I was blinded by this pressure, so instead of emailing my professor about my situation, I searched for a summary and a book review. I found them, and I wrote my book review based on these two online sources. My professor noticed the similarity, and she told me this was plagiarism. In the end, I was given academic dishonesty with a penalty, which was a grade deduction to C+.
When my professor told me about this, I was very embarrassed and sorry because she trusted her students including myself, but I let her down and gave her disappointment. I couldn't believe I'd done such a shameful and wrongful action. I wanted to make up for my mistake, so I decided to take her next course in the Spring semester. I worked and studied as much as I could, and I was able to earn an A+ for that course. After that, I had a meeting with her, and we talked about what I've learned from her courses and from my mistake. We were able to see that I've changed ever since the incident. She decided to write me a letter of recommendation for my dental school, and I'm very thankful for it.
Even at this moment, I am very remorseful for my action, but I'm grateful for the lessons that I learned from it.
However, I believe reality is cruel and sometimes no-mercy. I'm certainly aware that having academic dishonesty on my application is a huge red flag. Is my chance to get into dental school gone? Do I have no chance at all?