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My freshman year I was falsely accused of academic dishonesty.
Long story short, it was sometime during first semester. I had a paper due the next day on a short story we read (the paper was assigned about a week ago, it was something like 2-3 pages, nothing huge). I ended up churning the thing out late at night, I was really tired.
Cut to later in the week, my professor says that he wants to see me after class regarding the last paper I turned in. This is about halfway into the semester, and I've handed in quite a few papers. At this point I'm assuming he's going to give me a hard time about handing in a paper that is pretty sub par.
The professor tells me that there is no way I didn't plagiarize this paper. He says he ran it through this database they have, and couldn't find any proof that I copied and pasted anything, but the language ideas I used were much too advanced for a freshman. He said he can't fail me because he lacks concrete proof but he *knows* I cheated. The thing is, this short story we read was super obscure story, he found one scholarly article on it, but he even told me that it apparent this wasn't a source for my paper.
He hounded me repeatedly, I even made an appointment with him later to explain to him that I've never had anything like this happen to me in my life, I've never cheated on anything etc. I eventually left it alone, and decided that there was nothing I could do to change his opinion, and that there was no reason why I had to let this unfounded and unfair accusation affect my performance.
I thought this might be a good anecdote to tell when the question "when were you unfairly judged or criticized" comes up in interviews...
Long story short, it was sometime during first semester. I had a paper due the next day on a short story we read (the paper was assigned about a week ago, it was something like 2-3 pages, nothing huge). I ended up churning the thing out late at night, I was really tired.
Cut to later in the week, my professor says that he wants to see me after class regarding the last paper I turned in. This is about halfway into the semester, and I've handed in quite a few papers. At this point I'm assuming he's going to give me a hard time about handing in a paper that is pretty sub par.
The professor tells me that there is no way I didn't plagiarize this paper. He says he ran it through this database they have, and couldn't find any proof that I copied and pasted anything, but the language ideas I used were much too advanced for a freshman. He said he can't fail me because he lacks concrete proof but he *knows* I cheated. The thing is, this short story we read was super obscure story, he found one scholarly article on it, but he even told me that it apparent this wasn't a source for my paper.
He hounded me repeatedly, I even made an appointment with him later to explain to him that I've never had anything like this happen to me in my life, I've never cheated on anything etc. I eventually left it alone, and decided that there was nothing I could do to change his opinion, and that there was no reason why I had to let this unfounded and unfair accusation affect my performance.
I thought this might be a good anecdote to tell when the question "when were you unfairly judged or criticized" comes up in interviews...
