question

[michiganxoxo]

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[deleted343839]

I restated it verbatim and did not cite. It has never been a problem and I have gotten positive feedback for every assignment.

I did the same thing I always do, restated them verbatim and then talked about how it applied to me. However, instead of using the lecture notes and textbook I Googled the theories. I got a zero and she commented in the feedback box (not even an email) saying she is going to report the plagiarism at the next PCE meeting. I know it was a huge mistake on my end and whether or not the professor cared about citing or not, I shouldn't have done it.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that in the past you used another person's words verbatim, without attribution, and suffered no consequences, but this time you cut and paste from a different source, you got called on it, and now you're in a bind. I'll take you've written at face value.

By the third year of a doctoral program, we expect trainees to be beyond the "it was wrong but the professor implied it was OK so I did it anyway" level of reasoning and show better judgment. So your professor created a climate conducive to cheating? Weak sauce. You knew it was wrong when you did it and it's a stretch to call that a "mistake" as the right thing to do was never in question. Even high school students know not to do this.

Your professor may be lazy, but this doesn't absolve you of doing the bare minimum thing which is putting ideas into your own words. Hopefully, the fallout from this will be manageable. Familiarize yourself with your institution's plagiarism policy and talk to your advisor about how best to proceed. But don't minimize your role by calling it a "mistake" or an "error" - no one wants to hear that and it can only hurt you in the end.