It's impossible to plagiarize yourself (or spell it the same way twice, apparently), but it can be against the rules. If so, there's not much you can do about it.
Is it Possible to Plaiarise Yourself?
- Thread starter Nowhere Man
- Start date
Take the advice of everybody here.
Ultimately it's your money on that class (unless it is your parent's or the government's) and if you turn in old work, you are completely missing the point of taking the class at all. You're admittedly weak in this subject, so it would do you good to work hard this time around and write the papers again.
There you go. Don't get hung up on the definition of "plagiarism" because that's probably not the right word for it. The issue here is following the instructor's policies and meeting his/her expectations. You will not suffer any ill-effects from doing new work, and the time and effort you spend is a good investment.
--Justin
Somehow I get angry reading this.
Why, because it's true? I'm as sympathetic as the next guy but rules is rules. You go to college, you follow their rules if you want to get a degree. I guess you could raise a ruckus if you really want to, but you might just succeed in pissing off powerful people. Don't see how it's worth it.
A lot of things in life are unfair and you have to pick your battles. Personally, this isn't one I would choose to fight, and I don't think Hillbilly has a chance in hell of winning it if he does.
That's the fundamental flaw why things don't change.
We wouldn't like you when you're angry.
Pain!
I wouldn't have a problem with using things from an old paper. At the end of the day, it's all my own work - a product of my own skills - which is what a qualification is supposed to be measuring.
If a school considered that cheating, it would put the value and meaning of the qualification into a new perspective for me. I'd be forced to reconsider why/if I wanted it.
If a school considered that cheating, it would put the value and meaning of the qualification into a new perspective for me. I'd be forced to reconsider why/if I wanted it.
The capricious policies of loony college professors rank pretty low on my list of pervasive social ills.
Provided you quoted and referenced it as such, sure. I've used old papers for new courses but always quoted the old work and referenced it in the bibliography, and none of my profs had an issue with that.
Gotta start small.
Schools, universities, companies, they all have ridiculous policies and hide behind "it's always been like that, deal with it", and that's bullshit that needs to change. It wouldn't even take much effort to do that, it's just that the responsible people are too lazy and stubborn.Regardless of the plagiarism issue, if you were to turn in the original paper, you should turn it in without any edits. To make changes and fix errors would be an unfair advantage. You wouldn't expect to take a math test, have it graded, then use the grader's comments to fix all the problems you missed and then turn it in for a grade, would you? It should be your work and your work only, not the teacher's.
Gotta start small.
Well, I'm not in college so there's not much I can do about that. I do work in a corporate environment, and I find that you don't achieve change by throwing a fit. You have to find a problem, research it, and put together a proposal for how to fix it, then be committed to implementing it.
In this instance, though, the professor likely has a good reason for the policy. Wanting people to do original work for a class is not at all unreasonable. Besides, the mental energy Hillbilly seems to be expending on being pissed about this could be much better spent putting together a kickass paper. I'll even help him with it if he'd like. (I never, ever got less than an A on an English paper.)
I agree it can sound odd. What happened in my case was that two different courses had subjects that overlapped. My prof was happy for me to summarise a paper I'd done for the other course and list the references in the bibliography as it was relevent to the paper I was writing for his class. Heck, I've quoted and referenced lecture notes from one class for a paper in another class. Perhaps it's a social sciences thing.
Nowhere Man
Commodore
I could see if I passed the class, but since I didn't it should negate all the work I did. I'm allowed to take the class over so I already have an advantage. I should be allowed to take my failed writting and improve upon it, isn't that the point of the class? If no one ever improved on an original idea, we wouldn't have these computers that we type on. Chris Nolan and his brother are using an old story they wrote for "The Dark Knight Rises", are you saying that once you write something, you can never touch it again and if you do it's plagiarism? That's a load of crap.
Have you ever thought about just writing the fucking thing? Students spent their time rallying against the system are generally the same students who are full of excuses about why their performance isn't as good as they think it should be (in their head).
Nowhere Man
Commodore
Gotta start small.
It's attitutes like that why we still can't take liquids on planes and get X-Rayed and patted down. It's why our phone calls are still bieng tapped without warrants. It's why governments, businesses and schools can trample all over us because, hey we need something from them, so deal with it. Well it gets old and we allow it because nobody stood up and resused to be treated like that.
Nowhere Man
Commodore
I could do that, but then the system wins. I'd rather turn in an average paper and beat the system than turn in an excellent paper and have the system win.
