I got accused of plagiarism!
Yes, me, today, right around 10:50 am. I got a paper back saying "cite" "cite" "cite" all the way to the end where I had a big fat Zero out of Fifty on my Mid-Term, with the note "this is Plagiarism." Well then, if that won't get one's heart racing, I don't know what will.
I sat and talked with my Grad Assistant and we talked about my paper after class. The problem seemed to come down to my assumption of common knowledge; specifically, that I assumed common knowledge to be too big. Which left me playing this debate game in my head all day: "Isn't common knowledge based on your assumed audience? Isn't my assumed audience my grad. assistant? Aren't short answer questions only supposed to contain common knowledge by default? If a reader isn't familiar with something uncited in the paper, shouldn't it be the shortcoming of the reader, and one that they should quickly correct with their own research?" etc. etc. It also took me a while to realize as well that part of my g.a.'s accusations of plagiarism were based on the assignment that she gave. The instructions were to cite every use of our text (which I didn't do), and she used, to an extent, those grounds to accuse me of plagiarism. Regardless, rather than going through the department, she offered me a deal. I would correct my plagiarism (which I still felt was an unjustified accusation) and turn the paper in before Wednesday, with a 10% late penalty in my grade. That didn't sound too bad, but I was getting really paranoid about my conceptions of what plagiarism is. Remember that this is an authority that I respect and trust telling me that I was very, horribly wrong, and that I needed to correct it ASAP.
So, I panicked for a few hours and had Mendon flipping out, because that's all he could do with an entire frappa-caffeine-something in his system. I had a girlfriend enraged at the whole thing: "they can't accuse you of that!" Which was incredibly reassuring and kind of her. I finally broke down; my paranoia subsided and I realized that I had to stand up for myself and do something, because I was either caving for the sake of my grade, or I really did plagiarize and just had no clue how to correctly write a paper. I called Dr. Cayton, who is wonderful and loving and hosts our bookclub and is the Chair of the History Department (so she knew a thing or two about these situations). She read my paper (this was approximately 2 hours after I was accused, with 1 class in between) and told me that I needed to be talking to someone in the Psych department. I really wanted her to just tell me that "This Isn't Plagiarism!" in a big, declarative way, but she didn't.
So, I head back to Psych, bounce from one administrator to the next and finally found myself in the office of the Chair of the Department of Psychology (and will be Dean of the College of Arts and Science quite soon). I was panicked, afraid that if I told her that I was accused of plagiarism that I might be incriminated; what if I had goofed?! But, instead, she was kind, and wonderful, and let me babble in my nervous sort of way. She listened to my concerns, read my assignment, laughed at the grammatical corrections that Dr. Cayton made on the assignment page, and asked if she could keep it. She said that everything would be OK and she was just the best mommy figure that I could have hoped for at the moment. She talked a little bit about how there's a system to keep students from being accused when they turn in quality work, and, she said, it was important to use it. She thanked me for coming in and basically told me to go home and stop worrying about it (which I'm trying really hard to do, but it's no easy task. I still have class on Wednesday to go to and man am I intimidated by what my GA will be feeling and may have heard from the Chair of her department).
So, that's it. I, of course, didn't plagiarize (I had citations all over the place), but the accusation was sufficient to send me reeling. Accusing someone of plagiarism is usually the equivalent of offering to smush their career into nothingness, and in my case, it was the largest insult I've received in a long time. So, now I'm off to quintet rehearsal. There will be an update come Wednesday, with class and confrontation on the horizon. So, how exciting!
Hey, I'm a friend of Mendon's (well, we get through psychopathology together so I guess that counts, right?) Anyway, I find myself in a similar boat as yourself on the assumed common knowledge issue with the audience. In fact, it resulted me losing quite a few points on that first psypathology exam... but not an accusation of plagiarism. That's a serious word to go throwing around. It sounds like Dr. Schilling is handling it well, though. I've found her to be pretty on top of things, and really was an advocate for an entire class of mine earlier in the semester. Good luck!
My older brother is in a similar situation right now. He was accused of plagiarism for seeking help from another student when the teacher was unavailable. Basically, if he's at fault, no one in the class isn't. In both cases, it seems, instructors are being nitpicky about extremely minor infractions, while shouldn't everyone be asking why they don't have bigger fish to fry? Within a week, two of the most hardworking and honest people I know have been accused of academic misconduct--something is very wrong with this picture!
That sucks. The thing that is interesting, is that I haven't violated any part of the University's code on Academic Honesty. There are 4 ways to do this:
1. Submitting work from another class without approval, 2. Submitting someone else's work as your own, 3. Having prohibited materials during a test/quiz, 4. providing/receiving assistance from another student unless explicitly permitted by the instructor.
I assumed my audience correctly and used appropriate common knowledge. The problem was that I didn't cite our text book every time I used an idea that was in it. Textbooks are considered by most all academicians as common knowledge. That's a great way to determine what is and isn't. The only problem with all of this is that we were told that we had to cite our text every time we wrote about anything in it. (talk about a headache). So... yeah, that warranted Plagiarism.
Well, now that I've learned that my backspace key is STICKY, let's try that again.
As a teaching assistant, I once had an honor student turn in a paper for my class in order to make it an honors class. She turned it in without a single reference in sight, I kid you not. I didn't even mention plagiarism, though, frankly, I was incensed. You're an honor's student and I don't get a single citation? What a joke! Have you heard of plagiarism? I did tell her why I couldn't accept it and why she had one day to return it to me, with citations in hand.
Sounds like that's a bit of a far cry from your paper. Hopefully your GA can hear constructive criticism from the administration (she's a student, too - learning how to teach) and can rectify the situation okay. Remember, if she gets reprimanded about this, she's probably going to feel sort of awkward about what she did, too. Really, don't worry about this. It's all a learning process, and I'm glad you went to the Chair to sort it out. You were totally justified in doing so. You will either get an apology, or be told to go back and further cite. Either way, it won't be that harmful to your future career :-)