Yup, go confess, beg mercy, and write your real paper. You know, where you make up sentences and stuff right out of your own head.
Sorry about the rough year, but nothing can ever make you destroy your integrity.
1: Tell her you made a mistake and want to do the right thing and hand her your own, original essay.
2: Pray like your life depended on it combined with a live animal sacrifice.
3: Ask her if she’s ever seen “The Graduate”.
4: Ask her if she would give you an hour of special tutoring and you’ll pay $ 500.00 for the hour.
Another vote for confessing. Also, with all due respect, it sounds like you might be better off taking a year or two off before college anyway, just to get some breathing space and figure out why (and whether) you really want to go to college. I say this because it sounds like you’re looking at your school assignments as hoops you have to jump through to get something entirely unrelated – diploma, college admissions, job – rather than an opportunity to learn. You’ll get more out of college if you value what you’re doing for its own sake, and sometimes you need to take a break from school to get to that point.
Another advantage of taking a year off is that your high school record will no longer make or break your college application. You’ll be able to get references from employers and point to concrete things you’ve achieved and ways you’ve matured during that year, so an F in this one class (worst-case scenario) won’t seem like the end of the world any more.
Also, Pythagras, not only does this teacher take plagiarism seriously, college admissions personnel take it very seriously, as well they should. It may not be much of a chance, but confession and an offer to make good may be the only way that Drinky Cow has of salvaging his college career.
Im sorry if I dont believe the hard and fast rules should decide everything. If the ‘line’ was so well defined there would be no need for judges or justice. Justice is about fairness, which in most cases is situational. For example, I believe that killing your parents because they were abusive pricks is more morally justifiable (though IMO still not) than killing your parents because they didnt give you your allowance. I do not believe that situations can be easily divided between ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ Call me a sophist if you want, but thats the way I feel. Each situation should be viewed on its own merit. For instance, I am a manager at a coffee shop. We have a rule that states nobody can hold conversations with people across the bar. I do not enforce this rule evenly. People must earn my respect and the respect of others as employees. If they are hard working employees that have garnished respect and a good reputation I simply do not enforce this rule very much. OTOH if they are slackers - I do indeed enforce this rule.
In this case we have somebody who has plagiarized on something rather serious. However, we should see the situation for what it is, not based entirely on some zero tolerance good or bad rule. There are exacerbating circumstances, but in the end I personally believe that the decision was rash and must be corrected by Dinky Cow.
Here’s another question - if, being stressed out, Dinky Cow had copied one assignment of math homework and the teacher caught him and threatened to ruin his academic career would Dinky Cow be a bit closer to the right?