Plagiarism and academic dishonesty [closed]

Question

Yesterday I was accused of plagiarism by my professor. who earlier in the week I had called him out for one of his policies being against the school policy. I feel like now I'm experiencing some kind of personal vendetta on his part. Then yesterday that professor pulled me aside and said theses are the facts and said I had deliberately done falsification and plagiarism and It was a bit overwhelming at that point . so I took a few minutes to collect myself then marched myself into his office and sat down and tried to discuss the matter with him. He began to show me what I did and I had always thought plagiarism was not giving credit to the authors but I had done In text citations and a bibliography citing the authors and I was under the assumption that this was a research paper so I was just putting in the cold hard facts and didn't think I was committing any academic dishonesty. Then my professor gave me two options the first one was to take it to an higher authority which he repeated several times that it would not be wise for me to do so and if I did he would tarnish my academic reputation at this university 2nd was to go through the rest of the class and act like nothing happened and know I would automatically be getting an failing grade at the end of this semester. I feel like I'm being black mailed here idk what I should do.

Answer 1

The first thing you should do is calm down, and realize failing a class, or even getting kicked out of school, is not the end of the world. (Note administrative punishment for plagiarism will probably be worse than just failing a class, though I think most schools would not expel you for a first offence.)

The second thing you should do is make sure you understand what plagiarism is (see also, e.g., here), and understand whether you truly, intentionally or not, committed plagiarism. Here the main question is: does it look like you were trying to pass off someone else's work as your own or not? It seems that your professor thinks so, though it is possible he is being more strict with you.

After you do the first two things, you should apologize to your professor (in person) for what you have done wrong. This includes (a) confronting him in a rude way about his policy, and (b) improper citations. Your apologies should be sincere, explain your original intents (at least assuming you didn't mean to be disrespectful or dishonest), why what you did was wrong, and show that you know now what you should have done. During this meeting, you should try to be as respectful and non-confrontational as possible.

If your professor then seems somewhat placated, and convinced of your sincerity, you can politely ask him if there is something you can do to make up for this, such as redoing your assignment. If he says no, you have to accept his decision. Unless it is clear from your assignment that there was no intent of plagiarism, it probably is a bad idea to take this issue higher up.