To whom it may concern,
I am currently a high school student and today was basically the most horrific day in my life, for i was caught supposedly for cheating. Of course, I do not admit that i cheated, not at all, but my teacher--without accepting any of my comments--had basically claimed that i cheated, giving me a zero on a paper that lowers my grade 2% to 3% as a result. This is an AP class that i am informing to you, and currently, I have a 92.3%, which i have achieved very hard, even sacrificing my hours of sleep. So i would like to briefly summarize what has happened. There was homework based on a video we watched and it was due today, meaning that we had yesterday to work on. Thus, i have finished all my work at 5 o'clock a.m.--still sacrificing my sleeping hours like usual, giving me an hour and a half of sleep for a day--and came to class. My friend, who attempted his homework and finished 3/4 of it, has asked me help for a particular question (one question) because he did not understand what the question was asking. Since the question was complex and hard to explain, i decided to show what i have written for my answer so that he can get an idea of what the question is asking. Of course, like always, i told him not to copy my answer before i gave him my work because i knew cheating is an illegal rule within the school. While my friend was holding my paper, my teacher witnessed this scene, and soon claimed that we were cheating, giving us a zero. I denied very hard, for i was just doing a beneficent action, trying to help my friend. I even claimed that i would receive a 50% on it as a consequence, but nothing worked. We were definitely not intending to cheat and he did not ask me for a particular problem to see my answers and copy exactly what i have wrote. I just wanted to help, and that's all, but as a result, doing something good gave me a zero, a very harsh consequence to me personally.
What i really want as a answer from you is that is this cheating? If so, is this a fair consequence? My goal is to get into a good college but this one assignment may ruin my dream, for this one assignment can give me a B, something what i do not want as a semester grade. You may just think, "Oh its just a B", but for me, a B is a F. This grade can depend on my future, for i want to major in something related to biology (yes, this is a AP bio class). I believe that my consequences should at least be less severe and i want your opinion. I believe that cheating is an action where the person knows and plans to cheat. But for me, in this case, I did not intend to cheat, or have him copy exactly what I wrote on my homework. Of course, there are many ways for me to inform my ideas but what came to my mind right at that moment is for me to show what i wrote so he can get the idea what the question is asking about. Is this cheating? I did not even think about cheating; I just wanted to help, and how i showed my answer is what my brain told me to do. In addition, I want to know what the exact definition of cheating really is. What is cheating? To what extent is cheating? If i were to instead tell my friend what i wrote (as a brief summary but not word for word), isnt this also cheating since he is using my idea? If this was cheating, then everything would be cheating. Why is my teacher ruining my life for this one assignment? I wanted to help a student and i did so. What happened? I got a zero.
From,
A student
Please reply, I need your help.
2006-12-19
19:55:27
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15 answers
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asked by
Aiuta
1