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[RMJ12345]

I think you just broke me.  I can't wrap my mind around this concept.

This is an issue in a lot of workshops - people turning in the same work to different workshops - and it's a cardinal no-no.

[V-Adore]

I am trying to figure out if this would be plagiarism in real life. I don't think so. I published a dissertation, and then I published a journal article about the same exact stuff. I think more than one article, in fact - basically two different chunks of the dissertation. And this was a totally normal thing to do - no one would have said I was plagiarizing myself. How is this different from reusing parts of an old term paper if your professor is too lazy to come up with a specific enough topic that you are forced to do new work?

Because the point of academic assignments as a student is to do new work to represent new learning, while as a professional publishing old results in new formats is perfectly legitimate? Like I said, this isn't an intellectual-property issue, it's an academic dishonesty issue.

(Sorry -- I grew up in a household where it was taught that academic dishonesty is Simply Not Done. I think that my dad would take my getting addicted to heroin and convicted of grand theft auto with some sanguineness, but if I turned in an old paper for a new assignment, I would never be allowed to enter the house again.)

[wombat]

But if the point of school is to teach you how to do life, in life, as my example shows, it's important to recognize when old work can be repurposed. In real life there's no point in reinventing the wheel all the time.  Why isn't it just as legitimate for a student to actually use something they learned in a previous class?  Don't we teach in the hope that what we teach is not immediately forgotten, but might actually be useful in the future?

You know I think part of the reason I don't get it is that I am unable to put myself in the place of a teacher who gets such work.  I never assigned the kind of work where that kind of copying was possible. You couldn't get the answer to a novel problem set that I made up by looking through your previous term papers.  The only class where I ever assigned a term paper, it actually would have been acceptable if part of that paper was essentially "Hey, I realized that this thing I wrote about in this previous class is relevant to this subject in this way." 

I honestly still don't get why it's dishonesty. What I asked for was that a student's work was theirs and not someone else's. It never occurred to me to require that they'd never done anything like it before, but like I said, that pretty much went without saying in my classes so it's hard for me to judge.

[theinevitable]

yeah. I mean... copying off someone else's paper is cheating. Copying off your own paper?

If you paraphrase, do you have to cite yourself? What?

[pmcd9]

It's not intellectually dishonest to reuse a paper you've written previously.  If the point of the class is to teach a concept and you've written a paper that demonstrates that you understand the concept you have lived up to your end of the bargain.  It shouldn't matter when that paper was written, it's still your work.  Maybe the student should have a beef with a university instructor who is teaching you shit you learned in high school.

[KeithHernandez]

The problem is that many degrees don't teach concepts, only ways to think and how to write.  Practicing writing is probably the best way to get better at it and you are not thinking if you are doing this.  It is definitely not intellectual dishonest (imo, obviously), but it also isn't what the University wants you to do. 

As wombat said, any decent history (in my case) professor will make their essays so specific that it is impossible to do.  However, if you have a class like that, then have a shitty teacher that assigns a free pick topic or an overview type paper, you can basically use the previous paper.

[theinevitable]

except, if they somehow figure you out, you are fucked.

we got into a big argument over this in my writing class... and then finally this bitchy but correct girl said "guys, shut the hell up. if you feel that strongly about it, reuse a paper. I don't really care if you get caught and get an F in the class."

Basically... I do not understand the composition of this class. The vast majority of people in my classes, on my floor, and basically in any situation at this school where I have met people have been nice, intelligent, wonderful individuals. And yet, I hate the people in my writing class so much that I can barely restrain myself sometimes.

ignore this rant, I just need to type this shit out:
_{[cast of characters: new york guy who thinks it is really cool to be a dick to the poor well-meaning grad student who is teaching this class, really pretty stuck-up israeli girl, spacey girl who maybe dropped the class, jock fratboy with a beard which he keeps trimming in ugly and hilarious ways, drama-major who has a black boyfriend and do you have a problem with that you probably do, oh my god my parents are so racist they hate that I'm dating a black man and you probably do too, did you know that i'm a double major in drama and african studies, and did you know that I'm a vegetarian... et al.]}

[Doc]

Just let it all out inev, let it all out and let the healing begin.

I'm torn on the self-plagiarism issue. On the one hand referring to previous work is logical and should be acceptable. On the other hand I've known people who have subtly altered a previous assignment so it is acceptable in a new context. There's no net benefit here since no new work is done and it's fairly debatable whether they actually do understand the new concept, they just understand that their previous work is close enough.

Wombat: I'd argue your dissertation example doesn't quite fit since a dissertation and a published article have different audiences. You wouldn't publish the same paper twice in different journals. Or at least I don't think you should, I've noticed some people have other views on this matter.

But as has already been said in a good assignment this shouldn't be possible.

[V-Adore]

I'm torn on the self-plagiarism issue. On the one hand referring to previous work is logical and should be acceptable. On the other hand I've known people who have subtly altered a previous assignment so it is acceptable in a new context. There's no net benefit here since no new work is done and it's fairly debatable whether they actually do understand the new concept, they just understand that their previous work is close enough.

Yeah. Obviously there is a burden on the professor to make assignments that are specific and relevant, but every time I've seen this little trick pulled, it's always been on this sort of "I'll nudge the paper in a couple of ways even though I know it's not really adequate" half-assery. It's disrespectful in the same way that packaging up a part of your dissertation for a journal on an entirely unrelated topic would be -- that kind of "oh, you want work in X? Well, I've got something about Y which I could edit to contain two contextless references to X; is that okay?" way.

And yes, in the end, it kind of comes down to whether you want to turn in recycled work and run the risk of failing if you get caught. Whatever floats your boat, in the end.

[side_show]

I had two classes that both included Sylvia Plath's Bell Jar.  The essay topics were almost identical, and I barely changed the paper on the second go to include a few new reflections upon class content.  I didn't even vaguely consider this to be a moral connundrum, or even really register it as being inappropriate.  I just thought I was lucky to have the opportunity to write one less paper.