Julius Caesar

Personal Essay

"Order, Order! My dear inner voices this chaos gets us nowhere. Regret, you really need to stop interrupting with your unhelpful comments and the same goes for you Frustration. There, isn't that better? Okay Narrator, go on," said I.

"Thank you ‘I'. So as I was saying, we got that email from our ASTU teacher over the summer, which informed us that there was an issue of plagiarism with our final research paper. That caused Alarm and Distress to rant all day because it said we had improperly cited two paragraphs from our primary source and we emailed her back explaining our mistake" continued Narrator attracting a solemn nod of agreement from Alarm and Distress.

"And did we not research their policies down to the last letter? Did we not wait forever for any attempt at establishing a contact from the Head of Department?" raved Anger.

"Aha, but neither were we so eager to pursue it ourselves. No Justification, no. Having been accepted into Cornell was all the more reason to have this resolved," Critical chided Anger.

"Yes but we imagined that all we had done is fail a course, so what? UBC never replied about the plagiarism issue with an official charge and since that is against protocol we were of the view that they must have shown leniency and given up the allegation. We rationalized that we still have a solid GPA otherwise and at worst we would have to repeat the course at Cornell," said Justification as he moved in to side with Anger.

"This is exactly what I meant about getting nowhere. Me, I apologize but this is important because I need to convince you of why we want to transfer again and it might not make sense right now but let the pieces come together. Bear with me. Narrator," said I asking for attention "continue."

"Yes. So Me, as you might have gathered we were accepted at Cornell mid-summer and we became complacent and did not comprehend the ramifications of this failed course and the plagiarism issue that went with it. Once at Cornell, we received the email, which for Justification solidified our belief in that plagiarism issue having gone away. This is how Justification puts it: If you have a case of plagiarism against you it says so on your transcripts as per UBC policy, or any University for that matter. That email asked us that our transcripts do not elaborate why we failed the course and Cornell would like us to contact our teacher to talk with the administration and explain," Narrator droned on.

"And then we started making shortsighted mistakes. We should have just volunteered the information that there might have been an issue of plagiarism," groaned Regret.

"I agree, but we do not give Justification much credit. As lousy as his ideas are, an honest portrayal for Me to form a judgment on requires that we mention that