Jacco said:
Could you please give me an example of how I could make it a new paper?
Another University Professor here:
Listen, the point of taking a class is to learn something and grow. When you write a paper for a class, that paper should reflect they ways in which you have learnt and grown in that class. If you turn in a paper that you already wrote two or three semesters ago, not only is it academic dishonesty (I've turned in multiple students for this) but it does not show any engagement with the class you are actually in. Also, it implies that you have not grown in any way as a scholar or thinker in the last two to three semester. That wouldn't be a good sign if that were true.
You should try to find a new take on the old paper...a take that reflects the growth you've experienced in the class and shows engagement with the material and topics of that course. But if there is going to be any reuse, you should talk to the professor.
So, for example. Let's say you wrote a paper on Silent Hill 2 for a Psychology Class when you were a sophomore. Now you are a Senior and you are talking my Music and Media class. You are still obsessed with Silent Hill 2 and want to write on that for my class's final paper as well.
Now, in the course of my class you've read lots and lots of material on Music and Media. We've discussed ways to think about and analyze music and media. We've worked through some large theoretical issues such as diegetic/non-diegetic and things that don't fall so easily in that binary...or the line between noise and music...or the place of film and video game music in art music cannons.
So if you just gave me your Psychology Class paper on Silent Hill 2 and threw in a paragraph on sound design, I'd know there would be something up. Because the paper would a) be Sophomore level writing, not senior level writing, and b) wouldn't have anything to do with the class.
You could take your knowledge of Silent Hill 2 that you gained while researching the old paper...and even some thoughts on psychology...but you should right a fundamentally new paper about Silent Hill 2 that engages with the topic of music and media.
Jedoro said:
Schools seem to hate it, which I think is crap. If you wrote the damn thing yourself, why can't you use it again?
Plagiarism is taking something from somewhere else without properly citing it. This includes things that you wrote. In the professional world, if I write an article and publish it, and then write a book...and I want to use stuff from that earlier article I wrote, I have to cite the article. I can't use reuse it without citation. And if I want to use a rewritten version of the original article, I have to get permission from the journal, or no dice. If I don't, the original journal will get really angry...and if they get really, really angry they could block the publication of my book.
Taking an old work and trying to pass it off as a new work...that is really academically dishonest.