Goldie Barajas
English 1A
11/15/10
Unintentionally
Being a senior in high school was a pain in the butt. I remember other students, who were seniors when I was a junior, say it would be the easiest year of all but it sure was not. They lied to you my conscious mind would tell me. Nevertheless, I was not so worried about what my mind had to say. I was worried about the tasks I had to get done. Things were getting overwhelming, and I had to start up my college applications, pay my senior fees, worry about my prom dress, my prom date, my assigned year book pages, and the list can go on forever. But I remember leaving one important thing behind from my to-do-list and that was Ms. Solis’s final project, for the fall semester of my Economics class. The project consisted of planning our lives in the future, making budget decisions of how our money was going to be managed, and how we were going to support our selves. The project was basically what I called a “senior-over planning for his funeral.” No offense to anyone who likes to plan things out before time.
Moreover, I hate Economics and having to do a project on such a subject was horrible. Thankfully I had Vanessa and Freddy as group members. Vanessa and I were inseparable in high school. I had her for all my classes and whenever it came to group projects we had to be teamed up no matter what. Freddy happened to be left out of a group so Vanessa and I decided to welcome him to ours. He was very funny and I like that about him. Anyhow, Vanessa and I were what people call “partners in crime” or should I say “partners in going against ordinary”. We do not like to be ordinary girls; we like to make everything different. However, this is not about how Vanessa and I are, the deal here is about what we decided to do in our Economics project. What we did marked us forever on the eyes of Ms. Solis who was disappointed at us.
So, time passed, Vanessa and I were confident that the project would not take us long to be done. Freddy was very chill about this project as well. We procrastinated as much as we could until the day of the project was only 24-hours away from the due date. Then, we were shocked. We had nothing done! Not even an outline on how we wanted to organize our “senior-over planning for his funeral” project. Vanessa and I thought of this as being funny, like always, we never took anything seriously. Freddy did not even bother to offer his help. Vanessa and I ended up doing the project on our own that afternoon. I went to her house, since she only lives one block away from mine. We turned on her lap top but the very moment we did, we got distracted and instead we started eating some cookies, Vanessa‘s grandmother had made the day before. It was so hard to stop eating those bean flavored cookies that Vanessa started getting upset at me for eating them all. I always had the advantage of getting more of whatever we were eating since although I eat slow Vanessa eats 3times slower than me. Sometimes I feel that instead of being a human she should have been born to be a turtle. Nevertheless, we noticed it was almost 6 p.m and we had spent an hour doing basically, nothing. We snapped out of our bubble of procrastination and said to each other “We have not done anything on the project yet!!” we laughed and giggled for about 5 minutes and then we put hands on into this boring, pointless project. We were done by 8 p.m. We were so confident about this project that nothing, according to us could go wrong.
The next day, which was a Thursday, we presented and Ms. Solis was very well pleased with our project. She thought of it to be one of the best ones but what she did not know was that we had plagiarized. Indeed, none of us knew we had done so. So how is it that we got to plagiarizing! I wondered, after getting caught by Ms. Solis.
It was a Friday afternoon, Vanessa and I were walking back home from eating Fish tacos, since we were out of school early, when Vanessa notices she had a restricted missed call that ended up leaving her a voice mail. We were laughing about something really hilarious, I don’t quite remember what it was but I do remember that Vanessa went mute as soon as she started listening to the voice mail. She stopped walking and put her phone on speaker so that I was able to listen to what had stunned her. It was a voicemail from Ms. Solis. In the voicemail she exclaimed about how upset she was that we had plagiarized on our final project thinking we could get away with it. I still remember what she said, her words marked my memory greatly because hearing this made my blood travel from head to toe at a fast speed and my mouth dropped down to the floor. I remember her saying something like “Vanessa and Goldie I am really mad and upset at you girls! How could both of you do this thinking you can get away from it so easily! I guess you girls thought wrong. I am not stupid enough not to see when a student plagiarizes and when a student actually does her work! Wow you girls made the biggest mistake ever. See you Monday in class…” I was like Wow is this really happening? God please tell me I am dreaming but I wasn’t dreaming this was reality and reality like people say hurts. Of course it hurt, I was worried more than ever about stepping foot in school on Monday. I could not help but wonder how in the world had we plagiarized. I was breaking my head trying to find an answer. After this phone call all Vanessa and I could do was continue walking home.
The weekend had passed so fast, I thought. I could not imagine that it was Monday morning, already. I was death scared to go to school. I loved going to school because that meant I was going to be away from home and that I had the opportunity to hang out with my friends but this time it was otherwise, I hated the fact that it was Monday and my weekend was over. I was secure at home, now I sure wasn’t secure at school. I trembled and waited for Vanessa to get to school. I didn’t want to step foot into the lions cage alone. The bell rang and we went to class. Ms. Solis put a warm-up question on the board as usual and did not say a word to us. Isn’t she supposed to be mad and ask us to step outside to talk to us? I remember thinking. At the same time, I was glad she had not done so already because that fed my hope to thinking that maybe she will let this incident slide without giving us a punishment and that we can all be happy and continue with life. Silly me, I always wanted a happy ending. So, to test her I dared to say “Good Morning Curly Fry” with a nice glowing smile showing her that I was happy to see her. Curly fry was how Vanessa and I referred to her due to the fact that she had very curly hair and her hair reminded us of Jack in the Box’ curly fries. She replied saying “Good Morning Goldie, as soon as you, Vanessa, and Freddy finish with the warm-up let me know. We need to step outside” Darn it why did I have to open my big mouth. Silence is Golden Goldie why was it so hard to stay silent ugh I blamed myself for over minutes. Freddy, that reminds me Freddy had no idea what was going on. He never found out about the voice mail Ms. Solis had left Vanessa so he knew nothing of what was waiting for him outside the classroom. Quickly Vanessa and I whispered and explained him what was going on. He was shocked and giggled for a moment while Vanessa and I were dying inside with nervousness.
We stepped outside and I noticed Ms. Solis was very calm compared to Friday but you could still sense the tension within her by staring at her eyes and looking at the soldier like posture she carried. She began by saying “So I am sure you all know why now you have stepped outside of the classroom. I don’t know how to start but I do know this was unexpected. I trusted you guys to do the right thing. What was so hard about this project that made you guys plagiarize?” ouch that word hurt my ears, it sounded so harsh, I remember thinking while she was waiting for an answer. Freddy broke the ice by saying “Honestly Ms. Solis I had nothing to do with this because I did not participate in the project at all. All I did was help them with the presentation. Everything was done by Goldie and Vanessa.” Damn Damn Damn I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. He had washed himself away from any blame. What if none of this would have happened? Then he of course would fake that he helped in the project just to get credit right? Wow I was disappointed and mad at him, really mad. I snapped out of my thoughts and heard Ms. Solis say “and you girls have nothing to say?” I immediately answered with the truth, “Ms. Solis where did we plagiarize? I don’t know what you are talking about. Perhaps, I may dare to suggest this is all a misunderstanding” Vanessa looked at me with that expression that said, Oh please Goldie shut up don’t make this any worse just say sorry and get this over with.
I did not want to admit to something I don’t remember doing. I wanted the benefit of the doubt. Ms. Solis looked at me and pointed at our 3-page-written paper pointing to some underlined link from a website that we never gave credit too. There you go that was our mistake, using someone else’s website’ ideas to illustrate our ideas without giving the website credit! Relief came upon my body. This was my “aha” moment. I knew we weren’t that guilty. I explained to Ms. Solis our intentions were never to plagiarize that we had done so unconsciously because we forgot to give the website credit since, we had done our project in a rush. We never had the intentions of making her think the website’s ideas were our ideas. I had said nothing but the truth. I was waiting for Ms. Solis’ answer. It seemed like years before she could open her mouth and say “Well, okay do you all agree with Goldie’s explanation.?” Vanessa scared to say a word said “Yeah” Freddy said nothing since he did not have a say in this. Ms. Solis said the final words “Okay, since you cannot do the project again, I will deduct your grade for this project from and A to a C+ , things could have gotten worse so all of you are lucky to still be able to graduate on stage. If I would have decided not to meet up to talk to you guys and go straight to the point and fail you three then you guys would be in big trouble because as you guys know with an F in your Economics class you cannot graduate on stage. Thank you ,now go back inside and nothing happened here”
That was unfair. Freddy did not do anything and yet he got credit for the project. He had betrayed us when Ms. Solis questioned us and yet he had gotten away with it. But the ones that really did the work got punished for making a silly mistake. I was mad but I did consider myself lucky because as Ms. Solis had said maybe another teacher would have straight down failed all three of us and then what would I say to my parents? Things were good like this, I thought. What a shame I saved myself from being spotted out as the girl who did not graduate on stage for plagiarizing. Things had not turned out to be the best but at least they were not the worse. I learned not to ever again procrastinate and that whenever I used an outside source even to just illustrate my ideas, to give it the correct credit because I do not want to be accused of plagiarism ever again in my whole life. I had enough in Economics class. From then on I always did the right thing.
