Submitting a paper you wrote for another class is plagiarism. You can only reuse a paper if you have your professor's permission. Most professors will not let you simply resubmit a paper from a previous class; however, they may work with you to expand upon your original paper in place of writing a whole new paper.
Some instances of plagiarism are intentional - the student knows they are breaking the Academic Honor Code with their actions. However, many times, students plagiarize on accident.
Examples of intentional and accidental plagiarism:
| Intentional Plagiarism | Accidental Plagiarism |
| Evan doesn't have time to write his paper, and he's panicking because he can't afford to lose his scholarship. He finds a website where he can buy a custom paper. He promises it'll just be this once. | Siena used a direct quote in her paper, including the citation. However, her professor wants to talk to her about possible plagiarism because she did not use quotation marks around the direct quote. |
| Avery found a blog post that says exactly what they want to say in their paper. It's not a well-known blogger, so they figure they won't get caught if they just pretend it's their original words. | Chris referenced the website he cited in the text of his paper, but he did not include a full citation in his bibliography/works cited. |
| Stephanie has been sick for 2 weeks, and she has a paper due in a few days. Her roommate, Jenn, feels bad for her and offers to write her paper. | When citing her sources, Madison only included the authors' names (omitting the titles of articles/books, web addresses, etc.). |