Hi everyone, I am hoping to get some light on an already dark place that I am in right now. I am a postgraduate student currently studying Data Analytics, and I have reached my breaking point. I have spent the past few weeks working on multiple assessment papers that are fully manual: handwritten, printed out, screen recorded and even intentionally downgrading my writing… all just to get past Turnitin’s AI detection. And despite all that, I keep getting flagged as AI-written.
For context, during my formative years, my background was in research writing. I studied in a science-focused public school and university back home (another country), where we were trained in academic research writing from a young age. We wrote scientific reports starting in primary school, had year-long courses in research methodology in high school, and even presented our own thesis in front of the university panel (4th year of high school). I have written this way most of my life, as it is just how I was trained. I may have gone into a completely different field, but some of my classmates and close friends, and a few of them are now the Head or Director of Research at prestigious universities, so that shows our background.
But now that I am back to studying, it’s like I’ve been traumatized by the quality of work that the school endorses. It is waaaaay different from back then. Every time I write naturally without using AI tools even when I record my screen the entire time, even when I intentionally insert grammar errors, Turnitin keeps flagging my work. And the worst part? The school’s response is: “Lower your grammar. This is not an English school.”
I have offered to sit the paper onsite. I have recorded my whole screen for hours, avoided all AI suggestions, typed everything manually, and even printed and read 80+ journal articles by hand to build my citations. But when I write clearly and cohesively, I still get flagged. When I deliberately lower the quality of my writing, intentionally removing proper transitions and leaving grammatical lapses, then the system no longer flags it. That experience is incredibly disheartening.
At this point, it does not feel like the policy is protecting academic integrity. Instead, it is punishing those of us who are genuinely committed to doing things the right way.
I have lost sleep. I have skipped holidays and even doubted my own abilities. I am now working on my next paper and honestly, I feel ashamed to put my name on a low-quality paper just to get it “approved.”
So I ask this community: How can I move forward to submit a paper that is even remotely acceptable without getting flagged as AI?
I feel like I’ve done everything on my end, but it feels like I am the only one fighting and it’s getting tiresome. Thank you for reading. I really need some advice right now.
P.S. I requested to withdraw my enrolment (for a different reason but with a similar root cause) without paying the tuition fee (I am under scholarship), but that is no longer an option.
Comments
Share concerns with professor in advance and offer to share drafts in progress or offer to give access during development.
Turn on version history as you type it out. Show them version history.
If what you say is true, then you’re attending a shitpile of an institution. Good thing you’re leaving, end of story.
We all know Turnitin is prone to false positives and a high risk score can’t be automatically trusted without verification.
Does your school have any sort of appeals process for accusations of academic dishonesty? Even the technical college I worked at had some way to escalate issues like this and get things resolved. If you have the screen recordings and version history that proves you are right, I would have asked to escalate this to that next level, rather than redoing work.