To never admit I had a lot of help when training for my Professional job

[frappuchino]

I qualified in a professional job 4 years ago. I have a lot of guilt regarding the whole situation.

My tutor passed all my work, helping me with large portions of it. I was supposed to be observed in practice three times but he didn't really assess my work he just sat in the meetings and passed me without even bothering to see if I was competent.

Instead of failing my work he would simply correct it and give it a final mark. Helping with large chunks of it.

I always thought he was a lovely, helpful tutor until years later when I realised my work simply wasn't my own and I have not be professionally assessed for competency. This was not my fault.

Would I be unreasonable to say absolutely nothing?

I have quickly been promoted in my job, I am competent in my job. But in all honesty, I didn't do my own work.

If you're competant then it doesn't matter: this is often how professional accreditations work

Thank you :-)

In all honestly I probably wouldn't have passed the course as I was going through a living hell at the time and lacked confidence in myself. But my tutor seemed to want me to pass and so helped me to pass.

It's strictly against the rules though. It simply isn't allowed. You have to prove your competence on your own. Your tutor can support you but can't do chunks of your work for you and pass you when your work isn't necessarily good enough.

I also ended up with a distinction at masters level. No way could I have ever achieved that. I would have got a merit at best on my own.

But, while academics aren't my strongest point, I can do the job, and do it very well.

In my opinion - who cares about the paper accreditation if you can truthfully competently do the job?

Did he write large chunks of your Masters dissertation? Having a supervisor write extensive comments and suggest edits is normal, indeed desirable, and most students' grades will rise if they listen to their supervisors.

It does sound like he crossed a line, but mainly on the observation side, in which case if you are competent now, I wouldn't worry as he was certifying this.

Academic work is allowed supervisor input but they shouldn't write it for you.

I think you're suffering from imposter syndrome. It sounds like you're very competent. Don't overthink it. Just move on and keep being good at what you do.

Actually, it matters. You know it matters. Professional integrity is vital because your qualification tells people that you achieved a certain level of proficiency in your professional training. However, you've been working for four years and presumably you've been getting promoted based on work you have actually done, not work someone else has done for you.

The real problem is the person who didn't take his obligation as a supervisor seriously. He really shouldn't have done your work for you. Are you sure you are seeing the situation correctly and you definitely got more help than you should have got?

He did my work for me. It supported, not helped. He did it.

I looked at my dissertation and essays and I don't even recognise any of the theory used. It was wrong. But he clearly knew I could do the job, and didn't want me to fail.

*not supported

Well, I guess you have to decide either put it behind you or do something about it. But if you do something about it, you'd need to raise it with the authorities, who would then, I guess, need to investigate and you'd risk being stripped of your qualification, ultimately. Which I can't imagine you wanting to do? In which case, you may have to find a way to make peace with the fact that it happened and forgive yourself.

What is the qualification?

I'm not saying the qualification. But people's wellbeing is in your hands. It's a profession with a lot of responsibility.

I'm never going to mention it. But I just feel bad.
But I have to remember it wasn't my fault or choice.

Writing about a thing very well is ok and you will get a piece of paper that says you can write about it very well.

BUT doing the thing well is ultimately the only important thing to consider.

So you/your tutor can write about it. Who cares? It's only relevant if you want to write textbooks or articles. But you want to DO your job, not write about it. And you can do it very well, you said so.

Well, you say that, and you may feel you can only say that because it is what lets you sleep at night. But as someone who also trained in a professional qualification, I know exactly what the requirements of my training were, and I know exactly what my responsibilities were and what the responsibilities of my assessors were, and it was absolutely my responsibility to report any misconduct to my university, my professional body and my placement leaders. So I don't agree that there was nothing that could have been done at the time. But I do agree that there is a power imbalance, and that different people cope with the demands of professional training in different ways, and that if you are finding the demands of the training difficult, then someone being willing to push you through must be very comforting and it must be very tempting to allow that to happen without challenging it and without taking any action.

But I have to remember it wasn't my fault or choice if he wrote big chunks that you didn't recognize and knew weren't your own, you must have realized this was wrong, surely?

I can't quite get to the bottom of how much he did, or how you didn't notice if he was faking your work for you. Or he didn't do that much and you are just very guilty about it.

Whatever- tis done now and you won't get absolution on this thread, that will come from doing a good job for your clients (I'd guess your job but I think that will make you feel worse).

I don't think there is anything you can do about it now. I wouldn't waste time feeling guilty either. Your supervisor was very clearly in the wrong. He did not adhere to his own professional standards. It's worked out well for you both if you are genuinely competent in your role. It could easily have been otherwise. I run a masters programme that awards professional accreditation and would be furious about this. It does students a massive disservice actually, not to mention potentially damaging our standing as a provider (we could lose our status).

I'm not saying the qualification. But people's wellbeing is in your hands

Theres nothing you can do but If its a health care role then I do think it matters you are not properly trained for the role, no matter how competent you may feel.

Okay so I'm assuming it's social care or teaching. In that case this happens a lot. It's why in my company we ask that masters in teaching, project management, and social care not be treated comparably to other masters (such as mbas, economics, maths etc) when applicants apply for certain jobs. My ask is - does it make a fundamental difference if you got a distinction over a merit or a pass? And also would you have passed on your own work?

This is not how things should be.

On the other hand, this is how things are and I guess that OP is a woman, and there are so many incompetent men in very important positions because of exactly this kind of thing.

It would make things worse if a tutor who was willing to give the same help to a woman that is routinely given to males, was punished for it.

Since I don't know what OPs job is, I cannot say whether being able to write papers is relevant to being able to do the job. But if it is anything like what I did for my bachelor's degree, then probably not. For the degree, I had to to science, the everyday work has little to do with that.

The difficulty is that if this person is continuing to do this with other students then there is a wider problem with the quality of supervision of students at that institution that does need to be addressed and it won't be addressed unless it is raised. Unfortunately, it won't be raised by people who are benefiting from it, and it certainly won't be raised by the person doing it. I can only see it being raised if you happen to get a student who is so truly hopeless that they are a danger to society (they do happen) - then people might think 'how on earth is s/he passing? But I suspect that this person is wise enough that they would let that sort of person fail anyway.

I work with someone who is a healthcare professional, one of the best, popular with doctors and patients, very competent, etc. When I did one of my postgraduate courses and asked her opinion on something, she confessed that she had failed hers first time so a friend rewrote the failed bits.

She has come to peace with that now as she realises she is great at the job, just not so great at the assessments needed to get there. I hope you can do the same