I have already ruined my life at 19.

First year uni student, and used AI for a research report worth 50% of my grade to create summaries of multiple studies that I was citing in my paper. I was doing this assignment very last minute, so I needed a way to quickly skim through articles. I thought I paraphrased well enough, nothing was detected from the turnitin similarity report, however my grades has been withheld, and the TA says a plagiarism check is being conducted.

I went back through my assignment and noticed I accidentally left in an in-text citation for a fake site (one of the papers i was citing had multiple authors, however the AI cited a random unrelated author + the quote was also wrong). As I was doing this assignment very last minute, I stupidly relied on the summaries that the AI created for me, and did not double check that the information matched with the sources I was citing. However, AI was only utlised to get a gist of what my sources were about, I drew links and made conclusions to the main topic of my research paper based on my own observations of the AI summaries.

I will attend an academic misconduct meeting soon, and plan on admitting everything. This is my first academic misconduct charge, what the penalty will likely be?

I feel like I have ruined my life, and have been having suicidal thoughts. I have utterly humiliated myself, and am ashamed that I ever resorted to such measures. I’ve been crying everyday, I’m worried about the future, and I don’t have anyone to talk to for emotional support/advice, as I am too embarrassed to look any of my friends or family in the eyes and tell them what I’ve done.