Woman exposes friend who stole her essay to get into college and gets immense support on Internet

It is great having a guardian figure in our lives. It's even better if someone is guiding us through our journey as a student and working professionals. If we are fortunate enough to have these helpful people in our lives, we should always be grateful to them. But instead of being grateful, one girl ended up stealing the essay of the person who was trying to help her, and she got a fitting lesson for her blunder. Reddit user u/jhhn- shared the story of her stolen essays and received support from netizens on how she reacted to the plagiarism. 

"I (19F) am a sophomore in college and have a friend, Tia (18F), who is in high school and applying for colleges and scholarships," the OP began her post. "I helped her throughout the college process and she ended up getting in early action to her top college, and she got a full scholarship. I was happy for her until recently." Well, Tia ended up doing what this Reddit user never could have imagined at first.

"I was talking to a mutual friend of ours and she started gushing about how Tia's essay was so heartfelt and beautiful. I asked to see it because I thought she had just forgotten to show me (she showed me many of her essay drafts). But as I was reading it, I was completely taken aback. The essay was one of my college essay drafts which I’d shown to Tia for reference on writing techniques. I made this clear," u/jhhn- continued. Since she had already made it clear to Tia that she was not supposed to use any of her original essays and pass them off as her own, Tia's act could be deemed as a clear violation of trust and a clear case of plagiarism.

"I was livid. The essay was really personal, and she barely even tweaked it up. It was almost entirely copied and pasted. I trusted her with it, and this is what she did. In a fit of rage, I gathered all the evidence of me helping her with the college process, including evidence of me sending the specific essay to her, and I showed it to the school." Following this, Tia not only lost her scholarship but also her seat in the school.

u/jhhn- further added that people who knew about this incident started calling her "dramatic" and shamed the sophomore student for botching up Tia's education journey. According to the post, Tia was apparently the only person from her family to get into a college and obtain an academic as well as an athletic scholarship. So, obviously, everyone was rooting for her success, including this Reddit user who had helped her. But Tia broke the OP's trust. "I didn’t expect the outcome to be so severe, it was. I feel like she took advantage of me, but I didn’t want to be the cause of something so horrible. I did myself justice but at the cost of someone’s dreams. Now I’m wondering if what I did was justified or not," the Reddit user concluded, looking forward to the opinion of netizens.

Most Reddit users talked in favor of the sophomore student. u/lark-sp wrote: "She wasn't actually accepted. The university thought they were accepting a different person." u/RoninSwordstar agreed, writing in her support: "Plagiarism and this behavior is not allowed and should never be condoned. It s**ks to be in your position too as it is a lose-lose." u/ICallTheBigOne_Bitey shed some light on the other side of the story and commented: "Everyone on here is saying your friend is simply facing the consequences of her actions, well so are you. And those consequences are knowing that your actions helped contribute to your friend losing this opportunity and, in turn, pissed off your other friends."

The sophomore student later made an update on the situation and thanked the people who supported her and reassured her that she did right. At the end of the day, one should always remember that plagiarism is never going to help anyone achieve milestones in life.