The paper was due tomorrow, and I was the one who volunteered to do the final edit. That’s when I saw it. The first section belonged to our teammate, and the language sounded too technical, too polished for him. Something felt off, so I checked the footnote, opened the PDF it cited, and found the problem.
He had copied sentences and phrases word for word, no quotation marks. I kept reading. Five instances so far. Then I found a sentence lifted straight from an organization’s website with no source at all.
I called and texted him. Nothing. Then I remembered he was on vacation, probably on a long-haul flight. We’re in a master’s program at a good school.
How could he think this was okay? If the professor caught this, we would all fail. We wouldn’t graduate. I was furious, and I didn’t know what to do.
I posted on Reddit asking for advice. A professor commented, warning me that the thesis would definitely be checked by plagiarism software. He told me to fix it before submission. He also said I needed to tell my other groupmates immediately, because if we submitted as is, we could face disciplinary action, maybe even expulsion.
Someone else told me to email the professor right away and ask for an extension. So that’s what I did. First, I emailed the whole group, telling everyone to double-check their sections for citation issues. I didn’t accuse anyone, but I made it clear the school would see it as plagiarism.
Then I contacted the professor, asking for an urgent call. And then I stayed up all night reading the entire paper. That’s when I found out it wasn’t just the first guy. The second teammate, a girl, had done the same thing.
It was actually worse. She copied three or four sentences in a row from the same source and only added the footnote at the very end of the paragraph. The next morning, only the fourth groupmate replied to my email. He said his section was clean and offered to help me check everything.
The professor was surprisingly accommodating. Because I came to her before the paper was due, she gave us a 12-hour extension. And she promised that if the plagiarism software flagged anything, she would talk to us first before taking it to the academic board. So the fourth guy and I spent the entire day going through the paper, checking every citation against every source, page by page.
It was exhausting. The other two never replied. Not once. We submitted the paper by the extension deadline.
I think we’re safe now. But I’m still angry. I worked harder than anyone to cover the asses of two people who wouldn’t even respond to an email about their own plagiarism. I was the only one in the group with a full-time job outside the program.
We should have finished earlier. But I never imagined grad students would need to be taught what plagiarism is. The advisor eventually confirmed that copying directly without quotation marks, even with a footnote, is plagiarism. Now I know.
Never do group projects again. And I’m never speaking to those two again. I told the advisor their names and explained what they did. She didn’t seem too concerned.
Her attitude was more like, “Oh, okay, let me just give you more time to fix it. ”
So I don’t think anything will happen to them. That’s fine. I did what I had to do to protect my own future.
And I’m done with all of them. The next story started with a question I never thought I’d be asking myself. My girlfriend wanted to meet my sister. Three years ago, my parents died within two months of each other.
My sister was only four. I was just out of college, but I had a good job, and we didn’t have any other family I trusted to take her in. So I did. It’s been challenging, but also incredibly rewarding.
I wouldn’t trade it for anything. My girlfriend and I met at a conference. We hit it off immediately. Conversation felt effortless.
We’ve been together for almost two years now, and I love her. I want to spend my life with her. She’s always known I take care of my sister, and she said she doesn’t mind. She’s been patient.
But recently she said she’d really like to meet my sister. I hesitated. My sister has already lost so much. I didn’t want her to get attached to someone and then have it fall apart.
I kept telling myself I was protecting her. I asked Reddit what to do. The comments were unanimous. “If you want a future with your girlfriend, your sister has to meet her.
”
“You can’t protect her from loss forever. ”
“Let her find role models, let her love another. ”
One comment stood out. Someone pointed out that my girlfriend could easily interpret my hesitation as me not being serious about the relationship.
As if I saw it as just a multi-year fling. They were right. I couldn’t keep them separate forever. I was almost living a double life, scheduling visits only when my sister was at sleepovers and hiring babysitters every time I went out.
So, three weeks later, I decided to bite the bullet. I took both of them ice skating, one of my sister’s favorite activities. My girlfriend was terrible at first, but she started to get the hang of it. My sister thought it was hilarious and kept trying to help her.
My girlfriend laughed at herself, which I loved. Afterward, we got pizza. They got along great. When I asked my sister what she thought, she said my girlfriend was pretty and funny, and that she liked her and wanted to see her again.
My girlfriend said the same about my sister. She couldn’t believe I’d been hiding her for so long. I’m thinking about inviting my girlfriend over for dinner with me and my sister next week. I’m still a little hesitant, but I think this is going to work.
Then there was the washing machine. I got scammed. A guy on Craigslist sold me one that stopped working halfway through the rinse cycle. Four hundred dollars gone.
I messaged him. No response. I spent two hours trying to fix it myself. Nothing.
But then I found more of his ads. This guy clearly had a warehouse of broken appliances, scamming people one by one. So I got an idea. Using a burner email, I wrote to him, asking if he could deliver two dryers to me.
I offered to pay extra. He replied immediately. I told him I was about 40 miles away. Could he deliver?
“Absolutely. ”
I set the meeting for 3 p. m. , during peak rush hour.
The next day, he asked if we were still on. I said yes. At 2:50 p. m.
, he said he was almost there. I told him I was running late. 3:10 p. m.
“Where are you? ”
“So sorry, the traffic is terrible. About 20 minutes out. ”
3:35 p.
m. “Almost here? ”
I apologized again and asked if he could pull the dryers out of his car so we could load them faster. He said he would.
3:45 p. m. “Here yet? ”
I kept stalling.
At around 4:30 p. m. , he sent his last message, telling me he was leaving and heading back into the traffic. I didn’t just lose $400.
I made sure he lost his afternoon too. And honestly, that felt even better. A commenter joking that the scammer stopped halfway through the rinse cycle made me laugh more than it should have. Another suggested I string the next scammer along even longer.
Maybe I will.
