The Stolen Dissertation

I threw in the towel on my Ph.D. program, and my folks, bless their hearts, bought me a one-way ticket to Europe to clear my head.

But then she showed up – my ex-boyfriend's "perfect" girl, blocking my ride to the airport like she owned the place.

See, I was this close to finishing my research.

Last time around, she'd somehow beat me to the punch by a day, turning in a paper that was practically a carbon copy of mine.

The internet mob came for me, calling me a no-good plagiarist.

I showed them my data, the research process, everything… but nobody believed a word I said.

She, bless her heart, cried and tried to "defend" me. Of course, that just painted me as a bully.

I couldn't handle the pressure, jumped off the science building, and that was that.

My parents fought for me, tried to get the truth out, but some crazy internet trolls got them into a car crash and took them away too.

Even in death, I couldn’t wrap my head around it: how did she publish my years of work before I could?

Then I woke up, back to the second before I submitted my paper.

1.

The submission page was staring me in the face.

My eyes darted to the clock: May 21st.

The day I was supposed to submit my science journal paper.

I was back!

If I remembered correctly, that paper, the one I’d burned the midnight oil on, had already been published by my ex’s perfect girl.

One push of the button, and I'd be labeled a plagiarist again.

I yanked my hand back, pulled out my phone, and opened Google Scholar.

Sure enough, there it was, a paper with my name on it, published by someone else.

Published at 8 a.m., twelve hours before I was even supposed to submit.

The author: Tiffany Hayes.

I clicked into it, and the whole thing, from title to abstract to the main body, was a mirror image.

Even the typos I hadn't caught were the same.

My stomach dropped, and a cold wave washed over me.

All that online hate, that garbage, came back to haunt me, suffocating me.

I started to shake, my ears ringing, my heart pounding in my chest.

Last time, this paper had gotten me accused of plagiarism, and the school turned into a circus.

Even with all the evidence I’d collected, they just didn’t buy it.

["So you're saying she copied you? She published it before you, how could she?"]

["Plagiarism is such hard work! Look at how fast you pulled this "evidence" together! Looks like you knew you were a plagiarist all along!"]

["You evil b****, why don't you go die?!"]

Before I could even get my advisor on the phone, my boyfriend, Jake Miller, had already made his statement.

["I'm so sorry," he said, "as Wendy’s boyfriend, I should have seen this coming. I apologize on Wendy’s behalf to Tiffany."]

It felt like a punch in the gut.

Jake and I had spent three years in the lab together.

Yet, because of Tiffany, he threw me under the bus.

2.

I took a deep breath and calmed myself down, clicking on Tiffany’s social media feed.

Not only was she the victim of my "plagiarism" last time, she w...