I stole somebody's Poem and said that I was the writer, It won an award

When I was in high school, I used to do a lot of things that I thought I wouldn't do. But this one has to be the worst one I have ever done in my high school life.

We had this sort of competition where all of the students were put in batches to compete with one another. I didn't want to join the part where you have to present the poem in front of the whole school so I decided to go with the writers for the poem. I used to do a lot of writing or paper works ever since but this time, I had no clue what I will write. I asked several people to help me but the suggestions were not exceeding the standards I want the poem to be. I tried to write some practices but I would just throw the papers into the garbage can because it wasn't very nice to hear or to even say.

That is when I decided to the opposite thing to the normal order. I know I'm not supposed to do it but I had no time. The poem needs to be printed out to be practiced by those who will be performing it.

So I looked on the internet and I saw some post that is very much related to the theme of the competition. I then used some parts of it to fit into my poem. I didn't steal the whole poem but actually I admit that stealing some lines of it is already an entry to plagiarism. I think that 50% was mine and the other half was from the poem on the internet.

When I passed it into one of the teachers/moderators of our batch, she actually liked it. I didn't bother going to the practice because of two reasons. One is that I am not part of that group and the other one is that I didn't have the balls to go there and be proud of the poem that I didn't fully write. Some of the participants that night just said to me that they liked the poem the next morning during school practice. I was shocked, kind of happy, and still hurt by that pinch of guilt.

During those practice moments, I can't look at myself since I am really feeling the guilt that I should have wrote my own and not steal someone's written work. But I'm also thinking of what will everyone say if I told them the truth. Back then, people know me as the girl who writes amazing things from stories to poems. I always amaze people with my skills in writing. But I have never plagiarized a work before that happens, I promise you that.

I just think that I let myself down because of what I have done.

During the competition tournament, everyone was cheering for their team and getting ready. There were a lot of pieces that were really awesome and in my mind, I thought were dead because the others were really awesome. But our batch managed to step up to their game and pull off an amazing show for the whole school.

The winner was announced. And it was us.

I admit that I was really happy when we became the winners. But then I was snapped at the moment, thinking of what I have done. It still hurts from the inside. Especially the part when the writers were called and everyone cheered for me. I became special for a moment and just smiled until everything was done.

At the end of the day, I considered myself a thief, not a writer.

A loser, not a winner.