Destroying my Career by Accidentally Sharing a Forged Document

Date: 2/16/2021

I had a letter from school with some discouraging news. I think it was telling me I couldn’t enroll there any further due to the accumulated back balance of tuition. At work I got curious. I changed the letter to a Word doc, edited it to say what I wanted, then changed it back to a pdf so it looked real. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do with that. I would never try to get away with passing something like that off as real. Especially because somehow it was related to a client at work and I couldn’t take a risk like that at work. Anyway I decided to email it to myself so I could keep the file of the altered document. I was so tired that when I emailed it to myself I CC’ed the school. They responded back saying like “This is incredibly serious.” and mentioned that they had to confer with the Dean to determine what to do about what I did. My email was discoverable by my boss. I knew I had to tell him my mistake and knew 100% that I would be fired and this would have a devastating impact on my career, most likely ruining it for good. I knew he would be furious and yell too. I was dreading this and didn’t know how to tell him or when. I remember thinking I wish I could restart today, just undo it, not make that stupid little mistake. How one tiny thing could destroy an entire career forever. I remember just wishing and pleading that it could be just a dream, even though I knew it was real.