I feel sick about term paper mills - or do I?
Every now and then, as I am looking for new jobs or sites to submit my freelance writing work, I come across term paper mills. They are always marketing as "a student resource center". Reading between the lines, I know that it is a place to help students cheat.
But then I was thinking... what if? What if I REALLY needed the money? What if I had three mouths to feed, no transportation, and only the bare essentials and an internet connection? Would I do it?
In that situation, maybe I would. But, would the stress of going against my ethics be too much in this instance? I spent time as a student. I stayed up all night, with three essays due.
Did I cheat? No - I developed another very useful skill - persuasion. I simply got extensions. Without that experience, I wouldn't be the writer I am today. And as it turns out, the art of persuasion is needed for certain kinds of writing, so I grew in several helpful ways.
I'm curious about what people think concerning these things.
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Submitted by kohuether on Thu, 12/13/2007 - 17:32.
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Not a chance
As a former college writing instructor, I had enough problems with people copying chapters out of obscure books, hoping I wouldn't catch them.
Stopping students from having others on campus writing papers is difficult enough; the term paper mill his NOT a resource, it's an imposter passing work off as the student's work.
TF
And, lack of writing skills
And, lack of writing skills is a huge problem right now. My uncle teaches grad school classes, and he can't believe they even got accepted to school with the way that they write.
"Services" like these mills perpetuate the problem.
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Would I go against my ethics to feed my family?
There's more to raising kids than feeding them. No, I wouldn't write a term paper for pay. First, because the degree is not supposed to be the point, the experience is... why are people out there helping these students get degrees they don't deserve? So that they can go into the workforce ill equipt?
The best is, though, people writing these papers could not possibley be highly educated or with good credentials, otherwise they'd have legitimate jobs. So basically, some shmuck is putting in countless hours of research and writing for what amounts to little more than slave wages to hand someone a degree that will allow them to out earn them... umn, who's getting scammed here? I'd say it's the idiot who calls themself a 'writer'.
Can you tell I have a problem with paper mills?
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I love what you said, "the
I love what you said, "the degree is not supposed to be the point, the experience is"...
It's tempting while you're in school to think that the grade is the point. If that were the case, things would be much different for me right now. I nearly landed on academic probation because I wasn't happy in my first major (engineering). Switching to English was smart, and was going against what I "thought" my life needed to be. It made me stronger.
And then when I attended my English classes, I was at peace - even when I needed to pull all-nighters (or decide to go to sleep anyway, and convince the instructors to give me some leeway - which I ALWAYS got).
So, the experience made me stronger. And the lessons I learned from trying to survive were a lot more meaningful than my GPA - I never even cleared the 3.0 mark because my experience in engineering was such a disaster.
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Paper mills and ethics
Nope. I wouldn't be party to it. The end does not always justify the means. I taught English 102 for a semester, back in the 80's. The course was on writing term papers. Much of what my students did was in class, without computers. If we went back to the in-class work written by hand, monitored by the teacher, we would not be fooled.
Furthermore, with the advent of internet highschools, many a parent has helped a child through a course of writing assignments and has never been paid for it. But the student passed, earning far better grades for work he or she didn't do. Now I wonder which is worse, the kid whose parent wrote his paper or the kid whose parent paid for his paper?
I have caught myself
as a parent I have caught myself putting to much information into a paper for my daughter. Especially a poem. I actually deleted it and made it as an example of how to come up with a poem. She ended up coming up with a great poem about her cat. When I find it I will have to post it. I was so proud of her. Now there are also a lot of times where she gets done hand writing a paper at 9:00pm so I will type it for her, is that okay? I do think that will only last a little longer since she is almost at the same typing speed as me.
__________________________Dru
"I woke up breathing, so no complaints here!!!"
http://druworld.blogspot.com/
How old is your daughter?
How old is your daughter? You did the right thing deleting it - now she has something she is proud of deep down.
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My parents helped me A LOT
My parents helped me A LOT with my papers when I was in school, but they were both teachers so they knew when they were crossing the line. Essentially, it was like having two editors in the house, and in the end it made my writing much stronger.
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