I derive a lot of pleasure from writing and working with people to help them improve and construct their writing. However, just like every other business, freelance writing has its pitfalls. I have run into several in my last three years of owning my own writing business.
One of the big issues I faced is having been asked to write academic papers and essays. Several paper mills have wooed me and I have dipped my toe in the water and signed up for a couple of on-line sites. Of course, I even have had requests sent directly to me from various clients and want to be clients.
I just cannot bring myself to do it. In the end, I will not do it.
It is true, as my mother always said, that the first person you have to face in the mirror in the morning, is yourself and you have to like that person. What is also true is that you have to respect that person. I cannot bring myself to write an academic paper for someone else for this very reason.
At first I was only personally affronted by the idea, a more of ‘I had to write my own papers and so should they', attitude. However, I began to have another feeling whenever I put myself in or someone tried to put me in that position.
I literally felt sick to my stomach.
I discovered the very thought of writing someone else's paper went, not only against everything I had been taught as a child, but it also went against everything I believed as a writer. It sanctioned plagiarism and cheating.
It does. I say this without prefacing it with any apology.
I believe that when you write an academic paper for someone who will then pass it off as work he or she has done, you are actively helping that person to cheat and that person is plagiarizing your work. In a learning situation where writing is part of how a student's knowledge is evaluated, and how, in the end, that student will receive formal acknowledgement from an academic institution for his learned expertise, that student has no business but to do the work him or herself. If he or she does not, they should not walk away with a University's acknowledgement in the form of a diploma.
The fact that there is software now that professors can use to see if the paper has been plagiarized saddens me. The only laughable part is when the student hiring you warns you against plagiarizing to help them avoid being caught with your paper by the self-same software. Moreover, it also makes me shake my head over another crime we as writers are allowing when we write these papers. We are aiding students in avoiding valuable lessons. These are not just academic lessons. They are life lessons in independent thought, in creativity, and in pride in one's own work. We are teaching them as well to avoid failure - perhaps the biggest lesson of them all.
In coming to this business crossroad, I know I am, like the great poet, Robert Frost, taking the road less taken. Whether professionally it makes a difference, I will probably never know. On a personal level, it makes all the difference especially to the face in the mirror.
