YSaC, Vol. LXXXIX
Academically Delinquent Student Seeks Writing Coach
Sensible [college] senior seeks beneficent academic, advanced degree student, or otherwise professional writer to act as guide through the vicissitudes of writing. Though my trouble with writing remained a private albatross for years, I don’t want my last semester to turn out like the never-ending story on account of a few papers, and, ahem, a thesis. A helpful sensei would read essay drafts, provide compositional and critical theoretical feedback, and be generally, sensitively, and honestly encouraging. I’m open to email correspondence or face to face meetings. In exchange for your services, I will cook, clean, babysit, or perform any other reasonable and ordinary unskilled labor or light techie task you need.
Most likely translation: Despite the fact that I clearly know my way around the English language and a thesaurus, I’m terminally lazy and want someone to write my senior thesis for me.
This is clearly a joke
I mentioned elsewhere that I’m a teacher. Trust me … this isn’t a joke, and that makes me sad.
“I mentioned elsewhere that I’m a teacher. Trust me … this isn’t a joke, and that makes me sad.”
Translation: “I’m a primary school teacher, and have terrible pessimism about the students I deal with on a daily basis. I will therefore use confirmation bias to believe this craigslist plea is factual, as opposed to a repost of a fanciful email that has been circulating as a joke amongst college students for several years.”
Nope. University professor.
And even if this is a joke to some students, it’s not to others.
It’s not that I *want* to believe that students are capable of this, and therefore use confirmation bias to believe it … it’s that years of having to take people through academic honesty hearings for things exactly like this has confirmed it for me.
I don’t believe all students are capable of this, but some most definitely are. And that, as I said, makes me sad.
Unsuccessful troll is unsuccessful. FAIL.
Keep up the good work, Professor drmk. YSaC is one of my new favorite sites. If there’s one thing I can’t get enough of, it’s laughing at the stupidity of others.
At least it’s better than actually buying it from the internet so that your teacher can Google a few choice sentences of your so-called paper and then BLAM, you’re outta the class? No, on second thought out of the school.
Yes, I know my comment is poorly written. I blame studying for economics finals.
The hip new teachers use Turnitin. I haven’t found a way to get plagiarism past its sensors yet 🙁 It even takes unique wording with non-unique ideas and points it out…
Speaking as a professor who has read a lot of papers (and caught a lot of plagiarists), I can say that Turnitin is not actually all that much better than knowing your students. The last time I used Turnitin was a couple of years ago, but I outperformed it on every plagiarist hunt but one—a student who’d used a pay service and therefore had his or her source behind a paywall. Most of the time, it’s easy to spot a shift in expertise or in tone, which is what most plagiarists do.
(In my experience, the great majority of plagiarism is in the form of lifting portions of the paper from easy-to-find internet sources, where it’s free. Most plagiarists are acting out of desperation, and therefore don’t have the time to use a write-for-hire service.)
Not to be a buzzkill, but this ad doesn’t seem to be asking for a free paper; it’s asking for coaching, which is something that plenty of people would genuinely benefit from.
If any potential plagiarists happen to read this: my advice is for you to sincerely and humbly ask for an extension on your assignment so you can perform it honestly. You’ll almost surely fare better in the long run, and most professors are fine with cutting you some slack if you can ask for it in a respectful way.
When I was a student, I often got requests for writing other people’s papers that started out as asking for help.
Once even started out as request for typing a paper.
As a college teacher, yes, I would cynically say at least half of my students cheated by not writing some or all of their papers.
I agree with Isaac about knowing your students. But “turnitin” if I recall correctly, is associated with the same people that sell the papers. So they take money from students for selling the papers, then grass them. I feel no pity, however!