Fake Essays ©
By Michael Casey
I keep an eye on my writing, I try and work out who is
reading it and where. Vanity I suppose, but if I’m writing I do of course like
to know who is reading. As I was doing this the other day I stumbled over an
old piece of mine, Oxbridge and Unable to write an Essay. When I clicked on my
piece of writing it lead to a site where for a few pounds you could buy an
essay, so you don’t have to do the work yourself. This is fraud in my opinion.
Why do any work yourself when you can pay somebody else to
write an essay for you. There are different charges depending on what level of
study the essay is for. Sadly if you spend 2 seconds reading the home page you
can see its run by somebody whose first language is not English. Prepositions
give Esol English writers away. So you won’t be getting a good essay in good
English, instead you’ll be getting something which is clearly not written by
you a Native English speaker. This should be picked up by your tutor/teacher in
5 seconds, so no matter how good the factual part of the essay, you will still
get an F and a warning.
There is another question, honesty, some students and even
cultures find nothing wrong in cheating. Cheating and bribery is the norm,
which is sad. If you cheat your way through, what happens when you really need
to know your subject. Oops what did I just do, as a mushroom cloud rises into
the air, or you poison an entire class. I have met some people in my travels
who have actually said to me, of course we cheat, how are we supposed to pass
otherwise, and they looked at me if I was some dullard. This is very very sad
because it has watered away basic honesty and integrity.
When you write an essay you are proving to yourself you
have learnt your subject, it’s an affirmation of knowledge. If you can write
something down, if you can teach it, then you have proved you know what you are
on about. You can read 10 to 30 essays on any topic you like, the internet is a
great source of knowledge, then after you have read all the essays or read a
few books you can distil this knowledge
into an essay that you have written yourself. You can quote Shakespeare or
Michael Casey with examples to build your case in your essay, showing the subject
in a new light. But you have done the work.
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