Fake Essays

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.