I've been asked to write a paper for someone else at my school and it has made me question whether I'd be doing a horrible thing by agreeing. I have done it and accepted pay before now. My papers are generally relatively good. A sizeable portion of my income in high school came from papers I had written for others.
I've written fewer things for people in college. My clientele has, to this point, consisted of old friends and friends of friends from the nearby community colleges and stuff. These essays take more than the fifty minutes to churn out than high school ones did, but they also feel more rewarding because I usually have to research and learn a bit before asking for a bit of a higher payment than I charged in high school. This whole thing didn't really feel morally unwholesome until a person at my college asked me to write an essay for her the other day.
We have an honor code that I thought worked well. While I wouldn't be breaking a rule by giving someone my intellectual property, the idea that they'd be signing the same agreement I always do about adhering to the school's policies on a piece written by me really freaks me out! Luckily it's nothing that would be published in any way, but it still opened me to what I guess is a common enough ethical dilemma. Do I sell out or do I pay attention to the "right" thing to do?
I have no scruples making people from other places pay. I'd still write a paper for a high schooler at the drop of their pretty penny. Doing it for someone here just feels perverse. I'm also gunning for a job as writing tutor --a flawed position in a crumbling part of the institution in which I'm still super interested. Right now it seems as though I'm teetering between becoming either the helper of or the worker for others.
Personal values aside it would probably be super awkward tutoring some people and doing the work for others, particularly if one of the professors who has recommended me for the tutor position were to discover that I had written papers for students taking their class. I imagine I'd be fired.
Still, writing papers pays well enough. This person has essentially agreed to pay by the page at a rate based on the grade the paper earns. Right now I'm expecting at least $100 for five or six hours of work, which is significantly more than any job I can get working for the school. She also indicated that she'd be interested in pursuing my services further should the first paper prove satisfactory. I could be making a decent bit of coin by doing something I actually enjoy while learning and developing is I wouldn't necessarily entertain under certain circumstances.
Do the many ethical implications necessarily outweigh the high potential monetary gains? Should it matter to me when I'm technically doing nothing wrong (apart from subverting some classic pedagogic practices and participating in small-scale soul sale among other issues)? Isn't this basically what professional speech writers do? Assuming I stop, where should I draw the line (i.e. should I stop writing for others entirely, or what)?
Can you think of any other comments, questions, or concerns for me to address?
No comments:
Post a Comment