Taylor Gogolski
When the writer Nick Mamatas was interviewed on New York Public Radio station, by Bob Garfield, the discussion topic was of his essay, “The Term Paper Artist”. This essay was published on an online Drexel University magazine by the name of The Smart Set. In both the essay and the interview, Mamatas reveals to readers and listeners the truth behind the job that got him started. This job was writing term papers. Mamatas tells that there are three different roads a student with a term paper could go; One, being staying up all night doing research and writing your own paper in your own words. The second way would be going on “Google” over drive and trying to find all of the right answers, while using someone else’s words. The last way of getting a term paper, and the way Mamatas earned his salary on, was by a student buying his or her term paper. The way that this works is that the client will go through Mamatas broker. The client who is “so dumb, they don’t even know what their assignment is” will explain to the broker what the assignment is. The client will either take the paper and “worsen” it (make it their own), or hand it in as is.
There are three types of clients that Mamatas deals with. The first are the dumb clients, which indicates that Nick should not make the paper “too good”. The second is the first timers, who either got too sick to write the paper or was places into a bad class. The third type of client is the ones that are not too familiar with English. These clients will most likely write their own paper, in which case Mamatas would edit it. Mamatas states that he always writes a good paper, but in the words of Garfield and the approval of these words by Mamatas, these term papers are “legal but repulsive”, “sleazy”, and “unethical”. Although these term papers are described like this, Nick had benefitted from writing them because with writing these he has improved as a writer.
The funniest part of the essay and interview is that Nick Mamatas admits that there has been times where he has “turned” his client in. If a client tried to “pull a fast one on him” or was just being “nasty” towards him, at times he would let their professor know about it.
Nick believes that in the end cheaters will get their own and that karma will catch up to them. He also believes that good writes only benefit and will be better off in the end. I agree with this because if you are cheating yourself you are not bettering yourself or learning for the future. If you cannot write a term paper, how could you help your child in high school with an essay? Cheaters will never benefit because they will always take the easy way out. I think that Nick Mamatas is a very smart man because of how he made his money. What Nick did is benefit from the people who will not benefit. He was the good writer, benefitting from the cheaters who will never benefit.
