Nick Mamatas's "The Term Paper Artist" is an article that discusses the system of writing term papers. Nick Mamatas is a writer that for several years made his money off of writing term papers. He describes the "three types of term paper clients" as well as the way he writes the term papers.
Nick Mamatas says the first type of client is a "DUMB CLIENT." These are the clients that are unintelligent. One of his examples of a DUMB CLIENT asked him to "Underline the thesis statement because locating it otherwise would have been too difficult." The second type of client is a "One-timer." One-timers are clients that are smart, but not on the subject they are supposed to write about, and often times they are busy doing other things and need some help writing their term papers. The third type of group is "well-educated professionals who simply lack English-language skills". Most people from this group come from another country and English is their second language.
Nick describes writing term papers as "extremely easy" because he has written so many of them. He would search the internet for information, add some quotes, and create and argument. Everything else he wrote just came to him as he was writing. He says that he does not try to write term papers because that is not important. The important things are "deadline, page count, and number of sources." If he actually tried to write a term paper he would stress himself out and he would have trouble writing them.
Nick makes writing term papers seem really easy because he does not care what grade the people ordering papers from him get. He just wants the money and the people will give it to him as long as he gives them a paper that meets their requirements. His way of writing papers works out very well for him but it would not work out for a student. If a student was trying to write a paper and wrote like he does they would not get the grade they want.
Nick makes many humorous remarks in his article but it does not have much of a point. He is talking about his job and basically how he writes whatever he wants because the person he's writing it for does not matter to him. He makes writing term papers seem way to easy and he could give people a false hope of making money off of writing term papers for people. Yes he does mention how difficult it could be but the amount of information about how easy it is over powers how hard it could be.
I really like your final paragraph. I agree with the fact that the article, while it was humorous, did not have much of a point. Mamatas does spend a lot of time rambling on and on about his job. However, I never really considered that people may be inspired to take this up as a "profession" and that could be a potentially dangerous thing. That's an interesting point, especially considering the fact that Mamatas's paper appears to be geared towards college kids (after all, The Smart Set is hosted by Drexel.)
ReplyDeleteI too like your last two paragraphs, they bring an interesting point that may have not been so clear to others. As seniors going into high school, we will soon be expected to be able to write term papers and Mamatus does give a false hope of how easy it is to write term papers. It was a point I didn't notice. Good job.
ReplyDeleteI found it interesting that you pointed out that he writes these papers without caring about the grades the papers will recieve. Its true that he did not seem to care whether about how he papers benefitted his customers as much as the fact that he would be paid for them. You showed the harsh side of Mamata that I did not see when I first read his article.
ReplyDelete