So many unethical opportunities

As I’ve mentioned before, I have my pride. I am agreeable, but less so nowadays. I am fatigued at employers offering volunteer work or piteously low rates. With age, I’ve learned to be less patient and make more demands.

There is one editorial industry which does often pay handsomely, but I have my pride and my morals to make me refuse this. It’s essay ghostwriting. Yes, I’ve assisted my siblings, friends, and classmates sometimes with their compositions, but never have I completed an assignment entirely on their behalf, their name next to my words. Perhaps if the platforms that offered these services regulated the practice a little more (i.e. the ideas, theses, analysis and research *must* be that of the student’s, and the writer can synthesize them) I may consider. But the way it is now is just a helter-skelter black market.

I’m not going to name these platforms, but you may already know of them. If you search the writing/editing job board on Craigslist from time to time, you’ll see them. Some even try to give an empathetic angle, that people write these essays for new English learners, people with low to no literacy, people with learning disabilities, etc. That’s no excuse. As someone who grew up with a learning disability it’s fine to have a crutch but to have a proxy complete your evaluations for you is insane.

I do really love the tone and flavor of academic writing, and I’d like to continue it, though indeed, don’t have much opportunity for it now as I’m currently unconnected to a school as a student or faculty. But this is not the way to reemerge in the genre.