Working my way through college writing other people’s papers.

My term papers have always gotten good grades, even in high school when I couldn’t give a crap either way. I recently decided to make some money from this. I wasn’t trying to be greedy, this idea came from sheer necessity. I’m a single mom raising two kids, an unemployed brother and his friend. Paying rent and bills for 5 people has gotten tiring and worrisome recently. My TANF, which has been a safety net and bill money for a while now, has been closed. I am now forced to try to pay the rent and bills on $674 a month. This can be quite a daunting task when the rent is $655 a month.

So, I recently posted an ad on Craigslist. Craigslist is the home to classified ads for everything from used toasters to casual quickies. I placed a nondescript little ad in the writing/editing service section and hoped and prayed for a response.

My first response came a little over a week ago. The guy needed a paper on any subject, and he needed it now. After emails and texts back and forth, we settled on a paper on the FairTax proposal. A few days after I had completed what I felt was a masterpiece, he asked for another. This time it was an annotated bibliography that asked the question “Should George Bush be prosecuted for his administration’s approval of torture?” We agreed that all of the evidence that I used should point in that direction. After a few days of HARD work, I got that one done and received $50 for both papers.

A few days later, I got a challenge. A high school senior needed a paper he had written twice completely rewritten in order to graduate high school. I took it on. It turned out that every single one of his sources on his works cited page was completely bogus and the entire paper was a rant on taxes. I took my magic Dell and my powers of internet research and crafted a paper that expressed a simplified, focused view of his views on taxes from a conservative viewpoint. This was torture, as I am a dyed in the wool democrat with socialist leanings. My herculean efforts were rewarded with $75, which was used to pay my electric bill and take the kids out to the cheap pizza place. (Pizza Mart, on Main st in Mesa AZ rules, by the way. $13 for a large pizza, pitcher of soda, and order of mozzerella sticks.)

I received another call today, this one may pan out to be a weekly gig. If so, I will work very hard not to blow it.

I’ve actually been learning a great deal while doing this. I’ve had to do papers in both APA and MLA format. I’ve researched tax code, constitutional law, psychology and crafted excellent papers, all the while maintaining a 4.0 in my own studies.

I do have one important rule: I will not write papers for anyone  at my own school. Call this professional ethics, call it protecting my butt, whatever. I just hope it’ll cover the bills until I can get a real job.

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