Photo: Pixabay

I have been hosting a number of guest posts by essay-writing service providers and some have called me out on it, albeit in your always polite way.

So, why do I do it?

Part of the reason is my own experience. As an awkward teenager, I remember struggling with a particularly tough assignment at school. My father came to the rescue. Although he was only supposed to offer some minor assistance, he ended up writing the whole thing (sorry, Mr. Anestidis). So, I don’t feel I’m in a position to cast any stones.

Strangely enough, when the next assignment came up, I was ready to tackle it—and I did. I have no idea how or why, but simply watching my dad at work seemed to vicariously teach me how to do it myself.

Then, there is the fact that the missus has tutored students in the past. As part of her job, she, too, has helped with their essays—often a euphemism for writing essays on their behalf. My wife’s experience also dispelled for me the caricature of the rich student paying to cruise through university while they’re out partying every night. None of my wife’s students were like that. All but one were heavily involved in their essay writing process. And all, I’m sure, gained a lot from the experience.

Internet Services

I was recently discussing with my wife the emergence of direct, public marketing campaigns for essay-writing services to students. What used to be a well-guarded secret, circulated among students in hushed whispers, is now a publically advertised service. There are even sites that evaluate essay-writing companies. And they don’t lurk around the Internet’s darker corners, either: the market is growing under the public eye.

Would it be that having an expert write one of your assigned essays is nowadays perfectly acceptable?

Well, no—at least not where colleges and universities are concerned. They are taking increasingly sophisticated measures against plagiarism as well as against having an original paper written by someone else than the assigned person. Some universities go to such lengths as to request your handwritten drafts and working notes along with the essay (as you can guess, there are now experts that hand you notes and drafts with the essay. You still have to make a copy in your own handwriting, though). Other schools request an oral presentation of the essay—chances are that if the essay is not yours, you cannot present it well enough. Sometimes, an unusual word or source can give you away, especially when the supposed writer of the essay cannot explain what it means or how he got hold of the source.

My own opinion is that using an essay-writing service is like using a carving knife: you can create a thing of beauty or you can end up missing a thumb or two.

The essay writer as your editor

Let’s face it: we have all used editors to help us with our assignments. Back at school, the parents play that role: mom and dad help with research, structure, spelling etc. At that age, most teachers find this acceptable or even expect a little help to polish the assignment, as long as you do the main work. Later on, in your professional life, your colleagues may be your editors. In some professions, third-party editing is a mandatory step. For instance, if you are a journalist or a writer, you don’t publish your work unedited. Even in academia, before publishing your article in any established review, two or three peers will review your work and send it back for editing. And all authors are familiar with both the pitfalls of self-editing and the notion of ghostwriting.

So why should this not be the case in higher education assignments?

As you progress with your studies, essay-writing becomes more demanding. Your parents probably cannot and will not continue their editing role. So, you may assign this role to an essay-writing service. The essay is still the product of your own intelligence, and you show diligence by seeking help to provide the best work you can.

The essay writer as your tutor

How do you learn to compose an essay? In the case of my father and me, it was through vicarious learning. The same can apply here. There are rules, methodology, best practices and “don’ts” that you are expected to master. However, maybe you never had a formal course, training you how to do it right. Maybe you only have your own past experience to guide you, and it was neither good nor bad enough to teach you all the lessons. Or, perhaps, you get medium grades despite your best efforts.

Clearly, there is a learning curve that you have to achieve. In this case, hiring an essay writer to give you feedback on your work and teach you the ropes can be an unmissable learning opportunity.

The essay writer as your assistant

Another important skill in later professional life is to be able to delegate work to coworkers and assistants or share the work within a team. You could hire an essay writer as your assistant, to whom you could delegate parts of the job, such as doing the preliminary research, or preparing a draft structure, or editing the end result. This is all about you knowing your strengths and weaknesses, accepting help, and sharing tasks.

In the end, the resulting essay should still be yours: delegating is also about assuming the responsibility of the project on behalf of the entire working team.

Hiring an essay writing service is a valuable outsourcing experience

Even if you’re looking to outsource your whole essay and not type a single word, hiring an essay-writing service can offer some valuable experience. If you choose to “cheat” in your academic life, at least make it a worthwhile experience for your future professional one.

This argument may sound far-fetched; however think about it: in your later professional life, outsourcing is absolutely acceptable—indeed, necessary. Hiring an essay writing service is essentially a case of outsourcing, which, given the risks, should be taken pretty seriously. Later on, it will be considered a skill if you can judge when and what to outsource, how to evaluate offers and select a competent outsourcer, how to contract with them, how to evaluate their work and, finally, how to integrate their deliverable in your own activity.

For example, hiring essay writing services requires that you do a diligent check that the essay is not plagiarized, require the relevant guarantees (like a certificate from some plagiarism-detection service), “own” the end result enough to present it with confidence etc.

A decision to hire an essay writing service to do all of your work for you comes with costs: a monetary one, of course, especially since you will want to hire one of the best essay writing services, such as Custom Writings, but also a moral one and a psychological one, as you may feel anxious. After all, if things go wrong, it is you who will have to face the consequences.

Therefore hiring an essay writer can be a huge life lesson on accepting the cost and responsibility of taking risks, on making decisions, and on learning the difference between bending and breaking the rules.

In the end, this is probably the most important thing essay-writing services can teach you: learning to own your decisions…

The Case For Essay-Writing Services

Powered By the Tweet This Plugin

Tweet This