1977-2008

Jaime was one of my best friends in the world.  I think alot of people are going to end up saying this about her, in fact.

She completed three different college degrees- BS in neuroscience, BA in teaching and Master’s in Industrial Design.   I have felt like she didn’t really get to enjoy the results of any of them, but Jaime worked in ways that I don’t fully understand.*  Her life was about the journey and the people she met along the way.  She lived fast paced and always had energy for people.  She had inexhaustible enthusiasm for something, always.

Jaime was eclectic and this photo really captures that; she is getting her nails done and being perfumed or oiled, while at the same time, the results of drunken debauchery reveal themselves in the background.   Jaime was a master of friendship, summa cum laude.  She did it automatically and without even thinking about it.  She made everyone feel important so they always wanted to be friends with her, and Jaime had lots of other high quality friends that you could then be friends with in turn.  Jaime was ALWAYS building a social network, because she thought that relationships were the most important thing in life.    In this, Jaime may have valued us all more highly than we value ourselves, and that is what we are going to miss most of all.

* Jaime was a teacher, of gifted science students in North Carolina, and of diplomats’ children in Okinawa, Japan.  She also tutored special needs kids, drove them around in her car and made them her friends too.  Jaime wasn’t a school dilettante, she had a mission for each of her degrees that always came down to people.  She also visited Catholic missionaries in Ghana.   She had multiple careers in a very short time…

What was really funny to me was reading one of the justifications offered by Quality Bullshit, as to why they had no reservations about offering their service to students.   Fundamentally, they question the usefulness of writing term papers for the purposes of learning, and they emphasize the stress that the students are under in having to perform these Herculean tasks of research.  Finally, one rep of QBS states that maybe colleges will learn a lesson from this mushrooming cheating phenomenon, and be forced to re-evaluate their methods.

Let’s fast forward to today.  I certainly NEVER question the value of a term paper or essay to the learning process.  Writing is a massively-resource intensive activity for your brain.  When I am writing, I use my frontal lobe to concentrate and sharpen my prose, but the words, concepts and connections come from many other parts.  Sadly, writing is also a solitary activity that requires concentration, so it is not very popular today, whereas in the 60’s with no digital media, folks might have been a little more willing to put time and effort into writing because they had little else to do.

However, I have most definitely rationalized my term paper company on the grounds that massive cheating will force our huge, 19th century education system to start addressing people’s new 21st century needs- how to love and support themselves, grow food and find land if needed, or use technology, knowledge and a dedicated career skill set to participate in urban high density environments while those are still viable.  Most of all, what is needed is a comprehension of our totality of connection to everything, living or allegedly ‘dead,’ including other members of the human species, but also animals, plants, rivers and other natural phenomenon.

Instead, we have vultures like Coca Cola circling the decaying, complacent corpse of American education, dropping their sugar dispensers like droplets of foul poison, slowly helping rot our children’s health and undermine the first building block of their education, good nutrition.  Because, how can they feel good about themselves and their chances if they don’t even ‘feel good’ at all?  How can they ever feel good if their bodies become accustomed to massive doses of sugar at every meal?  This is one of the many ‘accessory’ problems- parasites- that inflict suffering on a system with no purpose, direction or faith in its underlying mission.

Anyway, the point is that Quality Bullshit believed change would come to the system, and we remain in much the same educational dynamic today, with the added wrinkle of distance learning.  GoodTermPaper rationalizes that change will come to the system, but surely realizes this is putting up a mailbox in La La land.  Even the changes colleges implemented to prevent cheating-multiple drafts, smaller writing assignments and discussion questions- have just given GTP more opportunities to provide students with great papers.

Dickerson chides the term paper industry for its active sabotage of America’s educational future, its calculated and cold disregard for academic integrity.  I take the author’s criticism seriously and I reflect upon it.  I do offer the germination of a promise in response.

If it comes to the point where our GTP clients, or any other person who has ’suffered’ at hand of a term paper agency and is therefore unable to complete the requirements of their current job- we will ’step in’ and do their job for them, by proxy.  No, we will not commit fraud or pose as anyone, we will simply receive those tasks that the working professionals deem necessary for outsourcing.

Please bear with me, this is not the horrifying scenario that so many are eager to sound the giant horn about.  Credential fraud is a very serious issue in industries such as the airlines, forklift operators, sewage plant managers, doctors (well obviously), etc.  GTP will never participate in any such thing nor will we associate with anyone who does; those positions are MISSION CRITICAL to the health and success or our nation.

However, let me ask you a theoretical question.  Let us suppose that all the banking and brokerage executives in the United States had availed themselves of GTP or some other firm’s service during their college years.  Let’s imagine that they all committed academic fraud, and their entire credentials are null and void.

Do you think that the current situation would be ANY WORSE if this had happened?  You would really have to convince me in detail how we could have screwed that up any better than it ultimately ended up being screwed up!

Similarly, English and Philosophy assignments written by us aren’t going to cause planes to crash into things.  However, if we inadvertently step over the line and do too much for a student and they need us later, we WILL BE THERE.  We will be there to do the same quality job that they know and expect from us.  We will continue to exist and provide service, because other, inferior companies will be there to pick up the slack and drop the ball if we do not.  America is my country, and I stand behind it.  I will not allow its professional integrity to be assailed.  America, I have got your back.

This scenario, where some people ‘attend’ jobs and others actually work them, is perfect on many levels (somewhat reminds me of the movie Gattaca).  Some folks have good looks, charm, personality and networking skills that are essential for success in business.  Other folks are more reticent, scholarly, they work best alone where they can concentrate.  They dread picking out clothes for the office and going to cocktail hour.  They would do anything to avoid this fate and they sure would love just working on their own computer whenever they want.

For the actual jobbers themselves, the benefits are obvious- a reliable and articulate group of experts they can count on to back them up in meetings, presentations, reports, etc.  Of course, the salary will have to be shared in an equitable way- both jobber and worker contribute in their own ways, according to their own styles.

Well, duh.  Everyone knows this.  Good lucking people have charisma, and everyone loves following a guy with charisma.  In fact, most presidential elections come down to who is taller or better looking.  Don’t believe me?  Have a look at the mugs at some of the runner ups.

And we shouldn’t just dismiss this idea out of hand, either.  Sure, we all know the dumb jock stereotype- but what if a former president of the Harvard Law Review is also a jock?  What if we had a president with a mind so orderly and healthy that besides managing the unenviable feat of being a major nerd, also managed to keep his body in shape too?  That might tell us that an individual like that takes ALL of his responsibilities seriously.  It might also suggest that such a person would be less susceptible to health and emotional problems, losing his temper, etc.

Think I am crazy?  Think of it like this.  Would you rather have Obama, a man that feels good and feels good about himself, talking to the Iranians and Putin?  Or would you prefer McCain, an American hero so wounded by his Viet-Cong tormentors that he cannot raise his arms above his head?  A sick man is an unhappy man, unfortunately, and perhaps I am attributing to the American people too much insight but I believe they sensed this as well.  (Obviously, McCain is a hero, but the same experiences that made him a hero might not make him the best president for us right now).

We could also compare Obama’s physique with that of Clinton.  Clinton’s chest was a soft, puffy mass of flesh that quivered when he walked.  Obama has a reasonable, if not roided up physique.  I believe Obama is also much happier with his wife, and his children are much better looking as well (Although Chelsea I think grew into her face rather nicely).

I do have one question though.  Did this photo-shoot go through with Obama’s permission?  Because if a paparazzi was taking the shots at 1000 yards with a high res lens and had a clear line of sight…that could be an oversight the secret service should probably look into.  That kind of leads me to believe that this picture wasn’t an accident, which makes President Elect Obama….

A Shameless Exhibitionist!

It was all well and good for everyone to have a very well rounded, general education when America was King of the Hill.  When careers were for life, mutual funds were blue chip, and coastal boundaries were stable (mostly). Today, I think we all need to be a little sharper.

If college is to increase your wealth position instead of your debt position, then it must have a strong causal connection to reaching a coveted goal.  Alot of times, for many people, this is working in an established category of organizations, like banks, restaurants, national parks or riverboats.  Are you sure, as an 18 year old, in which of these you want to end up for your entire life?

Maybe 1 in 100 18 year olds will have that kind of vision.  For the rest of us, there is college, an intermediate,  beer filled womb that delays our emergence into the adult world.  There is a good chance that your life’s work will not be determined by the classes that you take in college.

I know someone who took on 100k in student loans to get an English degree.  Since I have an English degree myself, I can enlighten you as to the job forecast and one’s ability to pay down such loans- nada.  Unless you are going to law school, med school, business school or are just killing time before entering your family’s fortune cookie business- paying down those loans working low wage jobs is going to be a lifetime proposition.

I also know somebody who spent years and lots of money to get a teaching degree.  She got a job at a rich school which was supposed to be about accelerated learning.  However, she had personality conflicts with the students, who really just wanted to be lazy and be kids and saw her as ‘fresh meat.’  These little rich snobs started making up stories about her falling asleep at her desk, because she wouldn’t let them cheat on their tests.  This friend of mine ended up getting blackballed by the entire public school system for that state, and hasn’t been back to teaching since.  She is pursuing another degree.

This was not a series of  ‘poor decisions’ but a deliberate, planned and elaborate theft of resources.  The laws that deregulated banking and allowed this to happen were piggybacked onto 9-11 and Patriot Act legislation.  Thus, the groundwork was laid several years in advance.  From there, it was a clever multi step process:

1.  Make bad loans for half million dollar houses to truck drivers pulling in 25K a year.  Make sure the loans are ‘no money down’ and ‘no payment for 24 months’ to make them very enticing indeed.

2.  BUNDLE about a hundred of so or these loans into securities, i.e. ‘real estate futures.’

3.  Get the equity analysists (rating firms) to rate these securities as triple A.

4.  Sell these so-called triple A securities to the unsuspecting, thereby severing any connection between the decision maker for the loan (the bank or bank officer) and the ultimate sucker left holding the bag.

Bonus points:  use these methods to engender a crisis so severe that American companies can get rid of their legacy costs by defaulting on all pensions!

What a fabulous, ingenius heist, far more interesting than a vault break in, and far more lucrative.  In this case, the ‘vault’ was accumulated, hard earned money being stored in things like mutual funds.  The thieves convinced everyone to trade their money for magic beans.  The thieves made ALOT ALOT ALOT of money on this deal, I can tell you that.

I see two possibilities here.

A)  When the scandal broke, Jackson intended originally to remain silent about his informant role, even if he endured criticism.  However, constituents from Jackson’s district have picketed outside his office, demanding his resignation.  CNN even played the tiny violin for the Congressman’s financial plight.  Said Jackson:  “I have less money now than when I entered public service…I have to borrow money from my brothers to buy Christmas presents for my little kids and to pay my super high priced attorney.”  (i am paraphrasing but this was the gist of it).

So, maybe Jackson Jr. has reached a breaking point?  Feeling ‘hung out to dry’ by the Feds?  While his good name is dragged through the mud, Blagojevich still lurks and the seat remains unplopped upon.  Jackson couldn’t possibly be appointed Senator NOW, too much doubt has been cast upon his candidacy.  During the CNN interview last week, Jackson stopped his wife from answering when the reporter asked if it were possible that Jackson could still be appointed given the taint of scandal.  Jackson stopped her from saying something, and then gave an odd answer himself…interesting.

The only way Jackson could possibly get the seat at this point is just this kind of revelation.  The Feds will surely be antagonized by the move, but for Jackson, too much is at stake.  He could be hailed as a hero, and gain one of 100 highly coveted positions without the trouble of a lengthy campaign.

or

B)  That is not what is going on at all.  Jackson’s people are trying to preempt some truly damning revelations yet to come.  Because after all, he is truly ‘doubling down’ by going public about being an informant, right?  I mean, he’s now a known tattle tale and that would surely damage some of his connections in Illinois.  Unless, the political hay that could be made by a true skeleton-revealer, plus the clout that just comes with being a Senator- an irresistible temptation, and a huge gamble.  If he doesn’t get the seat, he has possibly weakened his position.

I always joked with Gitta that term papers were the perfect recession business, along with the well recognized alcohol, tobacco and mortuary services.  We are a society obsessed with education, driven by the lash of necessity and cruel wages to better ourselves at the fount of university.  And the kicker is, that college degree doesn’t even guarantee much of anything, absent a long term plan and a committed scholar.  Still, even given the tenuous connection between graduation and long term, gainful employment (at least for lazy bums of my ilk), the term paper business will survive by the sheer weight of parents’ hopes, dreams and expectations for their children.  Parents ante up for meal plans, rooms, credits, taxes, books and spending money.  GTP is there to turn some of that spending money into papers for classes, which frees up our clients to work more hours, party more hours, or sleep more hours.

We in America may well be frozen in an archaic system of education, one in which collegiate attainment often suffers due to poor preparation in high school.  Out of all subjects, perhaps writing is the most overlooked.  Writing actually takes tremendous concentration and attention to a myriad of details and second and third order effects.  You’ve all heard how MTV, then Ipods, cell phones, video games and those nasty little pocket lasers that burn your eyes if you look straight at them are eroding the morals and certainly attention spans of our youth.  Let’s include adults, children, teenagers and toddlers on that list as well, and not just take out all our complaints on the old ‘youth’ pinata.  Toddlers, yes- Ipod baby rattles, just a matter of time folks, just a matter of time.

So even in this recession, gtp will have customers with extra money who need help with their writing.  However, the 2 to 3 percent cuts in college budgets I keep hearing about are worrisome, as are the implications of the credit crisis for FAFSA and other student loans.  Plus, if Ford, GM and Chrylser go under, that is a tremendous blow that takes tens of thousands of hard working parents out of the ranks of viable bill payers for their college age children.

NOT GOOD.  So at GTP, we are concerned about America even though we are sitting pretty ourselves.  We have all our eggs in your basket, America.  The colleges and universities are the most respected and prestigious in the world, and we are honored to be ‘tour guides’ on the journeys of so many students.   The macro system is obviously in profound reorganization mode, and that will impact our world in unexpected ways.

6 months ago I was delighted to discover that when I put in term paper and set my google preferences to display 100 results, goodtermpaper was ranked…101.  Not on the first, largest possible page, quite, but chomping at the gate, clearly showing potential.

Today when I checked, we had firmly established ourselves in the top 100 results for term paper- which is the most common description of our service, even if essay is often more appropriate.  ‘Term paper mill’ is a derogatory, dismissive term- as if we were cutting and stacking nouns, verbs and clauses.  Yet its ubiquity is what makes term paper the be all and end all search for our business.

Folks, we are number 66- Mario Lemieux’s number- 1/3 of the way through the 100 sites that were in front of us.

So, who actually GOES THROUGH six pages of results to find a website?  And aren’t you worried that google will change and shoot you down again?

My theory is that business will start trending upward once we hit about number 35 or so.  Of course the infamous algorithms (vicious, multi-headed monsters that devour your text and callously pronounce page rank) can always wreak havoc, but our position isn’t built on gimmicks- just solid, well written text about term papers, admission essays, powerpoints and anti-plagiarisim.

If we get to the top ten I might be a bit more busy than I am used to!

Practicality can come in many forms. A class can benefit a student because it fulfills a requirement for a major or minor, or because it satisfies an elective demand of an arbitrarily insistent university. There is always that. A class can be also be a benefit by being really easy, or being somewhat challenging.

A really easy class can be good because it lets you bring up your GPA without, in many instances, having to even attend the lecture all that often.   Introductory classes in every discipline are often conducted from a commanding lecture podium and overhead projector in a very large, stadium shaped room.  Obviously, if you are fairly intelligent, you can coast off the book and just show up for the midterm and final.  If you use this strategy, however, I do advise that you attend at least some of the TA sessions, where much of the nuts and bolts work of comprehending material comes in.  You may not even need a supplement to the course text to know what’s going on, but TA sessions are also often where they hand out the assignments.  If your knowledge of the subject has any weak spots, be sure to ask your TA for help as he/she will appreciate explaining something that is basic for them.  TA’s are also often nervous in front of these classes, as many of them are just dedicated graduate students that are not cut out for the flair of public speaking.  You can help set their mind at ease by moving the session along with a good question or two.

But we were talking about English Lit.  What I advise, even if you cannot sit for hours on end and thoroughly digest the book you are assigned to read, is to make a determined proxy effort via Cliff Notes.  Many people will rant and rave about how AWESOME it is to sit down in a cafe, or on the beach, and just read a book.  To put yourself in the intricately painted scenarios, to stand side by side with a character as the writer’s world congeals and whips around him/her, to cherish every word of a genius, world class author…

But not everyone is cut out for long reading sessions that require absolute focus, concentration and sitting still (at least in body).  So the natural reaction is to reject and resent the advice to really ‘feel’ the book and let it sink in- this is what gives the liberal arts the fairy rap that it has.   Well, I am telling you that those feelings are REAL and that you can get much the same feeling for the text by reading cliff notes.

Your feeling and sense of the text is what will allow you to come up with a good paper topic.  Your thesis should be somewhat creative, but not off the wall crazy, and should be logical and well ordered.  But your inspiration to write a good thesis has to come from the feelings you distill over the reading of a long text.

Take the ‘Old Man and the Sea’, for example.  Hemingway’s brief treatise on an old man determinedly hanging on to the catch of his life while sharks mercilessly whittle away his gains is sad and triumphant all at the same time.  Even though the Old Man came back to shore with only a gigantic skeleton, and relentless sea vultures had stolen away every tangible (edible) bit of sustenance from his journey, the Old Man was left with a great story and a whopper of a trophy.  And the reader is invariably left with a profound moment of reflection on human perseverance, while at the same time poignantly cognizant  of the evanescence of all achievement.

But, of course, you would not know that if you didn’t read the book.

Or would you?  Actually, if you give the Cliff Notes version a serious and heartfelt rendition in your brain, you might get enough of a sense of it to pull an A.

Cliff Notes are great because they are written by dedicated scholars and phD’s who are deeply in love with their subject.  They know the Great Book inside and out, and it may have even changed their lives or added some valued bit of perspective to them as people.  Thus, they are seriously relating every important bit of plot development while relating what it all means to the society at the time, the writer’s other works, etc.  You can draw from this knowledge (in your own words, don’t copy their words or their ideas!)  You can use their ideas, throw in a little here and there to your own argument, but do not make a straight linear transition of their doctoral thesis to your paper.  That will not sound right to your professor.

Instead, just sit back with the Cliff Notes, and pretend you are reading a novel.  A really fast moving novel that gets right to the point, and doesn’t waste any time on setting the scene as great writers are wont to do.  If there is something important about the setting or time period that is vital to the larger work as a whole, or perhaps symbolic of something, you can be sure the Cliff Notes will not hesitate to tell you!  They love that stuff, really.

So if your are in an English class but you are limited in time/energy, go get the Cliff Notes and give them the serious, tender loving attention you would give to the book if you were a wealthy aristocrat with a huge library and infinite leisure at your disposal.  There is no shame in it.  The glaring yellow savior is NOT a hack or slacker’s tool, if it is truly used with respect and discretion.  The WRONG WAY to use Cliff notes is to read them as fast as possible and try to throw their ideas into a random mishmash of hackneyed prose.  You still have to make a thoughtful outline for your paper, and you still have to know what you are talking about.

Just please, before you begin on the yellow and black booklet, say a prayer to the Lords of the Great books and let them know that you do perceive their truth and beauty.  Just mention as an act of contrition that like the great poet John Keats, you are really pressed for time.

Oh. okay. Well, I wrote alot of stuff about how to write a term paper, but nobody commented, so my ego lost interest and sought other ways to satisfy my innate, magnetic, powerful vanity.

But I can tell you some stuff about college, particularly yinz guys who are into the humanities. Or ‘arts and sciences,’ is that what we are calling them now? What is that, like paintings and test tubes?

Well, today, I am going to tell you all about what courses to take and not to take in college.

Logic- awesome, but you’re gonna have to work.  Logic is alot like high school geometry, in that you have assumptions or axioms that you live by, and use them to tackle a problem and construct a solution.  It is not like algebra, where the equation is simply missing something and you are called upon to guess what it is, and only one answer out of about 400 billion possible answers is actually right.  In logic, you get to build a proof out of interesting symbols, which may indicate negation, if A then B, or either or.

Logic is a foundation upon which many beliefs are built, and its strictly, well logical structure can make an opinion absolutely unassailable.  For instance, lots of women believe that “all men are scum.”  Then, maybe a woman who believes that meets Stan.  If she can bring herself to believe that he is a man…well, you know.  So logic can really help you in holding popular opinions.

Logic is really rigorous, as befits a discipline committed to “dead certainty” (my old Logic teacher’s favorite phrase, actually it was ‘dead cert’).  It can be a challenging course that you will have to attend (or at least closely follow the textbook), but the reward is that you can get a huge whiteboard and magic markers, then go around and ‘prove’ to your friends that they are really dumbasses, or drunk, or even ostriches.

Sociology-  Ooh, I am gonna have to give this one a no-go.  I took one class in this, vaguely I remember it was about health, welfare and politics in communist China.  The instructor was great, but the course was a challenge, and I just have to ask, ‘to what end?’  I was a freshman trying to prove myself in upper level disciplines, but I had no motivation to pursue this line of thinking any further.  I remember studying VERY hard for the midterm exam, which was essay.  I spent many, many hours studying charts and graphs, and then committing to memory the implications that those numbers held.  And then constructing a coherent argument from those.  It is possible, but why?

More to come minyana…