Many of them include outlines, too...

August 25, 2005 1:48 PM

Remember how you wrote when you were in high school? Would you have been secure enough to post one of your essays online? [.doc files] Essay.org has compiled a collection of essays (in various languages), in order to "provide free essays for entertainment, education, and publishing." (My favorites are definitely the persuasive essays.)
posted by voltairemodern (19 comments total)

Isn't this just another site where kids can find copies of papers to turn in as their own?
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 1:53 PM on August 25, 2005 [1 favorite]

I wish we would have had the Internet when I was growing up...then I could have copied crappy essays for free!
posted by elquien at 1:54 PM on August 25, 2005

Isn't this just another site where kids can find copies of papers to turn in as their own?

I'm still not sure. There are so many terrible essays, it's hard to believe anyone would copy them. On the other hand, it does link to "The Paper Store"...
posted by voltairemodern at 2:00 PM on August 25, 2005

When I was teaching high school Freshman Composition, I used to bust students all the time for turning in papers they didn't write. It was an immediate F, no chance for redo. My policy on plagiarism was well-established. I'm sure some of my students hated that they had a teacher who knew more about the Internet than they did. Tough. Pay attention in class and write your own paper.
posted by mrbarrett.com at 2:02 PM on August 25, 2005

Oh my word, some of these "persuasive" essays definetly need a little work; or at least a debate course. This one really should not jump to conclusions.
posted by cleverusername at 2:25 PM on August 25, 2005

The Bible has been rewritten many times, but when it comes right down to it, all of the rewrites of the Bibles scriptures mean the same. No matter what religion you may be.

Umm...what?
posted by NationalKato at 2:30 PM on August 25, 2005

Isn't this just another site where kids can find copies of papers to turn in as their own?

Using the internet is a terrible source for plagiarising essays, it's so easy to get caught. It doesn't take long to enter a string of text into google to see if someone's been cheating... but alas idiots will do it anyway.
posted by bobo123 at 2:30 PM on August 25, 2005

I wonder if they'd accept my WRI121 process analysis paper, "How to Convince Someone to Commit Suicide"...
posted by mullingitover at 2:33 PM on August 25, 2005

That last one there (the "persuasive essays" link about gun control) should try, as quickly as he can, to move to the United States and get a job as a speechwriter in Washington. He's already writing exactly the kind of stuff those people are looking for, and any further education might ruin him; cogent, well-thought arguments are pretty frowned upon in politics.
posted by koeselitz at 2:53 PM on August 25, 2005

I wonder why my empoyer blocks essays.org? It's not like we employ high school students around here.
posted by raedyn at 3:05 PM on August 25, 2005

I wish we would have had the Internet when I was growing up...then I could have copied crappy essays for free!

I wish we would have had the Internet when I started teaching comp - it would have been much easier to Google suspicious papers than to access the fraternities' essay vaults.
posted by bibliowench at 3:23 PM on August 25, 2005

Lazy students don't know how to copy these days. Geez. I had the most bust your balls teachers ever on copying, the entire class called her a nazi, down the the point of actually comparing all copies of homework against others (caught her doing this), never mind the internet.

I copied the entire year's homework and got a solid 70%. Reworded every single sentence, left parts out, moved paragraphs about, and (since it was a lab class) purposely made mistakes in equations and answers to them. Even did it all written by hand. To add authenticity, I erased several equations and rewrote them, and plenty of white out on penned parts as well. And of course I used at least 5 or 6 different pens and colours.

Didn't even hear a peep about it. I did hear the teacher complain to me that most of the other students had cheated.

Just gotta use your brain. 'Course I could have used it to learn the class material, rather than learn systems analysis...
posted by shepd at 3:24 PM on August 25, 2005

I agree, shepd. Kids today have it too easy. Back in my youth, we didn't have the internet. If you wanted to use your computer to plagiarise an essay, you had to look for the floppy disk your university-aged sister's friend had used to type up her Philosophy 101 paper on Descartes' a priori proof on your Apple II, change it around using cumbersome ol' WordStar, and then print it out on a slow dot matrix printer before handing it in as your Grade 12 enriched English free writing assignment. (Teacher looked at it with interest but was too intimidated by the subject, I think, to ask me a single question about it. She just gave me 90%).
posted by senor biggles at 3:36 PM on August 25, 2005

I was always good at writing in high school, I just never turned anything in.
posted by Dean Keaton at 4:29 PM on August 25, 2005

Would you have been secure enough to post one of your essays online?

Oh, Lord no. Well, I might have been, and that would have even made it worse. Thank the good Lord we had nothing like the internets for enhancing our embarrassment in HS. Most of our mistakes never made the light of day.

Of course even now, I have trouble with the language, what with spurious apostrophes, even when I know better, that only makes it worse, and uncomfortable spelling issues, especially when the spell checker is a bit laggardly, not to mention a few indignant comments here and there that still haunt me. Add in the raging hormones, and total inexperience of high school. Oh my. Good luck to these folks. Us oldsters had our misdeeds buried so much more easily.
posted by caddis at 5:22 PM on August 25, 2005

I was a much better writer when I was 15. I had not developed the snark and sarcasm reflex I have built up over years of internet usage. Nowadays, everything I write sounds argumentative from the get-go.
posted by nightchrome at 6:10 PM on August 25, 2005

This makes me want to submit the essay I wrote about World War I beginning when there was an attempted assasination attempt on Hitler, when he was attending the royal wedding of Henri de Navarre in Prague.
posted by jb at 6:59 PM on August 25, 2005

Oh, and then he threw some communists out of the window. That was the defenestration of Prague in 1918.
posted by jb at 7:00 PM on August 25, 2005

I REMEMBER THIS ONE!

1st graf: Introduction. Thesis sentence at the end.
2nd graf: Dispute the conclusion. First sentence could be, e.g. "Some may say," etc.
3rd graf: Support your argument.
4th graf: Your strongest argument in favor of your position.
5th graf: Conclusion. Rephrase your thesis sentence.

Rinse and repeat.
posted by spiderwire at 9:34 PM on August 25, 2005