"The Term Paper Artist"

Nick Mamatus's "The Term Paper Artist" is an article discussing how a man turns his love of writting into a profitable business by writing other student's term papers.  Nick Mamatus starts the article by stating his passion for writing, "I always wanted to be writer, but was told from an early age that such a dream was futile. After all, nobody ever puts a classified ad in the paper that reads “Writers Wanted.” Then, in the Village Voice, I saw just such an ad. Writers wanted, to write short pieces on business, economics, and literature. It was from a term paper mill, and they ran the ad at the beginning of each semester."  He then goes on to speak about the "term paper biz" and the different types of people he generally helps.
Nick hits a key part of the article when he goes to describe how he writes the term papers for others.  He says, "[His friends] generally made the same fundamental error — they tried to write term papers. In the paper mill biz, the paper isn't important. The deadline, page count, and number of sources are."  This is a key portion of the article as it also gives insight on what college life is about, getting the right number of pages and sources rather than content.  Nick Mamatus finishes the article explaining his feelings on writing other's papers saying he doesn't feel too bad about what he did.

This article displays the growing trend in America, the trend that people are becoming more lazy and more greedy.  This trend can be seen in nearly all aspects of the American culture from the number of obese people, the "unnecessary" advances in technology, and now paying others to do work that isn't theirs.  This trend is having a "snow-ball" affect as it's starting to become more accepted by the majority of people, and this is what's causing the snow ball affect because it is becoming more accepted by the community that others don't feel as out of place by becoming lazy than they may have felt twenty years ago.  The same applies to the greedy aspect except it can be said that money has truly become the central focus of America and its society.  It's almost sad to see that it's gotten to the point that someone would would be willing to do someone else's work for money.  These two trends show how our society has changed over the years in a negative way.

It can also be said that this article is a testament to the educational level and value of students.  The simple fact that someone would have to pay for someone else to do their work is mind-blowing, it shows the laziness in the student, but you can also debate that the reason the student is paying for the paper to be written for them is because they don't know how to write a paper properly.  Nick Mamatus explains the types of students he deals with saying, "In broad strokes, there are three types of term paper clients. DUMB CLIENTS predominately... the second type of client is the one-timer.... [and] the third group is perhaps the most tragic: They are well-educated professionals who simply lack English-language skills."  He goes on to explain how the "dumb clients" are the ones usually seek his help and describes them as "They must buy model papers simply because they do not understand what a term paper is, much less anything going on in their assignments. I don't believe that most of them even handed the papers in as their own, as it would have been obvious that they didn't write them. Frequently I was asked to underline the thesis statement because locating it otherwise would have been too difficult. But that sort of thing was just average for the bottom of the barrel student-client."  One reason may be, as Mr. Carty and Nick Mamatus say, "It's because students have never read term papers."  So naturally, they don't know how to approach or how to write a term paper.

Whether or not it was intentional or unintentional, this article reflects on major issues in America today: the laziness and greed of people, and the average level of educational at  a standard college.  Whether it's the student's fault, the teacher's fault, or society's fault, it is apparent that America is not as flawless as it tries to portray itself.  Obviously, not everyone in America is lazy as the writer shows, "Finally, she explained to me the family philosophy — 'Since our family places great emphasis on education, [boy] fully accepts that the only guarantee for a good and stable future can be only achieved through outstanding education,'" but a vast majority are, and it only shows how America has changed over the years, in quite possibly a negative way.