has anyone ever bought an essay?

[sunnyjim]

there seem to be loads of those 'write your essay for you' sites. HOw on earth do they work? I mean most unis have set text books for a course so how coudl they manage to write your essay for you without those texts?

Every little helps!

the first time I went to uni there weren't any course materials we read books

and you read the core texts and then as much other stuff as you could

and even used your own ideas

moley you got me sussed,yep it is OU

It's undeniably a frustrating situation but I would see it as a (very annoying) hoop jumping exercise and just do it (with a liberal [no pun intended] sprinkling of s)

Goodness, how things change. When I did my degree, back in the mists of time , there were no set texts after the first year. We were always given reading lists by tutors and positivly encouraged to do independern reserch!

we get to use our own reading material aswell

and in fact you picked your own essay titles

is it the ou then? I couldn't be doiung with that system..I would be having huge rows

in fact I did when I did anohter course which was new and going through a validation process and I was very "outspoken"

and in fact now I come to think of it I left one uni because i was so in disagreement with the course and tutors so I know how you feel..i resented having to do a learn to write an essay course when i already had postgraduate degree

mature students are an exquisite pain to tutors I think

Lucky you mb! Depressing isn't it?

I disagree that universities have changed that much. In the departments I've worked in (social science ones) independent though would always be appreciated in a student essay.

I do think Sunnyjim should rethink her idea of doing a PhD if she's got such a low opinion of academia in general and thinks it's better to cheat than to argue her ideas properly.

I examined a PhD which was charged with plagiarism, it was very nearly failed and would have ruined a man's career if it had been. It was a nasty business and IMO it's an extremely stupid thing to do if you do want any sort of academic reputation.

Actually, thinking about it, when I did my PGCE with the OU I was bollocked (and marked down) for disagreeing with my tutor.

They encouraged you to stick to the texts.

She didn't like me one little bit . She was used to compliant 21 year olds (being new to the OU). I came as a bit of a shock to her!

I would never ever hand in something that I fundamentally didn't agree with especially about child rearing matters. When I was at Uni we were encouraged to write independantly.

OK, so what are you are trying to do here is to write an essay which will achieve 3 things:

1.Get you a good mark
2.Show off your sophistication and wider research for future PhD application purposes
3.End up as something you feel morally ok about.

Your priority may, for practical purposes, be #1, but it doesn't mean you can't do a bit of the other two.

Writing so as to achieve several apparently divergent aims is a pretty useful skill - you will need to do the same to get your PhD and again if you want to take your research further. Eg. you might disagree with a particular academic who is the editor of a journal where you want to be published, so you will need to phrase it v diplomatically, or want to tone down results of research (not dishonestly, just in terms of presentation) if stating them too bluntly will mean people don't take it seriously.

Your uni does sound very inflexible though.

It goes without saying that nothing you buy will ever be nearly as good as something you can write yourself

We could come up with any conclusion we liked, but had to back it up with peer reviewed refernces

Have to say that I've been lucky with all my tutors so far, who have encouraged independence and reading outside the course material. Would hate to put anyone off the OU

I think it's partly a Distance Learning thing btw - not surprised to hear it is the OU.

Oh no, zippi (and sunnyjim)... I love mature students. They add so much to any group, and just read and understand things in a different way, not to mention actually giving a shit, which is not always the case with the 18 year olds, bless 'em!

Sunnyjim... I don't know if this is possible (don't know the subject at all) but could you do an essay in which in the first half you show that you have read and digested the course material ('Joe Bloggs (out-of-date article: 1999) argues that blah blah blah is the case, because x, y and z...') and then in the second half you show some alternative points of view ('Bloggs' point of view has more recently been questioned by Someone, who points out that a, b and c'). That way, you show that you've done what my PhD supervisor used to call 'being a good girl' (i.e. citing all the people you are SUPPOSED to cite in these cases regardless of what you think of them) but you also show that you can think for yourself. Then, if you feel that you have been marked down for thinking for yourself, ask for the TMA to be re-marked. A certain proportion of essays will be second-marked anyway, but if you specifically ask for this to happen they should do it.

Oh, and obviously (just to echo everyone else) don't buy an essay! (If you get found out, which is eminently feasible, you will never get accepted to do a PhD, so you have a lot to lose.)

Good luck.

Crossed posts with Kathy (and others). She has good advice.

Oh, the course was good, and the oU good. My tutor was an old baggage! Ofsted inspector....need I say more? So nothing was ever good enough, for all she said we had to use formative assessment in a positive way with the kids, she was bugger all use at doing so herself!

I agree with Fennel (hi Fennel!). I'm also in a social science department and have never told students to 'just stick with the text books'. Can't believe that such advice could be given at a university level course. I am ecstatic when there is evidence that students have read widely, although of course they should have read the textbooks as well!
However, I do mark students down if they are guilty of disregarding the set question in order to get the essay on to a subject they are keen on. For example, 'that's not the real question, what we should be discussing is....'

ellie I did say an exquisite pain

I had thought of doing an ou course and this does put me off as I almost pathologically incapable of directing my attention solely to the matter in hand

do you have very right wing views then sunnyjim?

Its nice that there are people out there who have great university experiences where independant work was supported and encouraged.

Please believe me when I say that it ISN'T like that in all Uni's or all departments.

Being told 'at my university we were encouraged to write independantly' doesn't help me feel any better about the choice i feel I have to make in terms of what essay I write.

fennel, I didn't anywhere say I had a low opinion of academia. I've been trying to explain that my experience with this specific department has been that independant work LOSES you marks and that I fidn that system very hard to work within.

I had to stop reading at the mention of a PhD.... Are you aware that as a researcher the only thing you own is your CREDIBILITY?, that if something like this comes up in the future you might not even be able to find a job in the academic community? If you are not able to disgree with your tutor, how do you expect to present a new finding and defend it against the highly sceptic academic world?

I have gone against my tutors in several occasions but never in the belief that I could have done without enough evidence to support my point. They may have disagreed but I always got a good grade, provided my arguments were well constructed, referenced and supported by examples.

If you are thinking about buying an essay at this point, how do you plan to do as a PhD student/candidate when you really have to demonstrate that you are making a valuable contribution to knowledge to the people that is in the best position to dissect your work to the latest point?? just a thought.

Now, if the tutor is only asking to keep to the course material, you are with the wrong tutor (although it maybe the case this is a procedural essay to teach you how to structure and present a real one, in which case the content is less important than the structure and therefore there's not much point in using valuable time researching other sources).

nope I'm not 'very right wing' - liberal views (which i sometimes disagree with)aren't necesarily left wing.

Right and left wing are an incomplete and two dimensional way of catorgising poltical views.
Stalin and Ghandi have both been cited as 'left wing' but had very different political and economic views.
left - right is primarily an economic scale from total state control to free market.

I am a libertarian in political terms and sit in the centre ground on economic issues.

go here if you want to know more

LOL Zippi...

Sunnyjim, my dh worked for the OU for a while (in Social Sciences), and although they were encouraged to focus on the course material, he'd never have marked people down for reading outside the subject. This suggests that your problem is specifically related to one particular marker (although clearly the system isn't all that conducive to you way of working either). Hence my suggestion that you write an essay which balances a familiarity with the course material with a more critical view, and then be prepared to ask for a re-mark if necessary.

(It may not help you to know that it's not the same in all institutions. But it might help other people who may be considering doing a degree and who stumble on this thread. And you have had some good advice too, I think... not just complacent 'oh it's not like that here' type comments.)

"I have gone against my tutors in several occasions but never in the belief that I could have done without enough evidence to support my point. They may have disagreed but I always got a good grade, provided my arguments were well constructed, referenced and supported by examples."

thats very nice for you. But the last time I disagreed with a tutor I made sure I referenced my argument with work from the LSE publications, the politics section of my local univeristy library, and other recent research papers -

I got marked down for bringing in outside material.