The Term Paper Artist

Nick Mammatas is a very talented writer, and he's lucky enough to be able to make a living off of his talent. Unfortunately, some would argue that he used his "powers" for evil. For a couple of years Nick was a freelance writer who specialized in writing up term papers for college students. He would receive his assignments through a broker and then craft the term paper on virtually any subject. It's important to note that as part of the contract, the papers were supposed to serve as only a model of sorts for the client. The paper wasn't for them to hand in as their own, yet of course some of them did. The entire process is legal under our first amendment rights. The business had three main clientele groupings: "DUMB", one-timer, and foreign. The "DUMB CLIENTS" (as they were referred to by the author) were students who weren’t very smart. They lacked the creative thinking necessary to successfully make a term paper. Whenever he would be assigned to one of these clients, Nick would know to make it as simple as possible, so he would raise less suspicion. The one-timers would use the service for a plethora of reasons. Whether they were swamped with classes, an English major in a physics class (or vice versa), or their mom wanted them to, all were welcome to pay for a paper. The final classification is the foreigners. The language barrier prevents the client from being able to write their own paper. They are usually brilliant in all other aspects.



During the interview, Nick came off almost exactly as one would imagine a writer of his kind would. Having even equated his craft to the same kind of freedom as those expressed by neo-Nazis, he didn’t seem too remorseful. If a client would give him a hard time, Nick would send it to the professor. The fact that the students were cheating themselves made him okay with writing them. As he put it, “karma has a way of working in my favor”.



At first after reading the article and listening to the interview, I was deadest in thinking that Nick was a little arrogant punk. I even imagined him writing the papers in a cheap apartment and typing away sinisterly. My opinion changed the more I thought about it. He was the stereotypical poor writer. I have nothing against a man trying to make a living. For the most part too, he was giving model for the client to rewrite. If a client is going to plagiarize the paper and break the contract, they deserve to be punished. Other than that, I don’t find anything wrong with the system. I’ve had writer’s block before and wasn’t able to articulate concepts I know to be true into words. Does that mean I don’t know the Krebs cycle works? Absolutely not. In my opinion an entire class shouldn’t be decided upon by how well you can write your ideas down. It doesn’t show whether or not you really understand what was taught to you. Nick‘s job was to circumvent a faulty method of grading for his clients. The bad guy isn’t Nick, it’s the professor who summarizes a semester of learning into 10 pages.