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The culture of human nature is so complex due to the various shades of gray. Marketing my writing skills and fettering out legitimate project leads are a huge part of my day to day tasks. Some days are better than others with a healthy list of potential job leads. However, every job seeker, entrepreneur or salesmen has that moment of desperation, where they momentarily consider a project, a job or a potential buyer they might not normally consider. Sometimes it leads to a big sale. (Think of the rich guy who walks into a high end store wearing polyester lime green pants and an orange checkered shirt–he’s not wearing a 3-piece suit or flashing a Rolex so he’s probably not going to buy anything right?) Other times it leads where you might expect. It leads to nothing at all or a lot of grunt work not worthy of your time.

I had one of those moments last week. I saw an ad for a company seeking writers. The company claimed to provide research reports, book reviews, dissertations and essays to business and students. It sounded like the writer could pick and choose the projects they’d prefer to complete. Immediately I felt a sense of immorality in this offer. I’m that kid who wouldn’t “share” my homework with those who failed to complete their own. If they made a genuine effort to do their homework and just got stuck on one question, that’s one thing. But those kids who rather play video games or watch television than do their homework didn’t get any help from me.

Anyway, I filled out the form figuring I could complete the assignments for companies only. Let someone else write student essays if they wanted to, but I wasn’t going to do it. The company replied that my writing met their criteria and that if I was still interested I would need to write a new sample to ensure that the level of writing from my portfolio was indeed my own. All over the website there was strong language to deter plagiarism. Did anyone see the irony here? Once it dawned on me, I could not continue. This company was so concerned about plagiarism, yet they are provided term papers to students. It’s never said that these student clients would submit the papers as their own, but common sense would indicate that’s the purpose for these papers.

It goes to show just what the written word can accomplish. It can sway your thinking or cause you to interpret reality differently based on what is written or left to interpretation. In all your endeavors, make sure you analyze what’s not being said or written as well as what is.

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