I’m a freshman college student who 1. spells very well, 2. understands the rules of grammar, and 3. has a bit of free time now that they’re scaling back Arrested Development (sob).
The plan: Proofread other students’ papers for fun, practice, and enough funds to support my regional theater addiction.
The problem: How do I advertise? I’d like to put up fliers, but for some reason I feel like that’s a sketchy move. Our professors all encourage that we have other students read our papers, so I don’t feel as though it’s an ethical problem – supply, demand, and apparently spelling is a hot commodity here :rolleyes: – maybe it’s just a holdover from the stringent (and often nonsensical) “plagiarism” statutes of my old high school. (No one but you and a dictionary can proofread your papers, you can ask for help in a vague sense but not a specific one, etc.)
I guess I’m just looking for some feedback: have any of you now-copy editors done it before? What’s a reasonable price? (I was thinking $1.50/page – too low?) Is there an actual ethical quandary here that I’m not seeing?
Any thoughts at all would be very much appreciated.
Your university probably has a writing center, and they might be willing to hire you. Being an official employee of the school will definitely make things a bit easier.
Actually, the best advertising I had was word of mouth. I did put up flyers, but I would offer my services to people I knew and they would tell people they knew and so on and so on.
At our uni, there were comapanies I believe, that did this, I believe their address was www.betteredit.com, they’d just stick up posters around uni. Their ads were aimed at international students.
When you say “curve”, do you mean that the grades are fitted to a normal distribution? If not, I don’t see how it is necessarily a conflict of interest. I once had a class where the professor had the students grade the homework. Each assignment would be split between two graders; you did not grade your own paper.
I agree that you should look into working at the writing center. You might make more money in the “private sector,” (I know I would!) but on the other hand, you never have to worry about not getting paid, you would meet strangers in a neutral place on campus (I’m paranoid), you can use your boss for a reference later in life (better than doing it freelance and not having any references), and when people go crazy on you–and they will (stress combined with a strong sense of entitlement makes people do freaky things)–you can say, “Dude, I don’t get paid to put up with this shit. Go talk to my boss.” Problem solved. Also, I would be wary of possible accusations of plagerism (again, I’m paranoid). I feel safe because I’m at a small institution where most professors know me and know I’m honest, but more than that, I have strict procedures that I have to follow that protect me, and the student, from accusations–which can be a very, very serious problem these days even if you aren’t guilty.