See this is the problem I never got a straight answer out of the multiple business classes we had to take on resume writing and networking. I fucked around for the first three years in college taking general ed classes. By the time I transferred into the business college I had too many credits to apply for their co-op/internship program, I couldnt graduate on time with the internship hours, or some shit. Instead of just doing freelance internships/co-ops I just powered straight through two years of school, taking full time credit hours each summer. On top of this I got a DUI a month before I graduated that I spent almost a full year to fight off successfully. I have ZERO professional experience in one of the worst economic downturns in decades. When 99% of job listings require field related experience how the fuck do you get your foot in the door with no experience? Even personal contact leads dry up once they see my resume... Im fighting for low paid entry level shit and the fact that I have only got some bar work and manual labor jobs. Even in China the easy go to jobs is teaching english, most places require a minimum of one year experience and a TEFL certificate. 99% of the people that get into that by lying about experience and/or buying a fake certificate. I usually can't lie very well to begin with not to mention living a big lie like that. Ive been on one professional job interview here and maybe 3 rejection letters most of my resume/cover letters probably dont even get by the screeners. Having run out of cash Im in desperation mode and my stance on being a 100% moral person is slipping. One of my buddies has offered to vouch for me and claim Ive interned at his family's real estate title agency for the past few years, he does the hiring of interns and theyd talk directly to him. Im also investigating what whoppers to put down for school work, a buddy of mine put Harvard on his resume and claimed he went to Juliard to impress the Chinese schools, he put down one real life contact that his school never called. Honestly I wouldn't/won't feel too bad about it, depending on the business field I get into most of the job work will be on the job training with little to zero to do with my college course work. Im willing to start at the bottom, I don't see being over my head with work I couldnt handle.
None of you fuckers can play with my legos then until I see some credentials. Thinking about it today, it can very much depend on the individual. When I did my degree, I was working full time in a law firm as a clerk. There were four other guys ahead of me, each at various stages of their degree. We had two guys who were the epitome of what we're discussing here: R - Extremely studious. Did everything by the book. Completely scrupulous. F - The opposite. If a corner could be cut, he'd cut the cut in the cut corner. The first instance I saw was a group Torts assignment they did with one of the other guys at work. F did not do a single piece of work on the paper, except when it came time to fax it in. He signed his name on it. R, incredulously, asked him if he was happy signing his name to something he had not made any contribution and riding on his and the other guy's work. F said "yep" and hit send. F is now a partner in a mid size law firm and R is languishing somewhere in wage land. I have, and would again, refer work to F. The difference between the two is that F had the brains, but was lazy. R was hard working, but didn't have the smarts. Neither of them will be building me a bridge.
See this is what my brothers college career amounted to. He graduated 2 years late after failing out and working his way back in. He only graduated in the low 2.0s GPA, from a top ten engineering school. In real world working situations he says it all comes down to decision making and reasoning skills. As it was when he was in school and now that he works in China he says that all of the super studios asians have advanced degrees yet no way to apply it to actually get shit done in the real world. My brother has always "just got it" when it came to engineering and how shit worked, the studious labor never meant anything to him since he naturally could reason the stuff out. God I wish I had turned out like that. I don't think it be cutting corners as much as it would free you up to focus on the more important shit, like not letting the bridge collapse.
Focus- I have been asked to cover for friends before. On a couple of occasions, I felt uncomfortable with the proposal, as it involved lying to a girl I knew, or worse, was friends with, and I told the person I couldn't do it. For smaller things, however, I'm quite happy to oblige, and don't ask for any further information. In every instance, I got away with it very easily. While in most cases, the person asking didn't care enough to trouble me, there were several skeptical individuals whose concerns I was able to assuage quite easily. In general, I give off a vibe of being extremely trustworthy and honest, and in most instances, I am. However, I am also very effective at lying, knowing exactly what to say, what intonation and body language to employ, and never getting the slightest bit worked up over the matter, unless the situation demands fake outrage/anger. In general, keep your lies painfully mundane and simple, your face and voice typical and unaffected, think through the details beforehand, and you'll be fine. The other person might have some inkling of doubt, but not enough to investigate further, let alone call you out. Alt Focus- I don't have a problem with the morality of the service, but rather, its efficacy. Overall, I just don't see what type of "unique" service he is providing here. If it's something small and/or personal, I would rather have my friends help me. They will do it for free, much better, and will seem more trustworthy, anyways. If it's something major and more general (taxes, resume), and none of my friends specialize in it, I would rather have a professional help me. By the way, getting sick leave from work (his only client thus far) with a bogus doctor's note is extremely easy as it is, and if you do such things rarely, no one will care. But overdo it, and not even a note from the Chairman of Surgery at the Mayo Clinic will be enough. Also, as someone very good at both lying and seeing through other's BS can attest to, if I have severe doubts regarding something, not even a million people telling me the opposite will convince me otherwise. (The guys who have talked with me about MMA can well attest to this) And if I decide to investigate further, REALLY investigate, some filthy amateur doing this as a side-job in Miami isn't going to stymie me. It takes a legitimate professional to trick me.
Agreed, but some people don't have friends. I always thought that was the whole point of references in the first place, if you made it 22 years of life and didn't have at least three unrelated people to vouch for you, you're a piece of shit... and would want this type of service. My thoughts exactly
This, to be quite fucking honest. Now, don't get me wrong. I'm not only a huge proponent of the "work smart, not hard" mantra, but I'm also notoriously lazy. But at the same time, I will never ever get someone else to straight up do my work for me, payment or otherwise. Part of this is narcissism - my ego tells me someone else's work is never going to be as good as work I do myself, even if I half-ass it, so why would I bother attaching my name to it? (This part is obviously not a conscious calculation, but more of a pride thing.) But I do think there is something to be said for struggling through difficult classes; oftentimes, some of the most rigorous classes will be the most fulfilling if you put in the work. That's not to say that there isn't ridiculous bullshit work, but only to say that having that easy out - being able to pay someone to do your work whenever you want - makes the entire endeavor much less worthwhile. You start out only paying for those really bullshit assignments, but then perhaps you get the temptation to pay for that paper you would have actually found worthwhile, but just can't do, for time reasons, because you're hungover, or whatever. I go to a university where the standard of quality thought-provoking teaching is high, and currently study abroad at a university where the bullshit quotient is through the roof, so I feel I've kind of seen both sides of this, and by no means have I decided the issue with finality in my own life. If you attend a degree mill, of course you might feel tempted to pay for a bullshit paper here or there. But my question then would be, Why the fuck are you going to that school? You obviously don't want to be there, and your degree isn't worth that much anyway. Go do something you actually want to do. There's probably a different way of looking at it, but that's my view. (My least favorite bit of rigamarole is mandatory attendance policies. I paid for the class, let me decide for myself how often I need to show up. Egypt is nuts about this, and simultaneously quite poor on the teaching metrics I consider important - helping critical thinking, encouraging creative approaches to problems, essentially the things that made the US great as compared to the rote memorization of other countries. But I suppose that's a bit off focus.) Besides, I might be ridiculously naive here, but I do get some sense of accomplishment out of finishing a project or a paper and doing it my way, instead of getting the ready-made solution. Example (spoilered for length): Spoiler My junior year of high school, I was in an AP English class. In AP classes, the end of the year basically becomes the slack-off period - I'd finished my AP exams (which can give college credit), we'd finished with the curriculum for that class, and half of our class days were spent playing board games or Pocket Tanks, while the other half were spent doing things that weren't on the syllabus. Of course, there had to be a grade for the final, so we got assigned a final project - make a ten-minute video presentation about a book of our choosing, detailing its argument and showing it in a creative manner. I got put in a group with two other notoriously lazy people. We saw some other presentations that other groups had slaved over. One had a five minute "making of" video at the end, consisting of a harried-looking girl at five, ten, fifteen hours into video editing this behemoth of a presentation. We quickly decided: Fuck that. Our book was about corporatocracy; its thesis was that people were unaware what corporatocracy was. Cue us running around, videotaping us asking people if they were aware of corporatocracy, followed by them acting clueless. It was fucking hilarious. We video-taped people cracking up when we asked them the question, people getting hostile, people who immediately launched into rants about the government. We had a five-minute making of video in which we showed 30 seconds of editing and five minutes of the other two playing Counter-Strike. Outcome: a grade of 96% and the enduring hate of every group that actually tried. Direct quote from my teacher: "Well, sometimes you just gotta be practical." What's the point of this, aside from making me look like a massive douchebag? Well, I actually got a sense of accomplishment out of that project. I still have it lying around my house somewhere on CD. I thought it was funny, my teacher got a kick out of it, and I remember it with pride. Sure, I cut corners - that is to say, our project was obviously not in the spirit of the assignment - but even in doing that stupid piece of busy work, I got something out of it. tl;dr doing stupid assignments your own way can lead to personal fulfillment. As an aside, just because you don't think you will learn something doesn't mean you won't, because get this: you don't know everything.