Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Shadow Scholar

chronicle.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 115 posts

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#21

Post by rick_2047 »

thefool wrote: post #5

I am involved with a startup working on this problem ( http://GuruFi.com ). Fundamentally this problem is derives from the fact that it is difficult for people to learn how to write and structure their ideas. Hell thats basically the whole point of PhD programs, and people spend years finishing them. With the internet, it becomes really easy to just pay someone else who already knows how to write to do the work for y…

I don't think getting writers only from the top 20 uni will work.

I wouldn't like my high school paper to be edited by a grad student at an Ivey League college

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#22

Post by jorleif »

thefool wrote: post #5

I am involved with a startup working on this problem ( http://GuruFi.com ). Fundamentally this problem is derives from the fact that it is difficult for people to learn how to write and structure their ideas. Hell thats basically the whole point of PhD programs, and people spend years finishing them. With the internet, it becomes really easy to just pay someone else who already knows how to write to do the work for y…

This seems like a great service. The world is moving more and more towards using English as a universal language, and I think that plenty of non-native speakers are at a disadvantage, because they cannot communicate their ideas well enough. For example, of the best-selling business authors, how many are non-native English speakers? I bet not that many. That means that English speakers have a disproportionate influence.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#23

Post by twrensch »

I spent five years teaching at the University level. The beginning of the end of my academic career was receiving an e-mail from a student explaining one of my (programming) assignments and asking if they could write this one too. To me this was an obvious case of VERY incorrectly choosing the "to" address for an e-mail.

I immediately contacted my department head and was ready to apply the school's academic dishonesty policy, which would lead to--at least--failure of the course. It didn't happen. The student came up with a lame excuse, I was chided for harassing the student, and it was all swept under the rug. I was tempted to resign in protest, but kept with it for two more years before quietly leaving academics.

I enjoy teaching, I think I'm good at it and my students tended to agree. Unfortunately, I can't make myself teach in the current educational system here in the US.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#24

Post by rick_2047 »

jorleif wrote: post #19
rick_2047 wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm utterly fascinated, is it really possible to produce that much text on an unknown subject I write SEO articles for some pocket money. I do not really know what I am writing but churn out 2000 words in a hour or so. I know SEO articles is not close to a academic paper, but just to illustrate.

What is your writing process like? Do you edit a lot, or just write it in one go? I notice with the academic articles I'm involved in, that they are edited to death by the separate authors. Comments are often good, but sometimes I feel that when everything is edited many times, the coherence of the first (sloppy) version is often lost.

I just get the keyword from my contractor (who in turn gets it from hi clients) and then google the term. If it is common enough there will be a wikipedia, ask.com or wikihow page. I just use that info. I can take a sentence in those websites and churn out 100-150 words on it. Its really easy to bloat articles (planning a blog post on all this).

I have also produced on academic paper (it was a position paper) and I instinctively avoided editing. I believe when you start editing a paper you often cut out the depth of the idea.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#25

Post by thefool »

rick_2047 wrote: post #21
thefool wrote: post #5

I am involved with a startup working on this problem ( http://GuruFi.com ). Fundamentally this problem is derives from the fact that it is difficult for people to learn how to write and structure their ideas. Hell thats basically the whole point of PhD programs, and people spend years finishing them. With the internet, it becomes really easy to just pay someone else who already knows how to write to do the work for y…

I don't think getting writers only from the top 20 uni will work. I wouldn't like my high school paper to be edited by a grad student at an Ivey League college

This is something we are doing just in the beginning to build credibility.

Once we are a little more established we plan on being less selective with our editors and letting the market decide who the great people are.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#26

Post by jorleif »

jseliger wrote: post #20
jorleif wrote: post #16

I can churn out four or five pages an hour. I'm utterly fascinated, is it really possible to produce that much text on an unknown subject? I write maximum about 1 page of academic text per workday. That is of course real, and contains a significant amount of math, but still producing the amount of material mentioned in the article consistently is very impressive. I wonder if one way to improve writing skills would be…

I'm utterly fascinated, is it really possible to produce that much text on an unknown subject? Yes: journalists do this routinely. My family's business does grant writing for nonprofit and public agencies. We routinely write on subjects that we initially know nothing about; we described some of that process in a post about writing Department of Energy grants: http://blog.seliger.com/2009/04/05/doe/ . Granted, this is…

It seems to me that if one becomes a professor, a very big chunk of one's time goes into writing grant applications. All of that is "wasted time", in the sense that it takes time away from the primary goal of making good research. In the private sector one would hire separate people to perform this kind of support functions, but in academia that is often impossible. For these reasons, even being able to synthesize known information efficiently would be a very useful skill in this line of work.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#27

Post by rick_2047 »

thefool wrote: post #25
rick_2047 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think getting writers only from the top 20 uni will work. I wouldn't like my high school paper to be edited by a grad student at an Ivey League college

This is something we are doing just in the beginning to build credibility. Once we are a little more established we plan on being less selective with our editors and letting the market decide who the great people are.

The best people to do this work will be someone who has just passed (or is working on) a level high than that. A high school lab report can be much better drafted by a undergrad freshmen than a grad student as he has done this recently and is much more connected with it while the grad student has elevated in terms of language and lowest common denominator of knowledge in any subject. They also tend to forget the basics somehow.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#29

Post by Female »

twrensch wrote: post #23

I spent five years teaching at the University level. The beginning of the end of my academic career was receiving an e-mail from a student explaining one of my (programming) assignments and asking if they could write this one too. To me this was an obvious case of VERY incorrectly choosing the "to" address for an e-mail. I immediately contacted my department head and was ready to apply the school's academic dishonest…

A resounding upvote.

I only taught for 2 years as a graduate teaching assistant, but we were told in training to never accuse anyone of cheating ever. It opened the university up to being sued, and made everyone's life more complicated.

Re: The Shadow Scholar

#30

Post by grellas »

Has modern education become so jaded that it now plays out as farce, where learning is not the goal but gaming the system is?

I vividly remember the slackers of my generation (college/law school in the 1970s). They took the basket-weaving classes on the cynical assumption that it was a short-cut to getting an "easy A." They padded their papers with junk - that is, whenever they couldn't avoid having to do a paper. They feared the demanding teachers and ran from them. They continually looked for outline-level materials (Cliff notes, Gilberts law summaries) by which they could try to cram for a test without really having to master any of the materials. In short, they did everything possible to avoid having to think or work at the process of learning and, hence, they graduated, if at all, miles behind the hard-working students in their ability to think or to work as they turned to face real-world challenges.

I have never understood this mind-set. For me, the challenge was always to take on the harder challenges if that meant developing either your substantive knowledge or your skills in writing, analyzing, communicating, or whatever. Wasn't that the point of being there, after all?

The one precious commodity you have as a student that you will likely never have again is the privilege of being able to devote large blocks of uninterrupted time to diving into any given area and mastering it. Once you get into the real world, it is very difficult, if not impossible, ever to have that resource available to you again.

Whatever you do, don't squander this resource but, instead, use it to advantage. You will sacrifice in the short term as you watch your friends party away while you slave away, but you will develop depth of knowledge and habits of discipline that will endure for a lifetime while those who choose to cut corners, sadly, will not.

Cheating does have its victims. Those who cheat, however, will one day realize that the primary victim of that cheating is none other than they themselves. Caveat discipulus!

Post reply on HN