Free Essays Should Be Avoided at All Costs

High school students and college students often think that they can get away with not writing essays because there are so many free ones available online. Those same students think that their teachers and professors are so behind the times and will never be able to tell if an essay was plagiarized. However, teachers and professors tend to be quite Internet savvy and they know how to find essays just as quickly, if not quicker, than their students can find them. Therefore, students should always avoid trying to turn in a found essay.

Red Flags

When students turn in essays they have found for free online, professors and teachers usually identify a host of red flags. They include things like:

• Overly complicated sentence structures
• Unusual and obsolete allusions
• Awkward and overly mature vocabulary
• Topics that were not covered in class
• Background knowledge that a student normally would not have

Once a teacher recognizes one of those red flags, all she has to do is Google a phrase from the essay and - Surprise! Surprise! - the essay tends to show up in the first few hits. Many schools also use programs like Turn It In so they can easily identify a found essay before they even have to read it.

Consequences to Cheating

If you attend a high school and you get caught cheating on an essay, you could suffer a variety of terrible consequences. Usually, teachers call parents and those phone calls are never good. Teachers also let the school principal know about the problem by writing referrals. Since many schools record referrals on software that parents and teachers can access, all of your teachers will be able to see the referral and your parents will be able to see it, too. You then develop the reputation of being a cheater and you will be watched through the rest of your high school career.

If you are in college and you cheat on an essay, you could be expelled. This is not only embarrassing and a major blemish on your transcript, but you will also lose the money that you spent for tuition. You might have difficulty being accepted at other colleges, especially if they want to see why you had to leave your previous school.

There might be other things you can do with your time rather than write essays, but the problems that can come from cheating are certainly not worth it.