How I Became A "Professional" Writer: A Kid Story

In Me And The English Teacher, I told the story of how I pretty much wrote my way into college... Without retelling the whole thing: While in Adult Ed I had shot off my big mouth about being a better writer than Jack London... not true, London is an excellent author, I just hate his subject matter- some guy freezes to death in the northwoods... Duh! Who gives a fuck!!! He shouldn't have been there. Anyways, I had painted myself into a corner and had to come up with three or four stories overnight. So I got out my wife's old Corona and got busy! The teacher was impressed (but not impressed enough that I didn't have to read London's shitty story) and asked permission to forward my stories to a professor friend at Central Michigan... The rest is history, as they say...

We got moved into Married Housing, me, my pregnant wife and three kids. It was about a week until the semester started and instead of partying like everybody else, I spent the time familiarizing myself with the library... how to access information systems, etc.. I had NO experience using computers, so I was way behind the curve- or so I thought. It paid off nicely in the long run.

My first semester (Spring) I became friends with "Bruce," another non-traditional (a nice way of saying old) student. "Bruce worked for GM who was starting a program to help employees get their GED's. Bruce was to run the program (Now I understood why GM went broke) and was working for his MS in Education. When it came time to write his thesis, he was in a bind. Actually, how he got his Bachelors is beyond me.... he was a great guy but dumber than the proverbial box of rocks.

So I took him in tow and brought him to the library and showed him how to access systems and garner the material he needed for his thesis. When he had completed 6-7 pages of his first draft he brought them to me to proofread... This guy was fucked! I asked him, "how bad do you want this thing and how much are you willing to spend to get it?" After a little haggling we settled on $200.00 (he had done me a few favors so I gave him a break). The die was cast... little by little grad students- mostly foreign- began approaching me for "help."

It was my Freshman year and I was writing Master's Theses. Depending on how much work I had to put in, determined the price... except the Arab guys that were filthy rich and drove Ferraris- they payed more. If I had to do the research, I charged $1000.00 if they had the research material and had some crucial information - you know, like what they wanted it to actually be about- it was $500.00. I wrote parers in Psychology (for some reason all the Arab guys wanted to be psychologists), History, English Political Science, Education, Sociology, Anthropology and probably some I forgot... And of course my own in Economics that I did my Sophomore year (and published). To tell the truth, it was kinda fun... and of course the money was great!

I actually learned something as well... "Higher Education" is the biggest case of consumer fraud in America today!

GIF by @papa-pepper