StudentofFortune.com - Blog

StudentofFortune.com was mentioned in a Washington Post article.

It’s an interesting article - The author, Jason Johnson, argues that many of the “anti-plagerism” reminders don’t particularly hold water in the corporate world. He wrote “It was an open secret that my entire report, written “by Jason Johnson,” had been composed by others and that I had been merely an editor. Instead of a reprimand, I was rewarded with a post-briefing latte.”

I’m not entirely sure I agree with this perspective. One of the best hallmarks of a strong manager is the ability to give credit when credit is due. Just because you no longer have a professor comparing your work against TurnItIn and iThenticate does not mean that one can take work without attribution.

For this, I hope that our users will continue to use SoF as a resource and learning tool.

Here’s what the Washington Post has to say about SoF:

Young people today are simply too far ahead of anything schools might do to curb their recycling efforts. Beyond simply selling used term papers online, Web sites such as StudentofFortune.com allow students to post specific questions and pay for answers.

Enterprising young scholars can also upload their completed homework assignments, and the site will broker a sale to someone who is stumped while using the same textbook. For a fee of $1, for instance, user “brittanymarie” from “calloway country high school” can get the answer to this burning query: “During the process of transcription, DNA serves as the template for making what?” The people behind StudentofFortune, not so far removed from their school days themselves, say this isn’t cheating — it’s just a chance for students to “ask their colleagues for help on difficult problems.”

I love PayPal’s humanitarian mission / customer service model. It’s simple: take mid-tier bureaucrats from the former Soviet Union’s government, teach them a bunch of English, then stick them in a call center.

Just kidding.

I will say, though, that getting anything done with PayPal is an exercise in “gaming the system” and patience. Here’s an example of that.

Student of Fortune, Inc. is a California Corporation, for what that’s worth. The corporation is a separate legal entity with it’s own TIN - Tax Identification Number. That’s like a Social Security Number, but for businesses.

As a result, all of PayPal’s dealings aren’t technically with myself and the other people who work for Student of Fortune. Their legal relationship is with Student of Fortune, and we’re just the intermediaries. Well, this makes things unexpectedly interesting.

For instance, I am not the “account holder” for PayPal. Our CEO is. That said, I handle all of the financial matters. That includes working with PayPal to make beautiful things happen. Well, it turns out that when I call PayPal to ask questions, they want to talk to the CEO. Usually when I remind them that they’re working with a corporation and that I’m one of the officers, things seem to work our way. The last time I called in, though, I was flatly told that I could not talk to anyone in customer service. The CEO would have to call. I explained my situation and asked for an easier way. “Oh, your CEO can log into the account and give you authorization to talk to us.”

“Ok, can you hang on a second while I do that?” …. “Ok, I’m now an authorized user. Now can you talk to me?”

Here’s another one. PayPal’s micropayment system requires you to have two accounts - one for “regular” payments, and one for “micro” payments. This all seems pretty reasonable, until you come to learn one very important fact: PayPal, deep down in the cockles of it’s beautiful heart, does not want it’s users to have more than one account. A bank account may be used only once. A TIN may be used only once. Everything can only be used once. This makes it awfully hard to confirm a bank account if I can only use our bank account once.

But, dear reader, I digress. In short - we now offer PayPal micropayments. You won’t find any visible changes on the site, but it makes everything better. Just like frosting.

We’ve released some major updates this past weekend that you might enjoy:

• A new registration process that no longer requires an email address confirmation
• A new homework upload tool that automatically categorizes your homework based on optional entry of a textbook’s ISBN number
• A new upload homework introduction
• You can now begin the process of asking a question without creating an account
• Other general usability improvements and bug-fixes across the site

I hope you like the new site! Please feel free to post a comment here if there’s other things you’d like to see.