Overview

During my first year at SMU, I participated in a university-wide writing competition with the theme of ethics. The event challenged me, both in my worldview and in my writing style. I had never written a work this large before, and it was an intimidating task. After many iterations, proofreads, and nearly giving up, I submitted my paper: Fake It ‘Till You Make It: The Morality of Con Mans. A few months later, I heard back from the Maguire Ethics Center, who informed me that I had won the top prize among all undergraduates, a notable feat considering that neither a freshman nor a STEM major had ever even placed in the four years the competition had been around. It was a challenging but rewarding process that raised my confidence in my own writing ability.

What is the Maguire Ethics Essay Contest?

The event is an annual essay contest hosted by SMU’s Maguire Ethics Center to encourage ethics-based conversation and reflection. Per the official website:

SMU’s Maguire Center for Ethics and Public Responsibility is proud to host the 2023-2024 Ethics Essay Prize - an essay competition open to all undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at SMU. The competition encourages the development of ethical discernment, imagination, and thoughtful reflection by challenging students to consider the role of ethics in their lives. Further, the contest provides the Maguire Ethics Center valuable insights into topics of importance to students.

The submissions are 4,000 - 6,000 words and adhere to one of the following prompts:

1. Reflect on an ethical issue you have encountered in your own life and analyze and evaluate the situation. Describe the ethical dilemma you faced, providing relevant context and exploring the factors that contributed to the complexity of the issue.
2. Analyze a contemporary societal issue of significance by examining the ethical dimensions, implications, or potential solutions related to the chosen issue.

Contestants are given about 5 months to write since the competition started to be advertised, but many students got either more or less time depending on how they heard about it. The submissions were due on February 28th, 2024, and I first heard about the competition in mid-October, giving me around 4 months to plan, write, revise, and finally submit.

Why did I join?

The reason I joined the contest wasn’t because of the $1,000 cash prize (though that certainly didn’t discourage me). It was for one reason: to prove I could win. Over the years, I have noticed a stigma around engineers not being able to communicate their ideas or have an active social life. Much of it is done as a joke, but it’s a joke that has slowly crept its way into the minds of engineers and non-engineers alike. For me to win this competition would be my way of declaring that, yes, I’m an engineer, but I can also communicate my ideas artistically and practically enough to compare with students who dedicated years exclusively to that type of writing.

Naturally, I didn’t expect to win first prize. My goal starting out was to just get on the podium, or even an honorable mention if that’s what I qualified for. In the four years of the competition’s history, a freshman has never even placed, let alone won the grand prize. This was also the first year that a STEM major ranked on the undergraduate level (I was honored to share the “first” with another student who wrote on the Just Transition). With those statistics in mind, I set the challenging yet achievable goal to win a prize, any prize.

What did I write about?

Through many iterations and revisions, I eventually settled on Fake It ‘Till You Make It: The Morality of Con Mans. I wanted to examine a critical question that both interested me and had influence in my own life, which is why I decided to answer the question “How much can confidence influence workers’ behavior in the job market?” I threaded my question through many eyes throughout my 5,000 words, examining everything from resume manipulation to hiring staff to instantaneous vs sustained immorality. I placed all my propositions in an abundance of contex, using syllogisms (which I rebranded as “Truth Trains”), pretend people like the devious Mr. Hoodwink, and examples that made the reader question their own morality.

I came to a few conclusions, which I called propositions, by the end of the paper. In summary, I argued that:

1. Con Mans are moral if they can fulfill every job requirement asked of them, even if their qualifications are made up.
2. Con Mans are immoral if they continue to deceive others after their initial employment.
3. Hiring staff are immoral if they are not intimately familiar with the industry they are hiring for.

If these are shocking conclusions to you, I suggest you read the full paper and see each of these arguments in context!

How did the essay evolve across writing it?

My first idea when brainstorming was to compare Con Mans to those who suffer from Imposter Syndrome. It facinated me that there was an abundance of both people who were intentionally decieving others and people who were afraid of accidentally decieving others. It seemed strange that we are all human, all the same species, yet there is a large division between each of our intentions, goals, and morals. However, as my essay evolved, I realized that I actually wasn’t making a moral argument with that topic. I was just comparing two mentalities. The quickest way to fail any sort of writing is to write off-topic, so I knew I had to keep my essay relevant and centered on morals. Not research. Not comparison. Morals. And Con Mans Vs Imposter Syndrome wasn’t cutting it.

There was a brief time after that where I played with the idea of writing the entire essay as a narrative story that proved my point. I scrapped that idea pretty quickly, realizing that the format didn’t support the message I was trying to send.

Around late December, I settled on writing the essay like a pop-psychology article with flashy examples and broad, sweeping conclusions. I chose that format because, in the end, morality is a personal scale and nobody can make an objective moral statement that everyone will agree with. The only way to get somewhere in the conversation is to present evidence, then declare a stance. Like most pop-psychology, my propositions will likely be disproven, dismantled, and/or disappear out of relevancy. My essay is not meant to be objective or even to stand the test of time. It is simply entertaining certain ideas if we suppose another idea is true. A faulty premise results in a faulty conclusion. Trash in, trash out. But for now, let’s pretend that the premise is correct. What happens next? That was how I wanted my essay to be structured.

What went smoothly?

Overall, the topic was easy to write about and had plenty of discussion points. I felt more limited by the word count than challenged to reach it, which is always a good place to be in. I also felt like I was easily able to exivate my ideas in the context of an essay. The format was perfect for my message and added to the pop-psychology feel of the article. The process of typing also went well thanks to my time learning stenography. Finally, stringing together my ideas was as flawless as I could make it. I never felt like I had an abrupt change of topic or left the reader suspended in thought between subjects, which used to be a huge struggle point in my writing. It was proof of how far I’ve come in just a few years.

What roadblocks did I encounter?

The most significant challenge I encountered during the essay contest was finding someone to proofread my work. It didn’t matter how much my essay made sense to me. What mattered was whether it would make sense to a first-time reader. I asked quite a few people, and was met mostly with the classic “I’ll see if I have time,” which is a very convoluted way to spell “no.” Some rejected me outright. I asked my Writing Class professor at the time if she would be willing to look it over, whereupon she became quite aggressive and told me that she “wasn’t paid to read student writing outside of her class.” That interaction was the biggest roadblock on my path to success. For around a week after that, I genuinely considered withdrawing from the competition, since my teacher made it sound like nobody would ever want to read my work. It hurt. A lot. And not the type of hurt that you grow from. Luckily, I overcame that obstacle and continued with my submission. I found two wonderful people to read my essay who will get a shoutout down below.

Who had an impact on my development throughout this project?

My first shoutout goes to Professor B.W. Hamilton, who was my first Writing professor at SMU and one of my favorite teachers of all time. She constantly encouraged me to think beyond my comfort zone in the best way possible and was always there to give me real support, both socially and through writing feedback. She might be the only Writing teacher I’ve had who pushed students to develop their own writing style instead of boxing it into some corporate standard. Her feedback and support were what pushed me through the mental roadblock generated by my other Writing professor.

The next shoutout goes to Spencer Barnhill, my great friend and published writer. He put aside his own schoolwork to look over my paper, and I’m forever grateful for that. I aspire to be at his level of writing some day and always look forward to his latest poetry and articles.

Finally, a huge shoutout to the Thrive Scholars Program, who let me attend one of their events. In my weekly SMU event newsletter, I saw that there was a presentation on Imposter Syndrome, which was perfect at the time (when I was still planning to write on that topic). I went to the event, and the welcome committee looked very confused when I showed up. It turns out that the event was exclusive to the Thrive Scholars, a prestigious program for minorities in engineering at SMU. Despite this, they gave me a warm welcome and invited me to stay for the presentation, which was excellently produced and very informative.

Final thoughts

In the end, I was overjoyed to have been awarded first prize in the competition, and I don’t take that for granted. There were many people who helped me along the way, and I couldn’t have done it without their help. The process of writing a sixteen page research paper was daunting, but it gave me a good sense of the amount of work needed for a project of that size. I’m excited to keep working on my writing and developing my skills, and I can’t wait to see what opportunities the future holds.

Where to read the paper

Want to read the paper? Check out the PDF here, or read about the competition on the official website (you can find my essay under “previous winners”).

I’d love to hear your feedback, both positive and negative. If you have a rebuttal or just want to chat about your ideas, shoot me an email at coopershapard(AT)duck.com! (The @ was removed to prevent bot scraping).