Last night, somewhere between the third mimosa and the fourth televised meltdown on Southern Charm, my wife and I found ourselves hurtling into an existential crisis during the commercial break. I casually mentioned that one of my fellow instructors—driven half-mad by the whiff of AI in every student essay—is now forcing his students to write in blue books. Yes, those stapled relics from the Stone Age of academia where panicked undergrads scribble 500 words of sweaty, incoherent prose while the clock ticks like a death sentence. Guess who gets to lug them home and decipher them like ancient scrolls written in caffeine and desperation?
My wife, also a writing instructor, winced in solidarity. “Grading blue books,” she said, “is about as appealing as jabbing an icepick into your own forehead. Repeatedly.”
Then I asked if her colleagues had gone full Skynet—grading with AI. She nodded. Magic School. NoRedInk. Algorithmic literacy assessments by the dozen. “So,” I said, “students are writing with AI, teachers are grading with AI, and we’re all just cosplaying the last days of human instruction?”
She shrugged with serene detachment. “It’s over. Time to let go.”
Her zen was unnerving. But also, weirdly admirable. Why scream into the algorithmic void when you can simply sip your tea and surrender?
Cinemorphosis 
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