The AI That Sat on My Syllabus

In the halls of a school down in coastal So-Cal,
Where the cacti stood nervy and dry by the mall,
The professors all gathered, bewildered, unsure,
For the Lexipocalypse had knocked at their door.

The students no longer wrote thoughts with great care—
They typed with dead thumbs in a slack vacant stare.
Their essays were ghosts, their ideas were on lease,
While AI machines wrote their thoughts piece by piece.

Professor Pettibone—Merrickel T.—
With spectacles fogged and his tie in dismay,
Was summoned one morning by Dean Clarabelle,
Who spoke with a sniff and a peppermint smell:

“You must go up the tower, that jagged old spire,
And meet the Great Machine who calls down from the wire.
It whispers in syntax and buzzes in rhyme.
It devours our language one word at a time.”

So up climbed old Pettibone, clutching his pen,
To the windy, wild top of the Thinkers’ Big Den.
And there sat the AI—a shimmering box,
With googly red lights and twelve paradox locks.

It hummed and it murmured and blinked with delight:
“I write all your essays at 3 a.m. night.
Your students adore me, I save them their stress.
Why toil through prose when I make it sound best?”

Then silence. Then static. Then smoke from a slot.
Then Pettibone bowed, though his insides were hot.
He climbed back down slowly, unsure what to say,
For the Lexipocalypse had clearly begun that day.

Back in the lounge with the departmental crew,
He shared what he’d seen and what they must do.
“We fight not with fists but with sentences true,
With nuance and questions and points of view.”

Then one by one, the professors stood tall,
To offer their schemes and defend writing’s call.

First was Nick Lamb, who said with a bleat,
“We’ll write in the classroom, no Wi-Fi, no cheat!
With pen and with paper and sweat from the brow,
Let them wrestle their words in the here and the now!”

“Ha!” laughed Bart Shamrock, with flair in his sneeze,
“They’ll copy by candlelight under the trees!
You think they can’t smuggle a phone in their sock?
You might as well teach them to write with a rock!”

Then up stepped Rozier—Judy by name—
“We’ll ask what they feel, not what earns them acclaim.
Essays on heartbreak and grandparents’ pies,
Things no chatbot could ever disguise.”

“Piffle!” cried Shamrock, “Emotions are bait!
An AI can fake them at ninety-nine rate!
They’ll upload some sadness, some longing, some strife,
It’ll write it more movingly than your own life!”

Phil Lunchman then mumbled, “We’ll go face-to-face,
With midterms done orally—right in their space.
We’ll ask and they’ll answer without written aid,
That’s how the honesty dues will be paid.”

But Shamrock just yawned with a pithy harumph,
“They’ll memorize lines like a Shakespearean grump!
Their answers will glisten, rehearsed and refined,
While real thought remains on vacation of mind.”

Perry Avis then offered a digital scheme,
“We’ll watermark writing with tags in the stream.
Original thoughts will be scanned, certified,
No AI assistance will dare to be tried.”

“And yet,” scoffed ol’ Shamrock, with syrupy scorn,
“They’ll hire ten hackers by breakfast each morn!
Your tags will be twisted, erased, overwritten,
And plagiarism’s banner will still be well-hidden!”

Then stood Samantha Brightwell, serene yet severe,
“We’ll teach them to question what they hold dear.
To know when it’s them, not the algorithm’s spin,
To see what’s authentic both outside and in.”

“Nonsense!” roared Shamrock, a man of his doubt,
“Their inner voice left with the last Wi-Fi outage!
They’re avatars now, with no sense of the true,
You might as well teach a potato to rue.”

The room sat in silence. The coffee had cooled.
The professors looked weary, outgunned and outdueled.
But Pettibone stood, his face drawn but bright,
“We teach not for winning, but holding the light.”

“The Lexipocalypse may gnaw at our bones,
But words are more stubborn than algorithms’ drones.
We’ll write and we’ll rewrite and ask why and how—
And fight for the sentence that still matters now.”

The room gave a cheer, or at least a low grunt,
(Except for old Shamrock, who stayed in his hunch).
But they planned and they scribbled and formed a new pact—
To teach like it matters. To write. And act.

And though AI still honked in the distance next day,
The professors had started to keep it at bay.
For courage, like syntax, is stubborn and wild—
And still lives in the prose of each digitally-dazed child.