Cinemorphosis

Category: Education in the AI Age

  • My Fifth-Decade Crisis in the Writing Classroom

    My Fifth-Decade Crisis in the Writing Classroom

    My students lean on AI the way past generations leaned on CliffsNotes and caffeine. They’re open about it, too. They send me their drafts: the human version and the AI-polished version, side by side, like before-and-after photos from a grammatical spa treatment. The upside? Their sentences are cleaner, the typos are nearly extinct, and dangling modifiers have been hunted to the brink. The downside? Engagement has flatlined. When students outsource their thinking to a bot, they sever the emotional thread to the material.

    It’s not that they’re getting dumber—they’re just developing a different flavor of intelligence, one optimized for our algorithmic future. And I know they’ll need that skill. But in the process, they grow numb to the very themes I’m trying to teach: how fashion brands and fitness influencers weaponize FOMO; how adolescent passion differs from mature purpose; how Frederick Douglass built a heroic code to claw his way out of the Sunken Place of slavery.

    This numbness shows up in the classroom. They’re present but elsewhere, half-submerged in the glow of their phones and laptops. Yesterday I screened The Evolution of the Black Quarterback—a powerful account of Black athletes who faced death threats and racist abuse to claim their place in the NFL. While these stories unfolded onscreen, my student-athletes were scrolling through sports highlights, barely glancing at the actual documentary in front of them.

    I’m not the kind of instructor who polices technology like a hall monitor. Still, I’m no longer convinced I have the power to pull students out of their world and into mine. I once believed I did. Perhaps this is my own educational Sunken Place: the realization that attention capture has shifted the center of gravity, and I’m now orbiting the edges.

    I’ve been teaching writing full-time since the 1980s. For decades, I believed I could craft lessons—and a persona—that made an impact. Now, in my fifth decade, I’m not sure I can say that with the same certainty. The ground has moved, and I’m still learning how to stand on it.

  • Essay Prompt: Innovation, Identity, and the Meaning of “Authentic” Food

    Essay Prompt: Innovation, Identity, and the Meaning of “Authentic” Food

    In Chef’s Table: Pizza, Ann Kim rebuilds her life after a failed acting career by reinventing pizza through the lens of her Korean-American identity. Her dishes fold together memory, rebellion, shame, pride, and the complicated love between immigrant parents and their children. Yet the moment she alters traditional recipes or refuses rigid cultural expectations, she steps into a debate that surrounds many immigrant chefs:
    Does innovation honor one’s heritage—or distort it?

    In this 1,700-word argumentative essay, you will explore that tension by comparing Ann Kim’s story with the themes found in Ugly Delicious (Season 1, “Tacos”), selected episodes of The Taco Chronicles, Gustavo Arellano’s “Let White People Appropriate Mexican Food,” and Kelley Kwok’s “‘Not Real Chinese’: Why American Chinese Food Deserves Our Respect.” Your goal is to craft an argument that responds to the following question:

    When immigrant chefs remix, adapt, or modernize traditional dishes, are they betraying cultural authenticity—or creating a new form of belonging that honors their past in a more personal way?

    To answer this question, analyze how each show or essay portrays the cultural meaning of food—its connection to heritage, shame, pride, memory, and the immigrant experience. Pay close attention to visual rhetoric (music, tone, pacing, imagery), and consider how these choices shape our sense of what counts as “authentic.”

    Include at least two scholarly secondary sources on food studies, cultural identity, or immigrant narratives to deepen your analysis. These sources should help you place the shows and essays within broader academic conversations about authenticity, assimilation, and innovation.

    Your essay must include a counterargument-rebuttal section. Address the view that innovation leads to “tourist food” or watered-down Americanization, and explain whether these cases justify a purist stance toward food traditions—or whether purity itself is an illusion shaped by nostalgia, nationalism, or fear of cultural loss.

    Ultimately, your task is to show how food becomes a form of storytelling—and to argue whether storytelling requires faithful preservation, bold revision, or something in between.

  • Rising From the Sunken Place: Heroism, History, and the Evolution of the Black Quarterback

    Rising From the Sunken Place: Heroism, History, and the Evolution of the Black Quarterback

    Essay Prompt: 

    Drawing on Jordan Peele’s concept of the Sunken Place in Get Out, write a 1,700-word essay examining the heroic effort required not only to lift oneself out of the Sunken Place, but to help others rise as well—an arc vividly captured in the three-part docuseries The Evolution of the Black Quarterback. What does it mean for Black quarterbacks to break the race barrier in the NFL? What forces tried to hold them back, and how do these forces echo the Sunken Place? Consider also the story of Wilbur Dungy—Tony Dungy’s father—who served as a war hero only to return home to the indignities of Jim Crow. How did his dignity, endurance, and moral clarity shape his son’s rise as both an athlete and a coach?

    Your essay will be divided into two major sections.

    Part I (Four Paragraphs): Define the Sunken Place
     Write a four-paragraph definition of the Sunken Place, with each paragraph offering a different lens:

    1. The Sunken Place as depicted in Get Out
    2. The Sunken Place through the writings of Frederick Douglass
    3. The Sunken Place as represented in the Jim Crow Museum, curated by David Pilgrim
    4. The Sunken Place as reflected in The Evolution of the Black Quarterback

    Each paragraph should show how the Sunken Place functions as a metaphor for psychological confinement, social domination, and the struggle for agency.

    Part II (Four Paragraphs): Rising From the Sunken Place
     After your definition section, pivot to your thesis. Explain how early Black quarterbacks in the NFL rose from the Sunken Place and built a legacy that opened doors for future generations. In four paragraphs, analyze their courage and composure in the face of rejection, demoralization, racist taunts, structural exclusion, and even death threats. Show how their resilience and excellence expanded the possibilities for Black athletes who followed.

    Conclusion:
     Close by addressing the broader implications. What life lessons can we draw from these trailblazing quarterbacks? How does their story speak to endurance, leadership, and the ongoing work of lifting others out of the Sunken Places they confront?

    Include a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least four sources.

  • Mature Passion vs. Adolescent Passion: A Contrast Essay on Work, Identity, and the Myth of “Follow Your Bliss”

    Mature Passion vs. Adolescent Passion: A Contrast Essay on Work, Identity, and the Myth of “Follow Your Bliss”

    For years, my freshman composition students wrote an argumentative essay critiquing Cal Newport’s “Passion Hypothesis”—the breezy mantra that if you follow your bliss, success will obediently fall into line. Newport dismantles this fantasy with blunt clarity. Most people don’t actually know what their passion is. Some “passions” amount to grounded purpose, while others are the daydreams of adolescence dressed up as destiny. And, he argues, genuine passion usually blooms only after someone has spent thousands of hours developing real skill and mastery. In that light, personality tests and “job alignment” quizzes reveal almost nothing. What matters, Newport insists, is work ethic and character—qualities that let people seize opportunity when it finally cracks open.

    My dilemma is that the assignment itself lacks controversy. Newport’s critique is sensible, and few students push back. Without real tension, the essay drifts: there’s no argument to wrestle into shape.

    Still, I don’t want to abandon the topic. College freshmen should confront the uncomfortable gap between the passions they romanticize and the careers the job market will actually reward.

    Maybe the solution is to reframe the assignment entirely. Instead of forcing an argument where none exists, the students could write a contrast essay. They could define mature passion and adolescent passion in clean, single-sentence terms; explain their defining traits; and examine real people who embody each version. In that format, the assignment keeps its intellectual weight without pretending there’s a genuine debate where there isn’t one.

    With that in mind, here is the essay prompt rewritten as a contrast, not an argument: 

    Essay Prompt (Approx. 1,700 Words)
    Mature Passion vs. Adolescent Passion: A Contrast Essay on Work, Identity, and the Myth of “Follow Your Bliss”

    College students are often surrounded by a cultural chorus that sings the same reassuring tune: Follow your passion, and everything else will fall into place. This idea appears in commencement speeches, self-help books, career counseling pamphlets, and the nebulous motivational fog of social media. It is a comforting narrative, but also a suspiciously easy one. The message promises agency without sacrifice, destiny without drudgery, and meaning without the slow grind of real development. In other words, it encourages students to build an entire life on a slogan that collapses under scrutiny.

    Computer scientist and writer Cal Newport identifies this seductive slogan as “The Passion Hypothesis.” The claim is simple: find your bliss and success will obediently trail behind. For years, my freshman composition students wrote argumentative essays challenging Newport’s critique of this idea. Newport’s counterargument has a tough, pragmatic edge: passion is not a pre-made, glowing inner truth waiting to be discovered; it is more often the result of discipline, time, and mastery. According to Newport, most people don’t actually know what their passion is. Even worse, many confuse fleeting fantasies with purpose. A true passion—something worth building a professional life around—is rarely the glamorous daydream that clicks instantly into place. Instead, it emerges slowly, often after someone has invested thousands of hours acquiring a deep skill set. For Newport, personality tests and job-alignment quizzes are little more than parlor tricks compared to the importance of developing work ethic, character, resilience, and the kind of competence that opens doors.

    The problem I’ve encountered over the years is that Newport’s argument makes so much sense that students rarely disagree with it. And when no one disagrees, an argumentative essay falls flat. There’s no tension for students to wrestle with, no friction to sharpen their analysis. The assignment, while intellectually rich, has begun to lose its edge.

    Still, I don’t want to abandon the topic altogether. College freshmen deserve—perhaps even need—to examine the gap between the passion narratives they’ve absorbed and the economic realities that shape their opportunities. They should reflect on the difference between the fantasies they carried through adolescence and the work they will need to undertake in adulthood. They need a clearer lens for distinguishing between a passion that grows through discipline and a passion that evaporates under pressure. This is where reframing the assignment can restore its power.

    Instead of asking students to argue for or against Newport’s position—an argument too one-sided to yield strong papers—this assignment will invite students to write a contrast essay. Your job will be to contrast two sharply different types of passion: mature passion and adolescent passion. These are not mere labels; they are categories that reflect deeper psychological, emotional, and developmental differences. Understanding these differences can help you think more clearly about your own aspirations, your academic path, and the professional life you hope to build.

    This contrast essay will ask you to think carefully, define your terms clearly, and support your analysis with real-world examples. It will encourage you to replace slogans with insight, and daydreams with reflective evaluation. Instead of forcing a debate where there isn’t one, you will trace a meaningful distinction—one with lifelong implications.

    Your Task

    Write a 1,700-word contrast essay in which you develop a clear, thoughtful distinction between mature passion and adolescent passion. You will define each term, describe their key characteristics, and analyze concrete examples of individuals—people you know personally, public figures, fictional characters, or even different versions of yourself—who embody each type of passion.

    Your essay should demonstrate that you understand the essential difference between a passion grounded in discipline, purpose, and skill development, and a passion rooted in excitement, fantasy, and wishful thinking. Use these distinctions to help your reader understand how one form of passion can support a meaningful career, while the other may hinder or distort it.

    What Is Mature Passion?

    Before writing, consider the traits that define mature passion. Mature passion is not a lightning bolt. It grows slowly and often quietly. It is less about being “meant” for something and more about discovering meaning through practice. A person with a mature passion may not start with enthusiasm; the enthusiasm develops after they become good at something, after they see how their abilities create opportunities for contribution, competence, or creativity. Mature passion aligns with Newport’s claim that passion is cultivated rather than discovered.

    Think about the people in your life who have developed expertise through patience and consistency. Maybe you know someone who didn’t fall in love with their field immediately, but grew into it over time. Perhaps a family member or mentor who built a career the way a craftsman builds a table—piece by piece, with steady hands and commitment. Consider athletes, musicians, engineers, business owners, teachers, or healthcare workers who have spent years refining their craft. What distinguishes their passion from a passing interest?

    Reflect also on the emotional maturity required to handle setbacks. Mature passion can survive boredom, frustration, or failure. It doesn’t disappear when the work becomes difficult. It may even grow stronger because of difficulty.

    What Is Adolescent Passion?

    Adolescent passion, by contrast, often thrives on excitement but collapses under pressure. It tends to be immediate, romanticized, and untested. It is fueled by fantasy rather than process. Someone with adolescent passion often imagines the rewards—the fame, the lifestyle, the applause—while ignoring or minimizing the work necessary to get there. It’s not that adolescent passion is childish; it’s simply undeveloped. It has not yet been made real by discipline.

    Consider people you’ve known who bounce from one dream to another: “I want to be a YouTuber,” “I want to be a professional gamer,” “I want to be a neurosurgeon,” “I want to start a clothing brand,” “I want to be a film director,” “I want to be a crypto millionaire.” The dreams are bold, but the follow-through is thin. Adolescent passion tends to burn bright but briefly. The person abandons the dream as soon as boredom or difficulty appears.

    Adolescent passion also thrives on external validation. It may be driven by trends, social media influencers, or the desire to appear impressive rather than the desire to master a craft. It can feel powerful, but it is fragile.

    Your Definitions

    Your essay must begin with clean, single-sentence definitions of each type of passion. These definitions should be clear enough that a stranger could read them and instantly understand the distinction. Avoid vague, poetic language. Your definitions should operate like the thesis of a dictionary entry: precise, purposeful, and unfuzzy.

    Here is a structural guideline you may use:

    1. Definition of mature passion (one sentence)
    2. Definition of adolescent passion (one sentence)
    3. A brief explanation of why distinguishing between the two is essential for students preparing to enter the professional world.

    Your Analysis

    Once you define your terms, you will devote the body of your essay to contrasting the two forms of passion in depth. Use the following guiding questions to develop your paragraphs. You do not need to answer them in order, nor do you need to answer every single one, but they should spark lines of exploration:

    • How does mature passion develop over time?
    • How does adolescent passion behave when it meets difficulty or boredom?
    • What emotional traits support mature passion—patience, resilience, humility, adaptability?
    • Which emotional traits undermine adolescent passion—impulsiveness, insecurity, fantasy, impatience?
    • How do people with each type of passion respond to setbacks?
    • How do they talk about their goals?
    • How do they make decisions?
    • How do they manage their time?
    • What role do mentors, teachers, or workplaces play in shaping each type of passion?
    • Which form of passion leads to long-term growth, responsibility, and contribution?
    • Which form of passion tends to collapse into disappointment, cynicism, or constant reinvention?

    As you write, avoid turning the essay into a list. Instead, build a sustained contrast. Your goal is to make the reader feel the difference—not just understand it intellectually. The contrast should reveal how these two forms of passion shape lives differently.

    Your Examples

    You must include examples of real people or fictional characters who illustrate each type of passion. The examples should help clarify your distinctions. Good examples include:

    • A relative who developed a mature passion through steady work
    • A friend who chased an adolescent passion that fizzled
    • A public figure whose career reflects mature passion (e.g., a musician who refined their craft over decades, not someone who went viral once)
    • A celebrity or influencer whose adolescent passion flared brightly but collapsed quickly
    • A fictional character who embodies either type of passion
    • A version of yourself at a different stage of life—past, present, or imagined future

    The examples should serve your analysis rather than distract from it. Explain how each example illustrates the traits you have identified. Don’t simply tell a story. Instead, use the example to deepen the reader’s understanding of the contrast.

    Your Purpose

    This essay is not merely an academic exercise. It is a chance to examine your assumptions about what a meaningful life requires. The cultural advice to “follow your bliss” is too easy, too vague, too romantic. If you take it literally, it may mislead you. But if you learn to distinguish between adolescent passion and mature passion, you gain a better sense of how to direct your energy in college and beyond. You gain a more realistic view of what it means to grow into competence, purpose, and self-respect.

    What you write here may influence the decisions you make in the next few years—your major, your work ethic, your expectations, and the way you evaluate opportunities. You are not simply contrasting two abstract ideas; you are constructing a clearer map of your future.

    Your Requirements

    Your final paper must:

    • Be approximately 1,700 words
     • Include single-sentence definitions of mature passion and adolescent passion
    • Develop at least five distinguishing characteristics for each type of passion
    • Use specific, concrete examples of individuals who represent each type
    • Maintain a clear contrast throughout
    • Demonstrate careful reasoning and a strong writing voice
    • Be revised for clarity, precision, and logical flow

    The Goal

    By the end of this essay, your reader should understand not only the surface-level difference between mature passion and adolescent passion, but the deeper psychological and practical implications of aligning oneself with one or the other. You are writing to illuminate—not to preach, lecture, or scold. Your job is to show your reader how these two kinds of passion operate in real life and what is at stake in choosing one path over the other.

    If you execute this well, you won’t merely be writing a contrast essay. You’ll be developing the kind of reflective, disciplined judgment that Newport argues is the true foundation of a meaningful and successful life.

    BUILDING BLOCK 1: Definitional Paragraph
     Goal: Produce clear, single-sentence definitions of mature passion and adolescent passion, then expand those definitions into a short paragraph that clarifies the stakes of the distinction.

    Instructions:
     Write a paragraph in which you:

    1. Create a one-sentence definition of mature passion.
    2. Create a one-sentence definition of adolescent passion.
    3. Follow those definitions with 4–6 sentences explaining why distinguishing between the two matters for college students facing decisions about majors, careers, and long-term goals.
    4. Include at least one observation drawn from your lived experience—something you have seen in yourself, your peers, or your family.

    Purpose:
     This paragraph becomes the opening anchor of your essay. It establishes the core concepts and clarifies why the reader should care about the contrast.

    BUILDING BLOCK 2: Characteristics and Analysis Paragraph
     Goal: Identify and analyze the defining traits of each type of passion.

    Instructions:
     In a detailed paragraph (8–10 sentences):

    1. Identify three defining characteristics of mature passion (examples: resilience, patience, incremental skill-building).
    2. Identify three defining characteristics of adolescent passion (examples: fantasy-driven goals, quick burnout, validation-seeking).
    3. For each pair of characteristics (one mature, one adolescent), show how they contrast in real-life behavior—how they handle setbacks, boredom, or responsibility.
    4. Use brief mini-examples (1–2 sentences at most) to illustrate the contrast.

    Purpose:
     This paragraph provides the conceptual foundation of your essay’s body section. You’re defining the landscape before exploring individual case studies.

    BUILDING BLOCK 3: Case Study Paragraph
     Goal: Analyze a real person (or fictional character) who embodies either mature passion or adolescent passion.

    Instructions:
     Choose one person—a friend, family member, public figure, or fictional character—and write an 8–12 sentence paragraph in which you:

    1. Identify whether the person represents mature or adolescent passion.
    2. Describe a specific moment or pattern from their life that reveals their type of passion.
    3. Explain how their habits, decisions, setbacks, and motivations illustrate the characteristics you identified in Building Block 2.
    4. Offer one brief evaluative reflection on what students can learn from this example, either as a model to follow or a cautionary tale.

    Purpose:
     This paragraph becomes one of your essay’s body examples—your most vivid evidence for how passion operates in real life.

  • Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Brushing His Teeth in Purgatory

    Yesterday, I ran into B—a colleague and friend of thirty years—in the faculty bathroom. He stood at the sink, looking tiny in an oversized blue oxford and baggy black pleated slacks, brushing his teeth with grim determination, the way a soldier might polish his boots before a hopeless battle. His reflection wore a bloodhound’s face: drooping eyes, sagging mouth, the look of someone who’d run out of surprises.

    We exchanged small talk about our students, about AI, about how much the classroom had changed. His voice was thin, almost apologetic.
    “They’ve checked out,” he said. “They use AI so much, they’ve just… checked out.”

    I tried to commiserate, mentioning how quickly the culture had shifted since the first wave of ChatGPT essays three years ago. But he didn’t answer. He rinsed, spat, and walked out without another word—already halfway gone.

    It isn’t just B. My younger colleagues say the same thing. Even my wife, who teaches writing in middle school, tells me her students have that same vacant look. Everyone seems ghosted by their own profession, still performing the motions of care while quietly surrendering.

    The image that won’t leave me is B—graying, stooped, and haloed in the pitiless glow of the faculty bathroom’s fluorescent lights—scrubbing his molars like an inmate serving life. He looked less like a man starting his day than one serving time in it, counting down to a retirement that recedes faster than his gumline.

  • Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    Bad But Worth It? De-skilling in the Age of AI (college essay prompt)

    AI is now deeply embedded in business, the arts, and education. We use it to write, edit, translate, summarize, and brainstorm. This raises a central question: when does AI meaningfully extend our abilities, and when does it quietly erode them?

    In “The Age of De-Skilling,” Kwame Anthony Appiah argues that not all de-skilling is equal. Some forms are corrosive and hollow us out; some are “bad but worth it” because the benefits outweigh the loss; some are so destructive that no benefit can redeem them. In that framework, AI becomes most interesting when we talk about strategic de-skilling: deliberately off-loading certain tasks to machines so we can focus on deeper, higher-level work.

    Write a 1,700-word argumentative essay in which you defend, refute, or complicate the claim that not all dependence on AI is harmful. Take a clear position on whether AI can function as a “bad but worth it” form of de-skilling that frees us for more meaningful thinking—or whether, in practice, it mostly dulls our edge and trains us into passivity.

    Your essay must:

    • Engage directly with Appiah’s concepts of corrosive vs. “bad but worth it” de-skilling.
    • Distinguish between lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with it.
    • Include a counterargument–rebuttal section that uses at least one example of what we might call Ozempification—people becoming less agents and more “users” of systems. You may draw this example from one or more of the following Black Mirror episodes: “Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens.”
    • Use at least three sources in MLA format, including Appiah and at least one Black Mirror episode.

    For your supporting paragraphs, you might consider:

    • Cognitive off-loading as optimization
    • Human–AI collaboration in creative or academic work
    • Ethical limits of automation
    • How AI is redefining what counts as “skill”

    Your goal is to show nuanced critical thinking about AI’s role in human skill development. Don’t just declare AI good or bad; use Appiah’s framework to examine when AI’s shortcuts lead to degradation—and when, if used wisely, they might lead to liberation.

    3 building-block paragraph assignments

    1. Concept Paragraph: Explaining Appiah’s De-Skilling Framework

    Assignment:
     Write one well-developed paragraph (8–10 sentences) in which you explain Kwame Anthony Appiah’s distinctions among corrosive de-skilling, “bad but worth it” de-skilling, and de-skilling that is so destructive no benefit can justify it.

    • Use at least one short, embedded quotation from Appiah.
    • Paraphrase his ideas in your own words and clarify the differences between the three categories.
    • End the paragraph by briefly suggesting how AI might fit into one of these categories (without fully arguing your position yet).

    Your goal is to show that you understand Appiah’s framework clearly enough to use it later as the backbone of an argument.

    2. Definition Paragraph: Lazy Dependence vs. Deliberate Collaboration

    Assignment:
     Write one paragraph in which you define and contrast lazy dependence on AI and deliberate collaboration with AI in your own words.

    • Begin with a clear topic sentence that sets up the contrast.
    • Give at least one concrete example of “lazy dependence” (for instance, using AI to dodge thinking, reading, or drafting altogether).
    • Give at least one concrete example of “deliberate collaboration” (for instance, using AI to brainstorm options, check clarity, or off-load repetitive tasks while you still make the key decisions).
    • End the paragraph with a sentence explaining which of these two modes you think is more common among students right now—and why.

    This paragraph will later function as a “conceptual lens” for your body paragraphs.

    3. Counterargument Paragraph: Ozempification and Black Mirror

    Assignment:
     After watching one of the assigned Black Mirror episodes (“Joan Is Awful,” “Nosedive,” or “Smithereens”), write one counterargument paragraph that challenges the optimistic idea of “strategic de-skilling.”

    • Briefly describe a key moment or character from the episode that illustrates Ozempification—a person becoming more of a “user” of a system than an agent of their own life.
    • Explain how this example suggests that dependence on powerful systems (platforms, algorithms, or AI-like tools) can erode self-agency and critical thinking rather than free us.
    • End by posing a difficult question your eventual essay will need to answer—for example: If it’s so easy to slide from strategic use to dependence, can we really trust ourselves with AI?

    Later, you’ll rebut this paragraph in the full essay, but here your job is to make the counterargument as strong and persuasive as you can.

  • The Outrage Economy: How Moral Fury Became America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (college essay prompt)

    The Outrage Economy: How Moral Fury Became America’s Favorite Spectator Sport (college essay prompt)

    In a 1,700-word argumentative essay, analyze how the Netflix docuseries Mr. McMahon and Jonathan Haidt’s essay “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid” explore the rise of moral outrage as a form of entertainment, social currency, and group belonging. To what extent do these works suggest that the pursuit of outrage has eroded our ability to think critically and engage in good-faith dialogue?

    Your essay should take a clear position on whether Haidt and Mr. McMahon portray moral outrage as a symptom of cultural decay, a profitable spectacle, or a distorted form of moral engagement—and whether they overstate or accurately diagnose its impact on public reason. Support your argument with specific examples and analysis from both sources.

    Be sure to include a counterargument and rebuttal section, and a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least three sources.

  • Shame as Entertainment: The Myth of Moral Fitness in The Biggest Loser (college essay prompt)

    Shame as Entertainment: The Myth of Moral Fitness in The Biggest Loser (college essay prompt)

    With 70 percent of Americans now overweight or obese, it’s no wonder the nation is obsessed with weight loss. That obsession fuels a vast industry of diets, influencers, and reality shows, none more infamous than The Biggest Loser. The series, which became the subject of the three-part docuseries Fit for TV: The Reality of The Biggest Loser, reveals how television turned the suffering of overweight people into prime-time entertainment. Contestants were pushed, shamed, and humiliated under the guise of “motivation.” The so-called fitness experts preached self-discipline, grit, and moral purity, but what they really offered was a cocktail of cruelty and pseudoscience disguised as inspiration.

    Essay Assignment (1,700 words)
    In this essay, analyze how the abuse documented in Fit for TV exposes the deeper myths behind weight loss culture. Drawing on Fit for TV, Julia Belluz and Kevin Hall’s essay “It’s Not You. It’s the Food,” and Rebecca Johns’s “A Diet Writer’s Regrets,” develop an argument that answers this question:

    What is intrinsically abusive about the gospel of self-discipline in weight loss, and how does this ideology blind us to the systemic causes of obesity while offering a hollow sense of meaning through influencers and their heroic panaceas?

    Your essay must include a counterargument and rebuttal section and a Works Cited page in MLA format with at least three sources.

  • The Flim-Flam Man of Higher Ed

    The Flim-Flam Man of Higher Ed

    In the summer of 2025, the English Chair—Steve, a mild-mannered, hyper-competent saint of a man—sent me an email that sounded innocuous enough. Would I, he asked, teach a freshman writing course for student-athletes? It would meet two mornings a week, two hours a session. The rest of my load would stay online. I should have known from the soft tone of his message that this was no ordinary assignment. This was a CoLab, an experimental hybrid of academic optimism and administrative wishcasting.

    The idea was elegant on paper: gather athletes into one class, surround them with counselors and coaches, raise retention rates, and call it innovation. Morale would soar. Grades would climb. The athletes would have a “safe space,” a phrase that always sounds like a promise from someone who’s never had reality punch their teeth in. Through the magic of cross-departmental communication, we’d form a “deep network of student support.” It all sounded like a TED Talk waiting to happen.

    Morning classes weren’t my preference. I usually reserved that time for my kettlebell ritual—my secular liturgy of iron and sweat—but I said yes without hesitation. Steve had earned my respect long ago. A decade earlier, we’d bonded over Dale Allison’s Night Comes, marveling at its lucidity on the afterlife. You don’t forget someone who reads eschatology with humility and enthusiasm. So when Steve asked, it felt less like a request than a summons.

    And yes, I’ll admit it: the offer flattered me. Steve knew my past as an Olympic weightlifter, the remnant coach swagger in my stride was visible even at sixty-three. I imagined myself the perfect fit—a grizzled academic with gym cred, able to command respect from linemen and linebackers. I said yes with gusto, convinced I was not just teaching a class but leading a mission.

    Soon enough, the flattery metastasized into full-blown delusion. I stalked the campus like a self-appointed messiah of pedagogy, convinced destiny had personally cc’d me on its latest memo. To anyone within earshot, I announced my divine assignment: to pilot a revolutionary experiment that would fuse intellect and biceps into one enlightened organism. I fancied myself the missing link between Socrates and Schwarzenegger—a professor forged in iron, sent to rescue education from the sterile clutches of the AI Age. My “muscular, roll-up-your-sleeves” teaching style, I told myself, would be a sweaty rebuke to all that was algorithmic, bloodless, and bland.

    The problem with self-congratulation is that it only boosts performance in the imagination. It blunts the discipline of preparation and tricks you into confusing adrenaline for authority. I wasn’t an educational pioneer—I was a man on a dopamine binge, inhaling the exhaust of my own hype. Beneath the swagger, there was no scholarship, no rigor, no plan—just the hollow hum of self-belief. I hadn’t earned a thing. Until I actually taught the class and produced results, my so-called innovation was vaporware. I was a loudmouth in faculty khakis, mistaking vanity for vocation. Until I delivered the goods, I wasn’t a trailblazer—I was the Flim-flam Man of Higher Ed, peddling inspiration on credit.

    Forgive me for being so hard on myself, but after thirty-eight years of full-time college teaching, I’ve earned the right to doubt my own effectiveness. I’ve sat in the back of other instructors’ classrooms during evaluations, watching them conduct symphonies of group discussions and peer-review sessions with the grace of social alchemists. Their students collaborate, laugh, and somehow stay on task. Mine? The moment I try anything resembling a workshop, it devolves into chatter about weekend plans, fantasy football, or the ethics of tipping baristas. A few students slink out early as if the assignment violated parole. I sit there afterward, deflated, convinced I’m the pedagogical equivalent of a restaurant that can’t get anyone to stay for dessert.

    I’ve been to professional development seminars. I’ve heard the gospel of “increasing engagement” and “active learning.” I even take notes—real ones, not the doodles of a man pretending to care. Yet I never manage to replicate their magic. Perhaps it’s because I’ve leaned too heavily on my teaching persona, the wisecracking moralist who turns outrage into a stand-up routine. My students laugh; I bask in the glow of my own wit. Then I drive home replaying the greatest hits—those sarcastic riffs that landed just right—while avoiding the inconvenient truth: humor is a sugar high. It keeps the crowd awake, but it doesn’t build muscle. Even if I’m half as funny as I think I am, comedy can easily become a sedative—a way to distract myself from the harder work of improvement.

    Measuring effectiveness in teaching is its own farce. If I sold cars, I’d know by the end of the quarter whether I was good at it. If I ran a business, profit margins would tell the story. But academia? It’s all smoke and mirrors. We talk about “retention” and “Student Learning Outcomes,” but everyone knows the game is rigged. The easiest graders pull the highest retention numbers. And when “learning outcomes” are massaged to ensure success, the data becomes a self-congratulatory illusion—a bureaucratic circle jerk masquerading as accountability.

    The current fetish is “engagement,” a buzzword that’s supposed to fix everything. We’re told to gamify, scaffold, diversify, digitize—anything to keep students from drifting into their screens. But engagement itself has become impossible to measure; it’s a ghost we chase through PowerPoint slides. My colleagues, battle-scarred veterans of equal or greater tenure, tell me engagement has fallen off a cliff. Screens have rewired attention spans, and a culture that prizes self-esteem over rigor has made deep learning feel oppressive. Asking students to revise an essay is now a microaggression.

    So yes, I question my value as an instructor. I prepare obsessively, dive deep into my essay topics, and let my passion show—because I know that if I don’t care, the students won’t either. But too often, my enthusiasm earns me smirks. To many of my students, I’m just an eccentric goofy man who takes this writing thing way too seriously. Their goal is simple: pass the class with minimal friction. The more I push them to care, the more resistance I meet, until the whole enterprise starts to feel like an arm-wrestling match.

    Until I find a cure for this malaise—a magic wand, a new pedagogy, or divine intervention—I remain skeptical of my own worth in the classroom. I do my best, but some days that feels like shouting into a void lined with smartphones. So yes, I’ll say it again for the record: I am the Flim-Flam Man of Higher Ed, hawking sincerity in an age that rewards performance.

  • The No Consequences Era of Education

    The No Consequences Era of Education

    It’s been a bruising semester. I’m teaching a class full of student-athletes—big personalities, bigger social circles. I like them; I even feel protective of them. But they’re driving me halfway to madness. They sit in tight cliques, chattering through lectures like it’s a locker room between drills. Every class, I play the same game of whack-a-murmur: redirect, refocus, remind them that the material matters for their essays. I promise them mercy—“just give me 30 minutes of focus before we watch the documentary or workshop your drafts”—but my voice competes with the hum of conversation and the holy glow of smartphones.

    The phones are the true sirens of the classroom—scrolling, snapping, texting, attention atomized into pixels. Maybe it’s my fault for not collecting them in a basket like contraband. I thought I was teaching adults. I thought athletes, of all people, would bring discipline and drive. Instead, I’ve got a team that treats class like study hall with Wi-Fi. My essay topics that have created engagement in past semesters—like Jordan Peele’s Sunken Place—barely register. The irony: I’m showing them the metaphor for psychological paralysis, and half the room is literally sinking into their screens.

    After thirty years of teaching, this is the hardest semester I’ve had. I kept telling myself, Five more weeks and the storm will pass. Next semester, you’ll have your groove back. Today I spoke with a colleague who teaches the same class to the general population—same disengagement, same cell phones, same glazed eyes. He added one more grim diagnosis: the rise of fragility. When he points out errors, missing citations, too much AI-speak, or low effort, students protest that his feedback “hurts their feelings.” They’re not defiant—they’re delicate. Consequences have become cruelty.

    That word—consequences—haunted me as I walked to class. I thought about my own twin daughters at their highly rated high school, where late work flows freely, “self-esteem” trumps rigor, and parental complaints terrify administrators more than failing grades. It hit me: this isn’t an athlete problem—it’s a generational shift. The No Consequences Era has arrived. Students no longer fear failure; they resent it. And the tragedy isn’t that they can’t handle criticism—it’s that they’ve never been forced to build the muscle for it.