Cinemorphosis

Tag: ai

  • CHATGPT LIVES RENT-FREE INSIDE YOUR HEAD

    CHATGPT LIVES RENT-FREE INSIDE YOUR HEAD

    One thing I know about my colleagues is that we have an unrelenting love affair with control. We thrive on reliability, routine, and preparation. These three pillars are our holy trinity—without them, the classroom descends into anarchy. And despite the tech tidal waves that keep crashing against us, we cling to these pillars like castaways on a raft.

    Remember when smartphones hijacked human attention spans fifteen years ago? We adapted—begrudgingly—when our students started caring more about their screens than us. Our power waned, but we put on our game face and carried on. Then came the digital migration: Canvas, Pronto, Nuventive—all those lovely platforms that no one asked us if we wanted. We learned them anyway, with as much grace as one can muster when faced with endless login screens and forgotten passwords.

    Technology never asks permission; it just barges in like an unwelcome houseguest. One morning, you wake up to find it’s moved in—like a freeloading uncle you didn’t know you had. He doesn’t just take over the guest room; he follows you to work, plops on your couch, and eats your sanity for breakfast. Now that homeless uncle is ChatGPT. I tried to evict him. I said, “Look, dude, I’ve already got Canvas, Pronto, and Edmodo crammed in the guest room. No vacancy!”

    But ChatGPT just grinned and said, “No problem, bro. I’ll crash rent-free in your head.” And here he is—shuffling around my brain, lounging in my workspace, and making himself way too comfortable. This time, though, something’s different. Students are asking me—dead serious—if I’m still going to have a job in a few years. As far as they’re concerned, I’m just another fossil ChatGPT is about to shove into irrelevance.

    And honestly, they have a point. According to The Washington Post article, “ChatGPT took their jobs. Now they walk dogs and fix air conditioners,” AI might soon rearrange the workforce with all the finesse of a wrecking ball. Economists predict this upheaval could rival the industrial revolution. Students aren’t just worried about us—they’re terrified about their own future in a post-literate world where books collect dust, podcasts reign supreme, and “good enough” AI-generated writing becomes the standard.

    So, what’s the game plan for college writing instructors? If we’re going to have a chance at survival, we need to tackle these tasks:

    1. Reassess how we teach to highlight our relevance.
    2. Identify what ChatGPT can’t replicate in our content and communication styles.
    3. Design assignments that AI can’t easily fake.
    4. Set clear boundaries: ChatGPT stays in its lane, and we own ours.

    We’ll adapt because we always do. But let’s be real—this is only the first round. ChatGPT is a shape-shifter. Whatever we fix today might need a reboot tomorrow. Such is life in the never-ending tech arms race. 

    The real existential threat to my job isn’t just ChatGPT’s constant shape-shifting. No, the real menace is the creeping reality that we might be tumbling headfirst into a post-literate society—one that wouldn’t hesitate to outsource my teaching duties to a soulless algorithm with a smarmy virtual smile.

    Let’s start with the illusion of “best-sellers.” In today’s shrinking reader pool, a “best-seller” might move a tenth of the copies it would have a decade ago. Long-form reading is withering on the vine, replaced by a flood of bite-sized content. Tweets, memes, and TikTok clips now reign supreme. Even a 500-word blog post gets slapped with the dreaded “TL;DR” tag. Back in 2015, when I had the audacity to assign The Autobiography of Malcolm X, my students grumbled like I’d asked them to scale Everest barefoot. Today? I’d be lucky if half the class didn’t drop out before I finished explaining who Malcolm X was.

    Emojis, GIFs, and memes now serve as emotional shorthand, flattening language into reaction shots and cartoon hearts. If the brain dines too long on these fast-food visuals, it may lose its appetite for gourmet intellectual discourse. Why savor complexity when you can swipe to the next dopamine hit?

    In this post-literate dystopia, autodidacticism—a fancy word for “learning via YouTube rabbit holes”—is king. Need to understand the American Revolution, Civil War, and Frederick Douglass? There’s a 10-minute video for that, perfectly timed to finish as your Hot Pocket dings. Meanwhile, print journalism decomposes like roadkill, replaced by podcasts that stretch on for hours, allowing listeners to feel productively busy as they fold laundry or doomscroll Twitter.

    The smartphone, of course, has been the linchpin of this decline. It’s normalized text-speak and obliterated grammar. LOL, brb, IDK, and ikr are now the lingua franca. Capitalization and punctuation? Optional. Precision? Passé.

    Content today isn’t designed to deepen understanding; it’s designed to appease the almighty algorithm. Search engines prioritize clickbait with shallow engagement metrics over nuanced quality. As a result, journalism dies and “information” becomes a hall of mirrors where truth is a quaint, optional accessory.

    In this bleak future, animated explainer videos could take over college classrooms, pushing instructors like me out the door. Lessons on grammar and argumentation might be spoon-fed by ChatGPT clones. Higher education will shift from cultivating wisdom and cultural literacy to churning out “job-ready” drones. Figures like Toni Morrison, James Baldwin, and Gabriel García Márquez? Erased, replaced by influencers hawking hustle culture and tech bros promising “disruption.”

    Convenience will smother curiosity. Screens will become the ultimate opiate, numbing users into passive compliance. Authoritarians won’t even need force—just a well-timed notification and a steady stream of distraction. The Convenience Brain will replace the Curiosity Brain, and we’ll all be too zombified to notice.

    In this post-literate world, I would inevitably fully expect to be replaced by a hologram—a cheerful AI that preps students for the workforce while serenading them with dopamine-laced infotainment. But at least I’ll get to say “I told you so” in my unemployment memoir.

    Perhaps my rant has become disconnected from reality, the result of the kind of paranoia that overtakes you when ChatGPT has been living rent-free inside your brain for too long. 

  • Where ChatGPT falls short as a writing tool

    Where ChatGPT falls short as a writing tool

    In More Than Words: How to Think About Writing in the Age of AI, John Warner points out just how emotionally tone-deaf ChatGPT is when tasked with describing something as tantalizing as a cinnamon roll. At best, the AI produces a sterile list of adjectives like “delicious,” “fattening,” and “comforting.” For a human who has gluttonous memories, however, the scent of cinnamon rolls sets off a chain reaction of sensory and emotional triggers—suddenly, you’re transported into a heavenly world of warm, gooey indulgence. For Warner, the smell launches him straight into vivid memories of losing his willpower at a Cinnabon in O’Hare Airport. ChatGPT, by contrast, is utterly incapable of such sensory delirium. It has no desire, no memory, no inner turmoil. As Warner explains, “ChatGPT has no capacity for sense memory; it has no memory in the way human memory works, period.”

    Without memory, ChatGPT can’t make meaningful connections and associations. The cinnamon roll for John Warner is a marker for a very particular time and place in his life. He was in a state of mind then that made him a different person than he was twelve years later reminiscing about the days of caving in to the temptation to buy a Cinnabon. For him, the cinnamon roll has layers and layers of associations that inform his writing about the cinnamon roll that gives depth to his description of that dessert that ChatGPT cannot match.

    Imagine ChatGPT writing a vivid description of Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlour. It would perform a serviceable job describing the physical layout–the sweet aroma of fresh waffle cones, sizzling burgers, and syrupy fudge;  the red-and-white striped wallpaper stretched from corner to corner, the dark, polished wooden booths lining the walls; the waitstaff, dressed in candy-cane-striped vests and straw boater hats, and so on. However, there are vital components missing in the description–a kid’s imagination full of memories and references to their favorite movies, TV shows, and books. The ChatGPT version is also lacking in a kid’s perspective, which is full of grandiose aspirations to being like their heroes and mythical legends. 

    For someone who grow up believing that Farrell’s was the Holy Grail for birthday parties, my memory of the place adds multiple dimensions to the ice cream parlour that ChatGPT is incapable of rendering:

    When I was a kid growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s, there was an ice creamery called Farrell’s. In a child’s imagination, Farrell’s was the equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory. You didn’t go to Farrell’s often, maybe once every two years or so. Entering Farrell’s, you were greeted by the cacophony of laughter and the clinking of spoons against glass. Servers in candy-striped uniforms dashed around with the energy of marathon runners, bearing trays laden with gargantuan sundaes. You sat down, your eyes wide with awe, and the menu was presented to you like a sacred scroll. You don’t need to read it, though. Your quest was clear: the legendary banana split. When the dessert finally arrived, it was nothing short of a spectacle. The banana split was monumental, an ice cream behemoth. It was as if the dessert gods themselves had conspired to create this masterpiece. Three scoops of ice cream, draped in velvety hot fudge and caramel, crowned with mountains of whipped cream and adorned with maraschino cherries, all nestled between perfectly ripe bananas. Sprinkles and nuts cascaded down the sides like the treasures of a sugar-coated El Dorado. As you took your first bite, you embarked on a journey as grand and transformative as any hero’s quest. The flavors exploded in your mouth, each spoonful a step deeper into the enchanted forest of dessert ecstasy. You were not just eating ice cream; you were battling dragons of indulgence and conquering kingdoms of sweetness. The sheer magnitude of the banana split demanded your full attention and stamina. Your small arms wielded the spoon like a warrior’s sword, and with each bite, you felt a mixture of triumph and fatigue. By the time you reached the bottom of the bowl, you were exhausted. Your muscles ached as if you’d climbed a mountain, and you were certain that you’d expanded your stomach capacity to Herculean proportions. You briefly considered the possibility of needing an appendectomy. But oh, the glory of it all! Your Farrell’s sojourn was worth every ache and groan. You entered the ice creamery as an ordinary child and emerged as a hero. In this fairy-tale-like journey, you had undergone a metamorphosis. You were no longer just a scrawny kid from the Bay Area; you were now a muscle-bound strutting Viking of the dessert world, having mastered the art of indulgence and delight. As you returned home, the experience of Farrell’s left a lasting imprint on your soul. You regaled your friends with tales of your conquest, the banana split becoming a legendary feast in the annals of your childhood adventures. In your heart, you knew that this epic journey to Farrell’s, this magical pilgrimage, had elevated you to the ranks of dessert royalty, a memory that would forever glitter like a golden crown in the kingdom of your mind. As a child, even an innocent trip to an ice creamery was a transformational experience. You entered Farrell’s a helpless runt; you exited it a glorious Viking. 

    The other failure of ChatGPT is that it cannot generate meaningful narratives. Without memory or point of view, ChatGPT has no stories to tell and no lessons to impart. Since the days of our Paleolithic ancestors, humans have shared emotionally charged stories around the campfire to ward off both external dangers—like saber-toothed tigers—and internal demons—obsessions, pride, and unbridled desires that can lead to madness. These tales resonate because they acknowledge a truth that thoughtful people, religious or not, can agree on: we are flawed and prone to self-destruction. It’s this precarious condition that makes storytelling essential. Stories filled with struggle, regret, and redemption offer us more than entertainment; they arm us with the tools to stay grounded and resist our darker impulses. ChatGPT, devoid of human frailty, cannot offer us such wisdom.

    Because ChatGPT has no memory, it cannot give us the stories and life lessons we crave and have craved for thousands of years in the form of folk tales, religious screeds, philosophical treatises, and personal manifestos. 

    That ChatGPT can only muster a Wikipedia-like description of a cinnamon roll hardly makes it competitive with humans when it comes to the kind of writing we crave with all of our heart, mind, and soul. 

    One of ChatGPT’s greatest disadvantages is that, unlike us, it is not a fallen creature slogging through the freak show that is this world, to use the language of George Carlin. Nor does ChatGPT understand how our fallen condition can put us at the mercy of our own internal demons and obsessions that cause us to warp reality that leads to dysfunction. In other words, ChatGPT does not have a haunted mind and without any oppressive memories, it cannot impart stories of value to us.

    When I think of being haunted, I think of one emotion above all others–regret. Regret doesn’t just trap people in the past—it embalms them in it, like a fly in amber, forever twitching with regret. Case in point: there are  three men I know who, decades later, are still gnashing their teeth over a squandered romantic encounter so catastrophic in their minds, it may as well be their personal Waterloo.

    It was the summer of their senior year, a time when testosterone and bad decisions flowed freely. Driving from Bakersfield to Los Angeles for a Dodgers game, they were winding through the Grapevine when fate, wearing a tie-dye bikini, waved them down. On the side of the road, an overheated vintage Volkswagen van—a sunbaked shade of decayed orange—coughed its last breath. Standing next to it? Four radiant, sun-kissed Grateful Dead followers, fresh from a concert and still floating on a psychedelic afterglow.

    These weren’t just women. These were ethereal, free-spirited nymphs, perfumed in the intoxicating mix of patchouli, wild musk, and possibility. Their laughter tinkled like wind chimes in an ocean breeze, their sun-bronzed shoulders glistening as they waved their bikinis and spaghetti-strap tops in the air like celestial signals guiding sailors to shore.

    My friends, handy with an engine but fatally clueless in the ways of the universe, leaped to action. With grease-stained heroism, they nursed the van back to health, coaxing it into a purring submission. Their reward? An invitation to abandon their pedestrian baseball game and join the Deadhead goddesses at the Santa Barbara Summer Solstice Festival—an offer so dripping with hedonistic promise that even a monk would’ve paused to consider.

    But my friends? Naïve. Stupid. Shackled to their Dodgers tickets as if they were golden keys to Valhalla. With profuse thanks (and, one imagines, the self-awareness of a plank of wood), they declined. They drove off, leaving behind the road-worn sirens who, even now, are probably still dancing barefoot somewhere, oblivious to the tragedy they unwittingly inflicted.

    Decades later, my friends can’t recall a single play from that Dodgers game, but they can describe—down to the last bead of sweat—the precise moment they drove away from paradise. Bring it up, and they revert into snarling, feral beasts, snapping at each other over whose fault it was that they abandoned the best opportunity of their pathetic young lives. Their girlfriends, beautiful and present, might as well be holograms. After all, these men are still spiritually chained to that sun-scorched highway, watching the tie-dye bikini tops flutter in the wind like banners of a lost kingdom.

    Insomnia haunts them. Their nights are riddled with fever dreams of sun-drenched bacchanals that never happened. They wake in cold sweats, whispering the names of women they never actually kissed. Their relationships suffer, their souls remain malnourished, and all because, on that fateful day, they chose baseball over Dionysian bliss.

    Regret couldn’t have orchestrated a better long-term psychological prison if it tried. It’s been forty years, but they still can’t forgive themselves. They never will. And in their minds, somewhere on that dusty stretch of highway, a rusted-out orange van still sits, idling in the sun, filled with the ghosts of what could have been.

    Humans have always craved stories of folly, and for good reason. First, there’s the guilty pleasure of witnessing someone else’s spectacular downfall—our inner schadenfreude finds comfort in knowing it wasn’t us who tumbled into the abyss of human madness. Second, these stories hold up a mirror to our own vulnerability, reminding us that we’re all just one bad decision away from disaster.

    As a teacher, I can tell you that if you don’t anchor your ideas to a compelling story, you might as well be lecturing to statues. Without a narrative hook, students’ eyes glaze over, their minds drift, and you’re left questioning every career choice that led you to this moment. But if you offer stories brimming with flawed characters—haunted by regrets so deep they’re like Lot’s wife, frozen and unmovable in their failure—students perk up. These narratives speak to something profoundly human: the agony of being broken and the relentless desire to become whole again. That’s precisely where AI like ChatGPT falls short. It may craft mechanically perfect prose, but it has never known the sting of regret or the crushing weight of shame. Without that depth, it can’t deliver the kind of storytelling that truly resonates.

  • WILL WRITING INSTRUCTORS BE REPLACED BY CHATBOTS?

    WILL WRITING INSTRUCTORS BE REPLACED BY CHATBOTS?

    Last night, I was trapped in a surreal nightmare—a bureaucratic limbo masquerading as a college elective. The course had no purpose other than to grant students enough credits to graduate. No curriculum, no topics, no teaching—just endless hours of supervised inertia. My role? Clock in, clock out, and do absolutely nothing.

    The students were oddly cheerful, like campers at some low-budget retreat. They brought packed lunches, sprawled across desks, and killed time with card games and checkers. They socialized, laughed, and blissfully ignored the fact that this whole charade was a colossal waste of time. Meanwhile, I sat there, twitching with existential dread. The urge to teach something—anything—gnawed at my gut. But that was forbidden. I was there to babysit, not educate.

    The shame hung on me like wet clothes. I felt obsolete, like a relic from the days when education had meaning. The minutes dragged by like a DMV line, each one stretching into a slow, agonizing eternity. I wondered if this Kafkaesque hell was a punishment for still believing that teaching is more than glorified daycare.

    This dream echoes a fear many writing instructors share: irrelevance. Daniel Herman explores this anxiety in his essay, “The End of High-School English.” He laments how students have always found shortcuts to learning—CliffsNotes, YouTube summaries—but still had to confront the terror of a blank page. Now, with AI tools like ChatGPT, that gatekeeping moment is gone. Writing is no longer a “metric for intelligence” or a teachable skill, Herman claims.

    I agree to an extent. Yes, AI can generate competent writing faster than a student pulling an all-nighter. But let’s not pretend this is new. Even in pre-ChatGPT days, students outsourced essays to parents, tutors, and paid services. We were always grappling with academic honesty. What’s different now is the scale of disruption.

    Herman’s deeper question—just how necessary are writing instructors in the age of AI—is far more troubling. Can ChatGPT really replace us? Maybe it can teach grammar and structure well enough for mundane tasks. But writing instructors have a higher purpose: teaching students to recognize the difference between surface-level mediocrity and powerful, persuasive writing.

    Herman himself admits that ChatGPT produces essays that are “adequate” but superficial. Sure, it can churn out syntactically flawless drivel, but syntax isn’t everything. Writing that leaves a lasting impression—“Higher Writing”—is built on sharp thought, strong argumentation, and a dynamic authorial voice. Think Baldwin, Didion, or Nabokov. That’s the standard. I’d argue it’s our job to steer students away from lifeless, task-oriented prose and toward writing that resonates.

    Herman’s pessimism about students’ indifference to rhetorical nuance and literary flair is half-baked at best. Sure, dive too deep into the murky waters of Shakespearean arcana or Melville’s endless tangents, and you’ll bore them stiff—faster than an unpaid intern at a three-hour faculty meeting. But let’s get real. You didn’t go into teaching to serve as a human snooze button. You went into sales, whether you like it or not. And what are you selling? Persona, ideas, and the antidote to chaos.

    First up: persona. It’s not just about writing—it’s about becoming. How do you craft an identity, project it with swagger, and use it to navigate life’s messiness? When students read Oscar Wilde, Frederick Douglass, or Octavia Butler, they don’t just see words on a page—they see mastery. A fully-realized persona commands attention with wit, irony, and rhetorical flair. Wilde nailed it when he said, “The first task in life is to assume a pose.” He wasn’t joking. That pose—your persona—grows stronger through mastery of language and argumentation. Once students catch a glimpse of that, they want it. They crave the power to command a room, not just survive it. And let’s be clear—ChatGPT isn’t in the persona business. That’s your turf.

    Next: ideas. You became a teacher because you believe in the transformative power of ideas. Great ideas don’t just fill word counts; they ignite brains and reshape worldviews. Over the years, students have thanked me for introducing them to concepts that stuck with them like intellectual tattoos. Take Bread and Circus—the idea that a tiny elite has always controlled the masses through cheap food and mindless entertainment. Students eat that up (pun intended). Or nihilism—the grim doctrine that nothing matters and we’re all here just killing time before we die. They’ll argue over that for hours. And Rousseau’s “noble savage” versus the myth of human hubris? They’ll debate whether we’re pure souls corrupted by society or doomed from birth by faulty wiring like it’s the Super Bowl of philosophy.

    ChatGPT doesn’t sell ideas. It regurgitates language like a well-trained parrot, but without the fire of intellectual curiosity. You, on the other hand, are in the idea business. If you’re not selling your students on the thrill of big ideas, you’re failing at your job.

    Finally: chaos. Most people live in a swirling mess of dysfunction and anxiety. You sell your students the tools to push back: discipline, routine, and what Cal Newport calls “deep work.” Writers like Newport, Oliver Burkeman, Phil Stutz, and Angela Duckworth offer blueprints for repelling chaos and replacing it with order. ChatGPT can’t teach students to prioritize, strategize, or persevere. That’s your domain.

    So keep honing your pitch. You’re selling something AI can’t: a powerful persona, the transformative power of ideas, and the tools to carve order from the chaos. ChatGPT can crunch words all it wants, but when it comes to shaping human beings, it’s just another cog. You? You’re the architect.

  • Ozempic Challenges the Notion of Free Will

    Ozempic Challenges the Notion of Free Will

    The other day I was listening to Howard Stern and his co-host Robin Quivers talking about how a bunch of celebrities magically slimmed down at the same time. The culprit, they noted, was Ozempic—a drug available mostly to the rich. While they laughed about the side effects, such as incontinence, “Ozempic face” and “Ozempic butt,” I couldn’t help but see these grotesque symptoms as a metaphor for the Ozempification of a society hooked on shortcuts. They enjoyed some short-term benefits but the side effects were far worse than the supposed solution. Ozempification was strikingly evident in AI-generated essays–boring, generic, surface-level, cliche-ridden, just about worthless. Regardless of how well structured and logically composed, these essays have the telltale signs of “Ozempfic face” and “Ozempic butt.” 

    As a college writing instructor, I’m not just trying to sell academic honesty. I’m trying to sell pride. As I face the brave new world of teaching writing in the AI era, I’ve realized that my job as a college instructor has morphed into that of a supercharged salesman. And what am I selling? No less than survival in an age where the very tools meant to empower us—like AI—threaten to bury us alive under layers of polished mediocrity. Imagine it: a spaceship has landed on Earth in the form of ChatGPT. It’s got warp-speed potential, sure, but it can either launch students into the stars of academic brilliance or plunge them into the soulless abyss of bland, AI-generated drivel. My mission? To make them realize that handling this tool without care is like inviting a black hole into their writing.

    As I fine-tune my sales pitch, I think about Ozempic–that magic slimming drug, beloved by celebrities who’ve turned from mid-sized to stick figures overnight. Like AI, Ozempic offers a seductive shortcut. But shortcuts have a price. You see the trade-off in “Ozempic face”—that gaunt, deflated look where once-thriving skin sags like a Shar-Pei’s wrinkles—or, worse still, “Ozempic butt,” where shapely glutes shrink to grim, skeletal wiring. The body wasn’t worked; it was bypassed. No muscle-building, no discipline. Just magic pill ingestion—and what do you get? A husk of your former self. Ozempified.

    The Ozempification of writing is a marvel of modern mediocrity—a literary gastric bypass where prose, instead of slimming down to something sleek and muscular, collapses into a bloated mess of clichés and stock phrases. It’s writing on autopilot, devoid of tension, rhythm, or even the faintest trace of a soul. Like the human body without effort, writing handed over to AI without scrutiny deteriorates into a skeletal, soulless product: technically coherent, yes, but lifeless as an elevator pitch for another cookie-cutter Marvel spinoff.

    What’s worse? Most people can’t spot it. They think their AI-crafted essay sparkles when, in reality, it has all the charm of Botox gone wrong—rigid, lifeless, and unnervingly “off.” Call it literary Ozempic face: a hollowed-out, sagging simulacrum of actual creativity. These essays prance about like bargain-bin Hollywood knock-offs—flashy at first glance but gutless on closer inspection.

    But here’s the twist: demonizing AI and Ozempic as shortcuts to ruin isn’t the full story. Both technologies have a darker complexity that defies simplistic moralizing. Sometimes, they’re necessary. Just as Ozempic can prevent a diabetic’s fast track to early organ failure, AI can become a valuable tool—if wielded with care and skill.

    Take Rebecca Johns’ haunting essay, “A Diet Writer’s Regrets.” It rattled me with its brutal honesty and became the cornerstone of my first Critical Thinking essay assignment. Johns doesn’t preach or wallow in platitudes. She exposes the failures of free will and good intentions in weight management with surgical precision. Her piece suggests that, as seductive as shortcuts may be, they can sometimes be life-saving, not soul-destroying. This tension—between convenience and survival, between control and surrender—deserves far more than a knee-jerk dismissal. It’s a line we walk daily in both our bodies and our writing. The key is knowing when you’re using a crutch versus when you’re just hobbling on borrowed time. 

    I want my students to grasp the uncanny parallels between Ozempic and AI writing platforms like ChatGPT. Both are cutting-edge solutions to modern problems: GLP-1 drugs for weight management and AI tools for productivity. And let’s be honest—both are becoming necessary adaptations to the absurd conditions of modern life. In a world flooded with calorie-dense junk, “willpower” and “food literacy” are about as effective as handing out umbrellas during a tsunami. For many, weight gain isn’t just an inconvenience—it’s a life-threatening hazard. Enter GLP-1s, the biochemical cavalry.

    Similarly, with AI tools quickly becoming the default infrastructure for white-collar work, resisting them might soon feel as futile as refusing to use Google Docs or Windows. If you’re in the information economy, you either adapt or get left behind. But here’s the twist I want my students to explore: both technologies, while necessary, come with strings attached. They save us from drowning, but they also bind us in ways that provoke deep, existential anguish.

    Rebecca Johns captures this anguish in her essay, “A Diet Writer’s Regrets.” Ironically, Johns started her career in diet journalism not just to inform others, but to arm herself with insider knowledge to win her own weight battles. Perhaps she could kill two birds with one stone: craft top-tier content while secretly curbing her emotional eating. But, as she admits, “None of it helped.” Instead, her career exploded along with her waistline. The magazine industry’s appetite for diet articles grew insatiable—and so did her own cravings. The stress ate away at her resolve, and before long, she was 30 pounds heavier, trapped by the very cycle she was paid to analyze.

    By the time her BMI hit 45 (deep in the obesity range), Johns was ashamed to tell anyone—even her husband. Desperate, she cycled through every diet plan she had ever recommended, only to regain the weight every time. Enter 2023. Her doctor handed her a lifeline: Mounjaro, a GLP-1 drug with a name as grand as the results it promised. (Seriously, who wouldn’t picture themselves triumphantly hiking Mount Kilimanjaro after hearing that name?) For Johns, it delivered. She shed 80 pounds without white-knuckling through hunger pangs. The miracle wasn’t just the weight loss—it was how Mounjaro rewired her mind.

    “Medical science has done what no diet-and-exercise plan ever could,” she writes. “It changed my entire relationship with what I eat and when and why.” Food no longer controlled her. But here’s the kicker: while the drug granted her a newfound sense of freedom, it also raises profound questions about dependence, control, and the shifting boundaries of human resilience—questions not unlike those we face with AI. Both Ozempic and AI can save us. But at what cost? 

    And is the cost of not using these technologies even greater? Rebecca Johns’ doctor didn’t mince words—she was teetering on the edge of diabetes. The trendy gospel of “self-love” and “body acceptance” she had once explored for her articles suddenly felt like a cruel joke. What’s the point of “self-acceptance” when carrying extra weight could put you six feet under?

    Once she started Mounjaro, everything changed. Her cravings for rich, calorie bombs disappeared, she got full on tiny portions, and all those golden nuggets of diet advice she’d dished out over the years—cut carbs, eat more protein and veggies, avoid snacks—were suddenly effortless. No more bargaining with herself for “just one cookie.” The biggest shift, however, was in her mind. She experienced a complete mental “reset.” Food no longer haunted her every waking thought. “I no longer had to white-knuckle my way through the day to lose weight,” she writes.

    Reading that, I couldn’t help but picture my students with their glowing ChatGPT tabs, no longer caffeinated zombies trying to churn out a midnight essay. With AI as their academic Mounjaro, they’ve ditched the anxiety-fueled, last-minute grind and achieved polished results with half the effort. AI cushions the process—time, energy, and creativity now outsourced to a digital assistant.

    Of course, the analogy isn’t perfect. AI tools like ChatGPT are dirt-cheap (or free), while GLP-1 drugs are expensive, scarce, and buried under a maze of insurance red tape. Johns herself is on borrowed time—her insurance will stop covering Mounjaro in just over a year. Her doctor warns that once off the drug, her weight will likely return, dragging her health risks back with it. Faced with this grim reality, she worries she’ll have no choice but to return to the endless cycle of dieting—“white-knuckling” her days with tricks and hacks that have repeatedly failed her.

    Her essay devastates me for many reasons. Johns is a smart, painfully honest narrator who lays bare the shame and anguish of relying on technology to rescue her from a problem that neither expertise nor willpower could fix. She reports on newfound freedom—freedom from food obsession, the physical benefits of shedding 80 pounds, and the relief of finally feeling like a more present, functional family member. But lurking beneath it all is the bitter truth: her well-being is tethered to technology, and that dependency is a permanent part of her identity.

    This contradiction haunts me. Technology, which I was raised to believe would stifle our potential, is now enhancing identity, granting people the ability to finally become their “better selves.” As a kid, I grew up on Captain Kangaroo, where Bob Keeshan preached the gospel of free will and positive thinking. Books like The Little Engine That Could drilled into me the sacred mantra: “I think I can.” Hard work, affirmations, and determination were supposed to be the alchemy that transformed character and gave us a true sense of self-worth.

    But Johns’ story—and millions like hers—rewrite that childhood gospel into something far darker: The Little Engine That Couldn’t. No amount of grit or optimism got her to the top of the hill. In the end, only medical science saved her from herself. And it terrifies me to think that maybe, just maybe, this is the new human condition: we can’t become our Higher Selves without technological crutches.

    This raises questions that I can’t easily shake. What does it mean to cheat if technology is now essential to survival and success? Just as GLP-1 drugs sculpt bodies society deems “acceptable,” AI is quietly reshaping creativity and productivity. At what point do we stop being individuals who achieve greatness through discipline and instead become avatars of the tech we rely on? Have we traded the dream of self-actualization for a digital illusion of competence and control?

    Of course, these philosophical quandaries feel like a luxury when most of us are drowning in the realities of modern life. Who has time to ponder free will or moral fortitude when you’re working overtime just to stay afloat? Maybe that’s the cruelest twist of all. Technology hasn’t just rewritten the rules—it’s made them inescapable. You adapt, or you get left behind. And maybe, somewhere deep down, we all already know which path we’re on.

    As I mull over the anguish and philosophical complexities presented in Rebecca Johns’ essay, I realize I’ve hit a goldmine for my Critical Thinking class. The themes of free will and technological dependency in her essay make it a worthy essay assignment for my students. For an assignment to be worthy, it must contain “Enduring ideas” that transcend the course and are so powerful and haunting they potentially sear an indelible impression in the students’ souls. 

    My college’s online education coordinator, Moses Wolfenstein, introduced me to this idea of “Enduring Ideas,” which he learned from Grant Wiggins and Jay McTighe’s Understanding by Design. Moses explained that “Enduring Ideas” are the foundational, universal concepts within a subject—those big ideas that students are likely to carry with them well beyond the classroom. According to Moses, these ideas form “the heart of the discipline,” connecting to the larger truths of the human condition. Because they resonate so deeply with students, “Enduring Ideas” have the power to drive genuine engagement.

    I was convinced that Rebecca Johns’ essay fulfilled the criteria, so now I had to create an argumentative essay assignment:

    In a 1,700-word essay using at least four credible sources, support, refute, or complicate the claim that, despite the philosophical challenges to free will, self-worth, and authenticity raised in Rebecca Means’ essay “A Diet Writer’s Regrets,” her story demonstrates that reliance on technology—such as GLP-1 drugs and AI writing tools—can be a necessary adaptation for survival, success, and competitiveness in today’s world. However, this adaptation comes at a significant cost: the erosion of self-reliance, a diminished sense of identity, and compromised authenticity. Is the cost justified? Are we striking a dangerous bargain for convenience and success? Or is refusing this deal even more self-destructive, with consequences so severe that avoiding it is the greater folly? Explore these questions in your essay, considering both the benefits and risks of technological dependency.

  • HOW DO WE ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING IN THE AGE OF AI?

    HOW DO WE ASSESS STUDENT LEARNING IN THE AGE OF AI?

    One of my colleagues—an expert in technology and education, and thus perpetually stuck in the trenches of this AI circus—must have noticed I’d taken on the role of ChatGPT’s most aggrieved critic. I’d been flooding her inbox with meticulously crafted, panic-laced mini manifestos about how these AI platforms were invading my classroom like a digital plague. But instead of telling me to get a grip or, better yet, stop emailing her altogether, she came up with an ingenious way for me to process my AI anxieties. Her solution? “Why not channel that nervous energy into a Spring Flex Activity on AI in teaching?”

    Naturally, because misery loves company, she signed on to co-present. The date was locked—mid-February 2025. A few months to go, plenty of time to prepare… or so I thought.

    Three months earlier in November, I was already deep into crafting a masterpiece of a Google Slides presentation, proudly titled: “Ten Approaches to Making AI-Resistant Writing Prompts: Resisting the AI Takeover.” It was focused, practical, and dripping with tech-savvy authority. I was convinced I had nailed it. I would be the knight in shining armor, defending academia from an algorithmic apocalypse.

    But a tiny voice in the back of my head kept nagging: “You do realize ChatGPT has a faster upgrade schedule than your iPhone, right?” Every time I’d tested my so-called AI-resistant strategies, the platform would recognize its weaknesses, evolve, and then laugh in my face. Still, I chose to ignore that voice and basked in my fleeting sense of triumph.

    Then came January. I pulled up my Google Slides to rehearse my presentation and felt the full weight of my hubris. My “cutting-edge” strategies were already about as relevant as an AOL dial-up manual. The AI arms race had advanced, and my presentation was now a quaint little relic—a reminder that in the war against AI, obsolescence isn’t just a risk. It’s the default setting.

    Let me walk you through my three brilliant strategies for giving students AI-resistant writing assignments—strategies that crumbled faster than a cookie in a chatbot’s clutches over the course of three short months.

    Strategy One: Have students summarize an essay with signal phrases, in-depth analysis, and in-text citations. Why? Because ChatGPT couldn’t handle that level of academic finesse. Or so I thought. Fast forward three months, and now the bot churns out MLA-perfect citations with smug precision and rhetorical flair, like it’s gunning for a tenure-track position.

    Strategy Two: Ban clichés and stock phrases. Simple, right? Wrong. Students can now binge-watch YouTube tutorials that teach them how to reprogram ChatGPT to “write with originality” and bypass every plagiarism detection tool I can throw at them. It’s like handing them a cheat code labeled: “Creative Nonsense, Now AI-Enhanced!”

    Strategy Three: Require current references. My reasoning? ChatGPT was stuck in a time warp with outdated sources. But wouldn’t you know it? The bot got a data upgrade and now pulls research so fresh it practically smells like new car leather.

    In sum, ChatGPT is a shape-shifting Hydra of academic trickery. Any technique I recommend today will be obsolete by the time you finish your coffee. So, yes—presenting a guide on “AI-resistant” strategies would be like publishing a survival manual for Jurassic Park and then as you’re dashing into the parking lot to get inside your car, you’re eaten by a velociraptor.

    So, what exactly was my Flex Day presentation supposed to be about? Since playing tug-of-war with AI’s ever-evolving powers was a losing battle, I decided it was time to pivot. Instead of chasing after futile strategies to “beat” AI, the real question became: what’s our role as instructors in a world where students—and everyone else—are increasingly outsourcing their cognitive load to machines? More importantly, how do we assess student learning when AI tools are rapidly becoming part of everyday life?

    To stay relevant, we have to confront four key questions:

    1. How do we assess how effective the students are at using AI-writing tools? Are they wielding ChatGPT like a scalpel or a sledgehammer? Are they correctly using ChatGPT as a sidekick to assist their human-generated writing, or have they fallen back on their lazy default setting to produce a “Genie Essay” in which ChatGPT materializes a cheap surface-level essay in “the blink of an eye”?
    2. How do we create a grading rubric that separates “higher-order thinking” from surface-level drivel? The difference between a real argument and a ChatGPT-generated one is both profound and crucial—one is a meaningful persuader, the other a stochastic parrot (imitates language mindlessly and randomly).
    3. How do we create a grading rubric that discourages the dreaded Uncanny Valley Effect in student writing? You know, that eerie sensation you get when an essay seems human at first glance but is just slightly “off,” like a malfunctioning Stepford paper that reeks of academic dishonesty.
    4. What uniquely human tasks can we assign in class (online or face-to-face) to measure real learning? Spoiler: If the answer is a formulaic five-paragraph essay, you’re already in trouble.

    If we can answer these questions, maybe—just maybe—we’ll stop grading assignments that feel like AI-generated fever dreams and start nurturing authentic learning again.

    Questions one through three pertain to how we grade the students’ writing and define our expectations in the form of a grading rubric. When it comes to assessing students’ use of AI machines as collaborative helpers in their writing, we don’t get to see how they work at home. We only see the final product: a portion of their essay that we have assigned, like an introduction and thesis paragraph, or the entire manuscript. 

    Let us assume that every student is using an open-platform AI tool. We need a grading rubric that separates the desirable “AI-sidekick essay” from the “AI-genie essay.” To make this separation, we need an AI-Grading Rubric, which should address the following features of writing quality:

    1. Is the language clear, rhetorically appropriate, and conducive to creating a strong authorial presence or is it mostly AI-signature cliches and stock phrases?
    2. Does the essay explore the messy human side of an issue with higher-order thought, meaning, nuance, and blood, sweat, and tears, or does it smack of an AI-signature facile, glib, surface-level, cookie-cutter Wikipedia-like superficial bot piece? 
    3. Does the essay appear to be an authentic expression of strong authorial presence or does it have that creepy Uncanny Valley Effect? 

    For any kind of grading rubric to be effective, you will have to give your students contrasting essay models, which can be scrutinized in class and posted on Canvas: 

    1. Sidekick Essay Vs. Genie Essay
    2. Strong Authorial Presence Vs. Cringe-Worthy AI Surface-Level Presence
    3. An essay that is so deep in meaning and nuance that it transcends the original topic and speaks to larger human concerns vs. a glib surface-level essay that has somehow managed to take a sophisticated topic and reduce it to a fifth-grade cookie-cutter argument. 

    A crucial thing to acknowledge as you make the rubric is that you’re assuming students are using AI in some way or another. Your purpose isn’t to “catch them in the act of plagiarism.” Rather, your purpose is to focus on the quality of their writing. They may be using AI effectively and ethically. They may be using AI ineffectively and dubiously. Or they may be using it somewhere in between. The final measure of how they used AI will be evident in the quality of their work, which will be measured against your grading rubric. 

    Aside from assessing your students’ work in the AI Age, you want them to engage in coursework that is uniquely human and cannot be replicated by AI. I recommend the following:

    One. Integrate Personal Writing in an Argumentative Essay: Your students can begin an argumentative essay with an attention-getting hook based on their personal experience. For example, I teach Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You in which he argues that pursuing your career based on passion as your first criteria is a dangerous premise with a large failure rate while pursuing a craftsman mindset renders higher career success and happiness. My students defend, refute, or complicate Newport’s claim. In their opening paragraph, they write about their own career quest, based on passion or something else, or they observe someone else they know who is struggling to choose a career based on passion or another criteria. 

    Two. Have students interview each other and process those interviews into an introduction paragraph. This can be done in the classroom, or if the class is online, the students can interview each other on the Canvas chat app Pronto. For example, I show my students the documentary Becoming Frederick Douglass and the Jordan Peele movie Get Out and the students have to interview each other with the purpose of writing an extended definition of “The Sunken Place,” as a condition of hellish confinement, and “The North Star,” as a condition of freedom and enlightenment. These definitions will be present in their essays as they compare the themes of Frederick Douglass’s journey to the journey in Get Out.  

    Three. Use multimodal composition assignments. What this means is that in addition to your students submitting an essay, they also submit other media expressions of the assignment. For example, if they are writing an essay about “The Sunken Place” in the movie Get Out, their essay would be accompanied by a YouTube video in which they give an oral presentation of their essay. Another example of multimodal composition is to pair students who are debating an argument. Each student takes an opposing side and they hash it out on either a YouTube video or a homemade podcast. 

    If I had to guess, multimodal composition is going to scale over the next decade. Not only does it measure student achievement in uniquely human ways, it gives students the opportunity to use a variety of media tools that they will probably have to master in their career. 

    Four. Before the completed essay is due, have students write a one-page meta-analysis of the assignment in which they describe the ways the assignment made them anxious, frustrated, and confused; and other ways the assignment made them feel curious and changed their understanding of a topic they may or may not have thought about before. The purpose of this assignment is to make students look at the assignment from a radically different way and engage in the creative process, rumination, baking ideas over time, and realizing that ideas don’t crystallize into absolutes. Rather, ideas are open to change and the more they change and mature, the more deep and valuable they become. 

    I got this idea from reading Questlove’s Creative Quest. In the book, he recalls a nightly ritual with his parents: After dinner, they would spend two hours immersed in his father’s colossal record collection—every genre imaginable. His dad, a doo-wop musician from the 1950s, didn’t treat those records like sacred relics. Oh no, they were living, breathing works-in-progress. To Questlove, they were the analog version of Google Docs—always open for revision and reinvention. “The thing about records,” he writes, “was that they didn’t feel like closed ideas. They were ideas you could open and ideas you could use.”

    As I reflected on this elegant creative tradition, I was hit by a wave of melancholy. Why? Because this ritual was steeped in abundance—abundance of love, of time, and of joy in creativity for creativity’s sake, without the specter of deadlines or profit lurking around every corner. Questlove’s parents gave him space to explore art as a lifelong conversation, not a product.

    Now cut to me, the college instructor, trying to preach that same gospel of creative abundance to my students—students who shuffle into class like zombies after working double shifts and raising kids. They’re sleep-deprived, haven’t eaten since yesterday’s granola bar, and are already bracing for another round of minimum-wage survival. And here I am, waxing poetic about how they should “let their ideas germinate over time” like artisanal sourdough. Worse yet, I’m promoting multimodal composition—assignments so elaborate, they’re one drone shot away from being a Netflix mini-series. Yeah, that’s gonna land well.

    The truth is, creativity—real, human creativity—requires time. And time is a privilege most of my students just don’t have. So, as I build my course content, I have to factor this reality in. Otherwise, I’m just another academic blowhard asking students to perform miracles on the fumes of a 20-minute nap and half a bag of stale pretzels.

  • HOW DO YOU GRADE AN AI-GENERATED “GENIE” ESSAY?

    HOW DO YOU GRADE AN AI-GENERATED “GENIE” ESSAY?

    Let’s get one thing straight: AI writing tools are impressive—borderline sorcery—for tasks like editing, outlining, experimenting with rhetorical voices, and polishing prose. I want my students to learn how to wield these tools because, spoiler alert, they aren’t going anywhere. AI will be as embedded in their future careers as email and bad office coffee. Teaching them to engage with AI isn’t just practical; it can actually make the process of learning to write more dynamic and engaging—assuming they don’t treat it like a magic eight-ball.

    That said, let’s not kid ourselves: in the AI Age, the line between authentic writing and plagiarism has become blurred. I’ll concede that writing today is more of a hybrid creature. You’re no longer grading a lone student’s essay—you’re evaluating how effectively someone can collaborate with technology without it turning into a lifeless, Frankensteined word salad.

    And here’s the kicker—not all AI-assisted writing is created equal. Some students use AI as a trusty sidekick, enhancing their own writing. Others? Well, they treat AI like a wish-granting genie, hoping it’ll conjure a masterpiece with a few vague prompts. What they end up with are “genie essays”—stiff, robotic monstrosities that reek of what instructors lovingly refer to as AI plagiarism. It’s like the uncanny valley of academic writing: technically coherent but soulless enough to give you existential dread.

    When faced with the dreaded genie essay, resist the urge to brandish the scarlet P for plagiarism. That’s a rabbit hole lined with bureaucratic landmines and self-inflicted migraines. First off, in a world where screenwriters and CEOs are cheerfully outsourcing their brains to ChatGPT, it’s hypocritical to deny students access to the same tools. Second, AI detection software is about as trustworthy as a used car salesman—glitchy, inconsistent, and bound to fail spectacularly when you need it most. Third, confronting a student about AI use is a fast track to an ugly, defensive shouting match that makes everyone want to crawl into a dark hole and die.

    My advice? Forget chasing “academic honesty” like some puritan witch hunter. Instead, focus on grading quality based on your rubric. Genie essays—those hollow, AI-generated snoozefests—practically grade themselves with a big, fat D or F. No need to scream “Plagiarism!” from the rooftops. Just point out the abysmal writing quality.

    Picture this: A student turns in an essay that technically ticks all your boxes—claim, evidence, organization, even a few dutiful signal phrases. But the whole thing reads like it was written by a Hallmark card algorithm that’s one motivational quote away from a nervous breakdown. Time to whip out a comment like this:

    “While your essay follows the prompt and contains necessary structural elements, it lacks in-depth analysis, presents generic, surface-level ideas, and is riddled with stock phrases, clichés, and formulaic robot-speak. As a result, it does not meet the standards of college-level writing or satisfy the Student Learning Outcomes.”

    I’ve used something kinder than this (barely), and you know what? Not one student has argued with me. Why? My guess is they don’t want to die on the hill of defending their AI-generated sludge. They’d rather take the low grade than risk having a grievance committee dissect their essay and reveal it for the bot-written monstrosity it is. Smart move. Even they know when to fold.

    More often than not, after I make a comment on a genie essay, the student will later confess and apologize for resorting to ChatGPT. They’ll tell me they had time constraints due to their job or a family emergency, and they take the hit. 

    The shame of passing off a chatbot-generated essay as your own has all but evaporated, and honestly, I’m not shocked. It’s not that today’s students are any less ethical than their predecessors. No, it’s that the line between “authentic” work and AI-assisted output has turned into a smudgy Rorschach test. In the AI Age, the idea of originality is slipperier than a politician at a press conference. Still, let’s be real: quality writing—sharp, insightful, and memorable—hasn’t gone extinct. Turning in some bland, AI-scented drivel that reads like a rejected Wikipedia draft? That’s still unacceptable, no matter how much technology is doing the heavy lifting these days.

    When it comes to grading, if you want to encourage your students to create authentic writing and not hide behind AI, it’s essential to give them a chance to rewrite. I’ve found that allowing one or two rewrites with the possibility of a higher grade keeps them from spiraling into despair when their first submission bombs. In today’s world of online Learning Management Systems (LMS), students are already navigating a digital labyrinth that could produce a migraine. They open their course page and are hit with a chaotic onslaught of modules, notifications, and resources—like the educational equivalent of being trapped in a Vegas casino with no exit signs. It’s no wonder anxiety sets in before they even find the damn syllabus.

    By giving students room to fail and rewrite, I’m essentially throwing them a lifeline. I tell them, “Relax. You can screw this up and try again.” The result? They engage more. They take risks. They’re more likely to produce writing that actually has a pulse—something authentic, which is exactly what I’m fighting for in an age where AI-written drivel is a tempting shortcut. In short, I’m not just teaching composition; I’m running a support group for people overwhelmed by both technology and their own perfectionism.

    If you want to crush your students’ spirits like a cinder block to a soda can, go ahead—pepper their essays with comments until they resemble the Dead Sea Scrolls, riddled with ancient mysteries and editorial marks. Remember, you’re not the high priest of Random House, dissecting a bestseller with the fervor of a literary surgeon. Your students are not authors tweaking their next Pulitzer prizewinner; they’re deer in the headlights, dodging corrections like hunters’ bullets. Load them down with too many notes, and they’ll toss their first draft like it’s cursed Ikea furniture in desperate need for assembly—wood screws, cam lock nuts, and dowel rods strewn across the floor next to an inscrutable instruction manual. At that point, ChatGPT becomes their savior, and off they go, diving into AI’s warm, mind-clearing waters.

    Here’s a reality check: Your students were raised texting, scrolling, and laughing at 15-second TikToks, not slogging through The Count of Monte Cristo or unraveling Dickensian labyrinths in Bleak House. Their attention spans have the tensile strength of wet spaghetti. Handing them an intricate manifesto on rewriting will make their brains flatline faster than you can say “Les Misérables.” If you want results, focus on three key improvements. Yes, just three. Keep it simple and digestible, like a McNugget of literary wisdom.

    You are their personal trainer, not some sadistic drill sergeant barking out Herculean demands. You don’t shove them under a bar loaded with 400 pounds on day one and shout, “Lift or die!” No, you ease them in. Guide them to the lat machine like a gentle Sherpa of education. Set the weight selector pin at 10 pounds. Teach them to pull with grace, not grunt like they’re auditioning for Gladiator. Form comes first. Confidence follows. They need to trust the process, to see themselves slowly building strength. Maybe they won’t make viral gains overnight, but this is why you became a teacher—not for glory or applause, but for those small, stubborn victories that bloom over time.

    And trust me—there will be victories. I’ve seen it. Students with writing deficits are not doomed to live forever in the land of dangling modifiers and comma splices. I’m living proof. When I stumbled onto my college campus in 1979 at seventeen, I was told I wasn’t ready for freshman composition. They shunted me into what I’d later dub “Bonehead English,” which kicked my ass so hard I had to downgrade to “Pre-Bonehead.” I wasn’t stupid. My teachers weren’t to blame. I was just too busy daydreaming about being the next Schwarzenegger, consumed by the illusion of future pecs and glory. But something clicked in college—I redirected my muscle dreams from biceps to brain cells. And here I am now, climbing the educational ladder I once thought was unreachable.

    So, lighten up on the corrections, and maybe—just maybe—you’ll witness your students climb too.

    The point of this chapter isn’t to have you allow your AI concerns to make you morph into some grim, clipboard-wielding overlord of academic misery. It’s about threading the needle: keeping your standards intact while preventing your students from mentally checking out like a bored clerk on a Friday shift. And to strike that balance, here’s a radical idea—stop moonlighting as the plagiarism police. Nobody wants to see you patrolling Turnitin reports like it’s an episode of CSI: MLA Edition. Instead, fixate on improving the actual writing.

    Next, throw your students a rewrite lifeline. Give them a shot at redemption, or at least at salvaging their GPA from the wreckage of their latest Word doc catastrophe. The goal is to prevent them from spiraling into despair and skipping class faster than a doomed New Year’s resolution.

    Lastly, remember, these are academic toddlers in a gym full of intellectual kettlebells. You wouldn’t toss them onto the T-Bar Row or demand a perfect Turkish Get-Up without first teaching them how not to blow out their L5-S1. Show them the fundamentals, give them small wins, and gradually increase the weight. This isn’t a Rocky montage—it’s education. Adjust your expectations accordingly.

  • Talking About ChatGPT with My College Students

    Talking About ChatGPT with My College Students

    Standing in front of thirty bleary-eyed college students, I was deep into a lesson on how to distinguish a ChatGPT-generated essay from one written by an actual human—primarily by the AI’s habit of spitting out the same bland, overused phrases like a malfunctioning inspirational calendar. That’s when a business major casually raised his hand and said, “I can guarantee you everyone on this campus is using ChatGPT. We don’t use it straight-up. We just tweak a few sentences, paraphrase a bit, and boom—no one can tell the difference.”

    Cue the follow-up from a computer science student: “ChatGPT isn’t just for essays. It’s my life coach. I ask it about everything—career moves, crypto investments, even dating advice.” Dating advice. From ChatGPT. Let that sink in. Somewhere out there is a romance blossoming because of AI-generated pillow talk.

    At that moment, I realized I was facing the biggest educational disruption of my thirty-year teaching career. AI platforms like ChatGPT have three superpowers: insane convenience, instant accessibility, and lightning-fast speed. In a world where time is money and business documents don’t need to channel the spirit of James Baldwin, ChatGPT is already “good enough” for 95% of professional writing. And therein lies the rub—good enough.

    “Good enough” is the siren call of convenience. Picture this: You’ve just rolled out of bed, and you’re faced with two breakfast options. Breakfast #1 is a premade smoothie. It’s mediocre at best—mystery berries, more foam than a frat boy’s beer, and nutritional value that’s probably overstated. But hey, it’s there. No work required.

    Breakfast #2? Oh, it’s gourmet bliss—organic fruits and berries, rich Greek yogurt, chia seeds, almond milk, the works. But to get there, you’ll need to fend off orb spiders in your backyard, pick peaches and blackberries, endure the incessant yapping of your neighbor’s demonic Belgian dachshund, and then spend precious time blending and cleaning a Vitamix. Which option do most people choose?

    Exactly. Breakfast #1. The pre-packaged sludge wins, because who has the time for spider-wrangling and kitchen chemistry before braving rush-hour traffic? This is how convenience lures us into complacency. Sure, you sacrificed quality, but look how much time you saved! Eventually, you stop even missing the better option. This process—adjusting to mediocrity until you no longer care—is called attenuation.

    Now apply that to writing. Writing takes effort—a lot more than making a smoothie—and millions of people have begun lowering their standards thanks to AI. Why spend hours refining your prose when the world is perfectly happy to settle for algorithmically generated mediocrity? Polished writing is becoming the artisanal smoothie of communication—too much work for most, when AI can churn out passable content at the click of a button.

    But this is a nightmare for anyone in education. You didn’t sign up for teaching to coach your students into becoming connoisseurs of mediocrity. You had lofty ambitions—cultivating critical thinkers, wordsmiths, and rhetoricians with prose so sharp it could cut glass. But now? You’re stuck in a dystopia where “good enough” is the new gospel, and you’re about as on-brand as a poet peddling protein shakes at a multilevel marketing seminar.

    And there you are, gazing into the abyss of AI-generated essays—each one as lifeless as a department meeting on a Friday afternoon—wondering if anyone still remembers what good writing tastes like, let alone hungers for it. Spoiler alert: probably not.

    This is your challenge, your Everest of futility, your battle against the relentless tide of Mindless Ozempification. Life has oh-so-generously handed you this cosmic joke disguised as a teaching mission. So what’s your next move? You could curl up in the fetal position, weeping salty tears of despair into your syllabus. That’s one option. Or you could square your shoulders, roar your best primal scream, and fight like hell for the craft you once worshipped.

    Either way, the abyss is staring back, smirking, and waiting for your next move.

  • AN ESSAY MUST RESIST THE HAMBURGER HELPER APPROACH 

    AN ESSAY MUST RESIST THE HAMBURGER HELPER APPROACH 

    I was in my late fifties when the Covid lockdown forced me to figure out how to teach college writing online. Picture me scrambling like a headless chicken, trying to cram my course content into Canvas Modules and somehow create “student engagement” without turning my class into a glorified correspondence course. I didn’t whine—thankful, at least, that I could work from the safety of my cocoon while everyone else was busy losing their minds, juggling the chaos of the ever-mutating pandemic.

    I completed a ten-week course on making online classes engaging, a challenge that felt a bit like coaching Dorothy and Toto along the Yellow-Brick Road. The students start off in Canvas, as lost as Dorothy in MunchkinLand, and my role, apparently, is to guide them along that winding, glitch-riddled road through all the trials of digital Oz. From the outset, I had to assume they’d be staring at their screens with a mix of dread and confusion—no teacher hovering nearby to reassure them, no calming voice to say, “Yes, you’re on the right track,” when they feared their uploaded assignment might not follow directions. And then, of course, there’s the matter of grades. For an anxious student, a low score notification feels less like feedback and more like the academic version of opening a FedEx package only to find a smelly sock inside.

    I did everything I could to make Canvas feel like a safe zone. If students botched an upload, I’d let them try again without a penalty. Finding the right balance in directions was its own adventure: too many instructions, and it’s like staring at the cockpit of a 747, baffling and overwhelming. Too few, and they’re adrift without a compass. I also worked hard to break down each writing assignment into manageable steps, taking a page from the DMV playbook. At the DMV, there’s no mystery—big yellow signs point you to “Station 1,” “Station 2,” and so on. My goal? Make Canvas as easy to navigate as the DMV steps but minus the endless lines and bureaucratic misery.

    The pandemic taught me that online education is a different animal than face-to-face teaching. Here, I’m not just a teacher but a guide, a cheerleader, and the technical help desk, ushering students through the labyrinthine modules and dodging their inevitable worries about formatting and deadlines. My goal? To help them make it to the other side of the digital Land of Oz without clicking their heels three times and disappearing from Canvas forever.

    When we returned to in-person teaching, masks on and vaccination cards at the ready for safety checks, I assumed I’d be back to a full schedule of face-to-face classes, delivering sixteen hours of lectures each week for my four sections of college composition. Instead, student demand for online classes held strong. As a result, my new schedule shifted to two online courses and two hybrid courses meeting only once a week. My in-class lecturing dropped to just four hours weekly, and, truth be told, I didn’t mind. Teaching four-hour weeks rather than sixteen was more manageable at this point in my life. 

    With this new format, I knew I’d need to stay sharp in the online teaching world. But just when I got a handle on Canvas, I faced an even bigger challenge to my teaching–AI. Around 2022, my students started throwing around the name ChatGPT like it was the Second Coming, and suddenly, I found myself knocked back on my heels. But instead of morphing into the cranky old man shaking his fist at the apocalypse, I found myself in awe of this technological sorcery. It was like someone parked a glowing UFO in my driveway and left the keys.

    Naturally, I did what any self-respecting writer would do—I took it for a spin. And let me tell you, this wasn’t just some flashy gimmick. It was a literary jet engine strapped to my prose, launching me into the stratosphere of seemingly unlimited possibilities. AI became my performance-enhancing drug, pumping my writing into an Arnold Schwarzenegger-esque “most muscular” pose. And let’s be honest—there’s no way to stuff this genie back into its bottle.

    But it wasn’t just me grappling with this disruptive technological beast; my students had to wrestle with it too. It wasn’t enough for them to simply dabble in AI—they needed to master it. I knew, deep down in my coffee-stained soul, that it was my duty to teach them how to wield this digital superpower ethically and effectively. After all, they weren’t just competing against each other anymore; they were preparing for a future job market where AI would be as essential as a stapler—an indispensable tool for saving time and money. To leave them unequipped would be nothing short of educational malpractice.

    Two years of mindlessly binging on ChatGPT like a glutton at an all-you-can-eat buffet have brought me to a harsh realization: there are two distinct breeds of AI users. The first group is the Hamburger Helper crowd. To explain this, I must first take you back to the 1970s, when Hamburger Helper—an unholy mix of dried potatoes, peas, and cornstarch—was the go-to for my exhausted mother. She never served it with a smile or a flourish; no, it was the grim “I’m too tired to cook, so this will have to do” meal. She’d look at me with glazed eyes and mutter, “Sorry, Jeff, it’s going to be Hamburger Helper tonight.” In other words, it was a culinary last resort—a one-skillet concoction born of fatigue and resignation. 

    Over time, Hamburger Helper became less about necessity and more about convenience. It wasn’t a moment of joy; it was a surrender to mediocrity, a reluctant capitulation to convenience at the expense of culinary standards. And this, my friends, is the perfect metaphor for the Hamburger Helper approach to using AI. Most AI users approach the tool with the same defeated attitude: “Just whip up something for me, and I’ll deal with the aftermath later.” These folks create work that is as appetizing as a soggy, expired burger, then slap some AI-generated lipstick on it, thinking they’ve made it presentable. They fool themselves into thinking this will be enough to pass as something worthy of attention—but it’s ultimately forgettable. This is the lowest form of AI use, no more groundbreaking than relying on a spell-checker. It’s been done before with Grammarly and other tools. Those who adopt this approach are destined to lead a life of mediocrity and quiet despair, wallowing in a sea of well-polished yet hollow work.

    As a college writing instructor who wants and needs to be relevant in the AI Age, I have to discourage students from using the following feeble methods in what I call the Hamburger Helper Approach, leading to a lifeless, mediocre outcome:

    1. Spell-Check Substitution  

       Using AI purely to catch typos and minor grammar mistakes, as if it were nothing more than an over-glorified spell-checker.

    2. Synonym Swaps  

       Asking AI to replace a few words with fancier synonyms, hoping it’ll make the writing sound sophisticated without adding any actual depth.

    3. Intro and Conclusion Generators 

       Letting AI crank out generic introductions and conclusions that could fit any essay, giving the illusion of structure without genuine insight.

    4. Polishing Bland Ideas  

       Feeding AI lackluster content and using it to simply smooth out the sentences, dressing up empty thoughts in polished prose.

    5. Filler Paragraph Production 

       Using AI to churn out long-winded but meaningless filler paragraphs, padding word count without adding substance.

    6. Rehashing Clichés  

       Prompting AI to layer clichés over every paragraph, resulting in writing that’s formulaic and as stale as week-old bread.

    7. Overusing Pre-Set Templates  

       Relying on AI to generate responses based on rigid templates, so the writing lacks any original thought or personal voice.

    8. Generating Fake Transitions  

       Inserting AI-generated “transition sentences” that sound smooth but connect ideas as awkwardly as puzzle pieces from different boxes.

    9. Blind Acceptance of AI Output  

       Copying and pasting AI suggestions without question, as if the AI’s word is law, resulting in sterile, uninspired text.

    10. Avoiding Research  

       Asking AI to generate “facts” instead of doing actual research, with signal phrases, quotations, paraphrases, and close textual analysis, creating a paper full of broad, generic statements without accuracy or depth.

    These methods rely on AI to add surface polish rather than meaningful improvements, creating writing that’s technically correct but creatively lifeless—perfect for those satisfied with mediocrity. 

    In spite of its shortcomings, the allure of the Hamburger Helper approach is undeniable. Its mass appeal lies in its speed and efficiency. It delivers exactly what 90% of college instructors and workplace bosses want, 90% of the time. The rise of this approach isn’t hard to understand: it’s the standard currency of information now. We’re bombarded with it, and after a while, we become numb to anything better. It lowers the bar so insidiously that we barely notice our defenses weakening or our standards slipping. In fact, the Hamburger Helper approach is so pervasive that I could almost throw up my hands, admit defeat, and quietly await my extinction as a college writing instructor.

    But here’s the thing: teaching students to resist this mediocrity is in their best interest. It saves them from the fate of becoming bland, replaceable functionaries, filing TPS reports in some forgotten office. Instead, it steers them toward excellence, helping them develop a distinctive writing voice and the self-confidence that comes from original thought. The truth is, sinking into the Hamburger Helper approach is a form of self-abasement. It’s a cheap way out, one that carries the silent shame of knowing you’re squandering your potential. With these counterarguments in mind, I have to guide my students toward a better way to use AI—one that doesn’t turn their writing into lifeless mush but instead pushes them toward something real, something worth saying.

    So if we ditch the Hamburger Helper approach, what is the alternative? In my experience with AI-writing platforms like ChatGPT, there is a meaningful engagement you can achieve provided you do the preparation work. Just as a concert pianist would be a worthless complement to an orchestra if they didn’t first master Chopin’s Second Piano Concerto, a writer is a worthless complement to ChatGPT if they didn’t do the necessary preparation. With this in mind, we will call the opposite of the Hamburger Helper approach, the Orchestra approach where you and ChatGPT join forces to make beautiful music.

    This is when AI goes full Beethoven, but—here’s the twist—you have to know how to conduct the orchestra. You can’t just wave a wand and hope for Mozart; you need the writing chops of a virtuoso to coax something sublime out of the AI. And this is the approach that’s going to throw a wrench into every corner of the world—from jobs to education to entertainment. This is what will send the gatekeepers running for cover and disrupt industries like a tsunami.

    The irony here? AI doesn’t make writing easier for the lazy; it makes it better for the diligent hard workers. If you really want to harness AI’s full potential, you need more talent, not less. The future isn’t for the Hamburger Helper crowd slapping together half-baked essays; it’s for the maestros who can orchestrate brilliance with AI as their partner in crime. Advanced writing won’t just be useful—it’ll be essential. If you’re only using AI to dress up your expired burger meat, you’re missing out on the true feast.

    Wanting my students to use ChatGPT effectively, I knew I’d have to teach them the 10 Effective User Principles for ChatGPT:

    1. The Prompt Precision Principle: The clearer and more specific your prompt, the better ChatGPT can deliver. Vague prompts lead to vague responses. Guide it with exact needs, tone, audience, rhetorical objectives, and desired style for high-quality output. For example, instead of asking ChatGPT a general question like, “Help me write an introduction about social media,” try refining it with specific details: “I need a concise, engaging introduction for an argumentative essay targeting college students about the impact of social media on mental health. I want a balanced, thought-provoking tone that acknowledges both the positive and negative aspects of social media use, while setting up my thesis that it’s essential for users to practice mindful engagement to protect their well-being.” This precise prompt provides clear direction on tone, audience, purpose, and style, giving ChatGPT the context it needs to deliver a focused and relevant response.

    2. The Refinement Principle: Treat ChatGPT responses as a rough draft, not a final product. Quality improves with iterative editing and critical review, just like any traditional writing process. You might find you have to revise your manuscript a dozen times before it reaches your standards. Learning how to revise by critically evaluating the writing and refining your editing prompts forces you to engage with the writing process in ways that are far deeper than if you never used a tool like ChatGPT. 

    3. The Context Clarity Principle: Provide ChatGPT with relevant background or context for complex assignments. ChatGPT should know who you are, what your level of writing proficiency is, what you need to know to improve your writing, what kind of objectives you have for your writing task, and how willing you are to make several revisions. If it understands the assignment’s framework, it’s more likely to generate a relevant, cohesive response. For example, suppose you’re drafting an argumentative essay on climate policy for an advanced environmental studies class. Instead of simply asking ChatGPT, “Help me write an argument about climate policy,” try this: “I’m an undergraduate environmental studies student writing an argumentative essay for a course on global climate policy. My current writing level is intermediate, and I struggle with making my arguments nuanced and cohesive. My objective is to present an argument that explores both the economic and ethical implications of implementing a carbon tax. I’d like suggestions that will help me elevate my analysis, and I’m open to making multiple drafts to improve clarity and depth.” With this setup, ChatGPT understands your level, goals, and willingness to refine, increasing its chances of producing responses that align with your needs and help you improve your work in meaningful ways.

    4. The Realness Check Principle: Remember that ChatGPT lacks true comprehension. Cross-check any facts or references it supplies; its “confidence” is an illusion of accuracy and can lead to misleading or outright incorrect information. There is currently a tendency for ChatGPT to write eloquent prose that says nonsense or fluff in the process of padding a writing sample. A lot of times this padding is called “AI detritus.” 

    5. The Critical Input Principle: Feed ChatGPT with specific themes, examples, or points you want covered in your response. The more thought you bring to what you want it to emphasize and create specific essay structures, the more targeted and purposeful its answers. This is why it’s important to know expository modes like cause-and-effect analysis, process analysis, comparison and contrast, argumentative Toulmin structure, refutation structure, and so on. 

    6. The Creativity Booster Principle: Don’t limit ChatGPT to surface-level work. Push it to brainstorm ideas, offer counterpoints, complicate argumentative claims, or suggest new approaches—use it as a springboard for creativity rather than a formulaic shortcut. For example, let’s say you’re writing a paper on the ethics of AI in the workplace. Instead of just asking ChatGPT for a summary of common arguments, prompt it to offer unexpected counterpoints or to brainstorm unique perspectives. For example, ask it, “What are some lesser-known ethical concerns about AI in the workplace?” or “Suggest a few unconventional solutions to address job displacement caused by AI.” By pushing ChatGPT to dig deeper, you’re not just outsourcing ideas—you’re using it as a tool to expand your own thinking, helping you approach the topic in a richer, more nuanced way.

    7. The Structure Control Principle: Use ChatGPT to structure and outline but bring your own voice and expertise to the core writing. Relying on it for organization can be helpful, but the details need your personal imprint for authenticity. Only through regular reading and your own writing–absent of ChatGPT–can you cultivate what I call a “strong authorial presence.” 

    8. The Feedback Filter Principle: Ask ChatGPT to critique your work, but take its suggestions with a critical eye. Not all feedback will be accurate or relevant, so be selective about what improvements you implement.

    9. The Authenticity Principle: Your voice should guide the final product. ChatGPT can help with flow, grammar, or idea expansion, but let your unique perspective and style dominate the end result, ensuring the work truly feels like yours. You don’t develop a unique voice over night. It takes years of deep work and solitude–reading and writing on your own–to achieve it. 

    10. Prep Payoff Principle: Finally, realize that ChatGPT is only a valuable tool if you adhere to the preparation described above. Asking ChatGPT to write an essay out of thin air based on an instructor’s prompt is futile. The more complete your first draft, the more ChatCGPT can help you with revision process using the techniques described above. In other words, the more effort up front, the more impressive the writing out back.

    Believing ChatGPT is some kind of wish-granting genie that’ll churn out flawless results on command isn’t just naive—it’s absurd. Approach ChatGPT with a sense of respect, if not a touch of healthy skepticism. This isn’t some magic pixie dust; it’s a disruptive tool, powerful and versatile, much like the personal computer that changed the world decades ago. Like all tools, its impact is determined by the skill of the person wielding it. You can use it to wander mindlessly through trivia and distractions, or you can turn it into a vehicle for genuine insight, scientific breakthroughs, and brilliant content. In the end, the tool is only as sharp as the hand that guides it.

  • AN ESSAY MUST EMBRACE HUMANIFICATION

    AN ESSAY MUST EMBRACE HUMANIFICATION

    Returning to the classroom post-pandemic and encountering ChatGPT, I’ve become fixated on what I now call “the battle for the human soul.” On one side, there’s Ozempification—that alluring shortcut. It’s the path where mediocrity is the destination, and the journey there is paved with laziness. Like popping Ozempic for quick weight loss and calling it a day, the shortcut to academic success involves relying on AI to churn out lackluster work. Who cares about excellence when Netflix is calling your name, right?

    On the other side, we have Humanification. This is the grueling path that my personal hero, Frederick Douglass, would champion. It’s the deep work Cal Newport writes about in his best-selling books. Humanification happens when we turn away from comfort and instead plunge headfirst into the difficult, yet rewarding, process of literacy, self-improvement, and helping others rise from their own “Sunken Place”—borrowing from Jordan Peele’s chilling metaphor in Get Out. On this path, the pursuit isn’t comfort; it’s meaning. The goal isn’t a Netflix binge but a life with purpose and higher aspirations.

    Reading Tyler Austin Harper’s essay “ChatGPT Doesn’t Have to Ruin College,” I was struck by the same dichotomy of Ozempification on one side of academia and Humanification on the other. Harper, while wandering around Haverford’s idyllic campus, stumbles upon a group of English majors who proudly scoff at ChatGPT, choosing instead to be “real” writers. These students, in a world that has largely tossed the humanities aside as irrelevant, are disciples of Humanification. For them, rejecting ChatGPT isn’t just an academic decision; it’s a badge of honor, reminiscent of Bartleby the Scrivener’s iconic refusal: “I prefer not to.” Let that sink in. Give these students the opportunity to use ChatGPT to write their essays, and they recoil at the thought of such a flagrant self-betrayal. 

    After interviewing students, Harper concludes that using AI in higher education isn’t just a technological issue—it’s cultural and economic. The disdain these students have for ChatGPT stems from a belief that reading and writing transcend mere resume-building or career milestones. It’s about art for art’s sake. But Harper wisely points out that this intellectual snobbery is rooted in privilege: “Honor and curiosity can be nurtured, or crushed, by circumstance.” 

    I had to stop in my tracks. Was I so privileged and naive to think I could preach the gospel of Humanification while unaware that such a pursuit costs time, money, and the peace of mind that one has a luxurious safety net in the event the Humanification quest goes awry? 

    This question made me think of Frederick Douglass, a man who had every reason to have his intellectual curiosity “crushed by circumstance.” In fact, his pursuit of literacy, despite the threat of death, was driven by an unquenchable thirst for knowledge. But Douglass, let’s be honest, is an outlier—a hero for the ages. Can we really expect most people, particularly those without resources, to follow that path? Harper’s argument carries weight. Without the financial and cultural infrastructure to support it, aspiring to Humanification isn’t always feasible.

    I often tell my students that being rich makes it easier to be an intellectual. Imagine the luxury: you could retreat to an off-grid cabin (complete with Wi-Fi, obviously), gorge on organic gourmet food prepped by your personal chef, and spend your days reading Dostoevsky in Russian and mastering Schubert’s sonatas while taking sunset jogs along the beach. When you emerge back into society, tanned and enlightened, you could boast of your intellectual achievements with ease.

    Harper’s point is that wealth facilitates Humanification. At a place like Haverford, with its “writing support, small classes, and unharried faculty,” it’s easier to uphold an honor code and aspire to intellectual purity. But for most students—especially those in public schools—this is a far cry from reality. My wife teaches sixth grade in the public school system, and she’s shared stories of schools that resemble post-apocalyptic wastelands more than educational institutions. We’re talking mold-infested buildings, chemical leaks, and underpaid teachers sleeping in their cars. Expecting students in these environments to uphold an “honor code” and strive for Humanification? It’s not just unrealistic—it’s insulting.

    This brings to mind Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Before we can expect students to self-actualize by reading Dostoevsky or rejecting ChatGPT, they need food, shelter, and basic safety. It’s hard to care about literary integrity when you’re navigating life’s survival mode.

    As I dive deeper into Harper’s thought-provoking essay on economic class and the honor code, I can’t help but notice the uncanny parallel to the “weight management code” my Critical Thinking students tackle in their first essay. Both seem to hinge not just on personal integrity or effort but on a cocktail of privilege and circumstance. Could it be that striving to be an “authentic writer,” untouched by the mediocrity of ChatGPT and backed by the luxury of free time, is eerily similar to the aspiration of achieving an Instagram-worthy body, possibly aided by expensive Ozempic injections?

    It raises the question: Is the difference between those who reject ChatGPT and those who embrace it simply a matter of character, or is it, at least in part, a product of class? After all, if you can afford the luxury of time—time to read Tolstoy and Dostoevsky in your rustic, tech-free cabin—you’re already in a different league. Similarly, if you have access to high-end weight management options like Ozempic, you’re not exactly running the same race as those pounding the pavement on their $20 sneakers. 

    Sure, both might involve personal effort—intellectual or physical—but they’re propped up by economic factors that can’t be ignored. Whether we’re talking about Ozempification or Humanification, it’s clear that while self-discipline and agency are part of the equation, they’re not the whole story. Class, as uncomfortable as it might be to admit, plays a significant role in determining who gets to choose their path—and who gets stuck navigating whatever options are left over.

    I’m sure the issue is more nuanced than that. These are, after all, complex topics that defy oversimplification. But both privilege and personal character need to be addressed if we’re going to have a real conversation about what it means to “aspire” in this day and age.

    Returning to Tyler Austin Harper’s essay, Harper provides a snapshot of the landscape when ChatGPT launched in late 2022. Many professors found themselves swamped with AI-generated essays, which, unsurprisingly, raised concerns about academic integrity. However, Harper, a professor at a liberal-arts college, remains optimistic, believing that students still have a genuine desire to learn and pursue authenticity. He views the potential for students to develop along the path of intellectual and personal growth, as very much alive—especially in environments like Haverford, where he went to test the waters of his optimism.

    When Harper interviews Haverford professors about ChatGPT violating the honor code, their collective shrug is surprising. They’re seemingly unbothered by the idea of policing students for cheating, as if grades and academic dishonesty are beneath them. The culture at Haverford, Harper implies, is one of intellectual immersion—where students and professors marinate in ideas, ethics, and the contemplation of higher ideals. The honor code, in this rarified academic air, is almost sacred, as though the mere existence of such a code ensures its observance. It’s a place where academic integrity and learning are intertwined, fueled by the aristocratic mind.

    Harper’s point is clear: The further you rise into the elite echelons of boutique colleges like Haverford, the less you have to worry about ChatGPT or cheating. But when you descend into the more grounded, practical world of community colleges, where students juggle multiple jobs, family obligations, and financial constraints, ChatGPT poses a greater threat to education. This divide, Harper suggests, is not just academic; it’s economic and cultural. The humanities may be thriving in the lofty spaces of elite institutions, but they’re rapidly withering in the trenches where students are simply trying to survive.

    As someone teaching at a community college, I can attest to this shift. My classrooms are filled with students who are not majoring in writing or education. Most of them are focused on nursing, engineering, and business. In this hypercompetitive job market, they simply don’t have the luxury to spend time reading novels, becoming musicologists or contemplating philosophical debates. They’re too busy hustling to get by. Humanification, as an idea, gets a nod in my class discussions, but in the “real world,” where six hours of sleep is a luxury, it often feels out of reach.

    Harper points out that in institutions like Haverford, not cheating has become a badge of honor, a marker of upper-class superiority. It’s akin to the social cachet of being skinny, thanks to access to expensive weight-loss drugs like Ozempic. There’s a smugness that comes with the privilege of maintaining integrity—an implication that those who cheat (or can’t afford Ozempic) are somehow morally inferior. This raises an uncomfortable question: Is the aspiration to Humanification really about moral growth, or is it just another way to signal wealth and privilege?

    However, Harper complicates this argument when he brings Stanford into the conversation. Unlike Haverford, Stanford has been forced to take the “nuclear option” of proctoring exams, convinced that cheating is rampant. In this larger, more impersonal environment, the honor code has failed to maintain academic integrity. It appears that Haverford’s secret sauce is its small, close-knit atmosphere—something that can’t be replicated at a sprawling institution like Stanford. Harper even wonders whether Haverford is more museum than university—a relic from an Edenic past when people pursued knowledge for its own sake, untainted by the drive for profit or prestige. Striving for Humanification at a place like Haverford may be an anachronism, a beautiful but lost world that most of us can only dream of.

    Harper’s essay forces me to consider the role of economic class in choosing a life of “authenticity” or Humanification. With this in mind, I give my Critical Thinking students the following writing prompt, which they will use for the introductory paragraph in their second essay:

    Personal Reflection Prompt: Imagining Wealth as a Path to Humanification

    Imagine that you have inherited a vast fortune, freeing you from the demands of work and financial survival. With all the time and resources you could ever need, you now have the opportunity to pursue a life focused on intellectual growth and personal fulfillment—a life of Humanification, as opposed to the shortcuts and superficial gains we often settle for in our daily lives.

    In this reflection, describe how you would use your newfound wealth to cultivate yourself as a deeply thoughtful, well-read individual. Consider the choices you might make to enrich your mind, whether through travel, rigorous study, artistic pursuits, or meaningful experiences that challenge and expand your understanding of the world. Reflect on how you would resist the temptation of “Ozempification”—the lure of easy, superficial achievements—and instead dedicate yourself to meaningful, enduring growth. How would this life of Humanification impact your values, relationships, and perspective on life?

    As you reflect, consider the role of economic class in the pursuit of an “authentic” or “intellectual” life. Do you think wealth plays a decisive role in people’s ability to focus on self-cultivation and Humanification, rather than opting for practical or mundane paths? In your view, is a lack of financial security a valid reason to abandon pursuits often associated with the privileged, like becoming well-read, exploring philosophy, or creating art? Or, do you think that intellectual and personal growth can (and should) be sought regardless of one’s economic situation?

    In your response, consider the following:

    1. Describe the intellectual and creative pursuits you would invest in, explaining why these activities appeal to you and how they might contribute to a richer, fuller life.

    2. Explore the challenges and choices involved in resisting the temptation for easy, unearned rewards. How would you stay true to your pursuit of meaning?

    3. Reflect on how living a life dedicated to Humanification might change the way you view success, happiness, and fulfillment.

    4. Finally, consider the role of privilege in your imagined life of Humanification. Would your goals and values shift if you had fewer resources, and would you find it justifiable to focus on more practical pursuits instead?

    ______

    While I acknowledge that Humanification is partly a function of class privilege, I can’t give up on it as a worthwhile and practical pursuit for my students. It doesn’t cost bucket loads of money to become a self-taught autodidactic, an intellectually curious person who hungers to learn something new every day. To be a person whose curiosity is more treasured than consumerism and pleasure-seeking is to be a happy person. This idea is argued persuasively in Jeffrey Rosen’s The Pursuit of Happiness, in which he delves into learning to free ourselves from the maudlin personality–a person who dotes on narcissistic and inconsequential trivia and is enslaved to the irrational passions while instead becoming a self-possessed person of hungers for wisdom and virtue. One of Rosen’s most inspiring examples is Frederick Douglass who had an early understanding that literacy was forbidden to enslaved people because it posed a direct threat to the institution of slavery itself. Douglass’ master knew that an illiterate slave was a docile, childlike being who, lacking the tools for critical thought, would be less likely to rebel or even question their role as a slave. Rosen captures the brilliance of Douglass’ epiphany: the realization that slavery’s cruelty lay not only in physical bondage but also in the systematic effort to shackle the mind. As Douglass learned to read in secret, under the threat of death, he embarked on a journey of self-liberation that proved literacy was both a radical act of defiance and a tool for Humanification—rising from ignorance to a life of meaning, purpose, and intellectual freedom.

    One of Douglass’ key turning points was his discovery of The Columbian Orator, a book he purchased at thirteen, which provided him with principles of eloquence and oratory, along with powerful antislavery messages. In it, Douglass encountered a dialogue between a master and slave, a reflection on the dehumanizing effects of slavery that resonated deeply with his own experience. This book laid bare the injustices of slavery and confirmed that developing literacy and reason were not just acts of rebellion, but essential to becoming fully human. Rosen points out that Douglass was convinced that slavery was rooted in the avarice of man, and his reading of The Columbian Orator dismantled any lingering doubts that God had willed his enslavement. For Douglass, literacy opened the door to understanding slavery as a violation of “God’s eternal justice.”

    Rosen’s analysis brings to life Douglass’ belief that the root of oppression—whether racial or otherwise—lies in people’s unreasoning hatred and their desire to dominate. Douglass realized that these “inflamed passions” existed across societies and were not exclusive to slavery. Douglass’ profound insight was that humanity’s failure to be governed by reason led to unjust societies that thrived on privilege for some and degradation for others. This understanding is deeply relevant today, especially when we reflect on the ways society continues to foster mediocrity, complacency, and self-degradation, which I have termed “Ozempification”—a lazy, shortcut-driven life that avoids the struggle required for meaningful self-development.

    Douglass’ argument for structured education as a path to freedom remains a cornerstone of his philosophy. As Rosen notes, in Douglass’ “Self-Made Men” speech, he articulates that true liberty means the opportunity to educate oneself and attain self-actualization. He rejected the notion that happiness or freedom would come from fate or divine intervention. Instead, Douglass embraced the belief that happiness was a result of hard work and virtuous self-control, not hedonistic pleasures or mindless pursuits. This aligns with Viktor Frankl’s philosophy in Man’s Search for Meaning: happiness is not something to be pursued directly but is a byproduct of living a life full of purpose.

    For me, Douglass’ story is both humbling and a powerful call to action. If Douglass risked his life to learn how to read and write, what excuse do I have to squander my intellectual freedom by grazing mindlessly on the Internet or indulging in dopamine hits from social media? His life forces me to reconsider my habits and reminds me that I need to engage in “deep work,” as Cal Newport would put it. Instead of wallowing in self-pity about the challenges AI presents to my teaching career, I need to recommit to the deep intellectual labor that gives life meaning and purpose. It’s clear that, like Douglass, I must fight against complacency and push myself to continuously grow.

    By following Douglass’ lead, I realize that my challenges today pale in comparison to his, yet the principles remain the same: the pursuit of knowledge, purpose, and self-improvement must be relentless. In a world filled with distractions and easy shortcuts, Douglass’ story teaches us what it means to live a life committed to true Humanification.

    I use Douglass’ example to create a counterargument assignment for the students’ third essay based on this personal reflection:

    Personal Reflection Assignment: Humanification Without Privilege—The Path of Frederick Douglass

    Frederick Douglass’ life is a powerful reminder that the pursuit of knowledge, purpose, and self-improvement can transcend material privilege. Douglass, born into the bondage of slavery and denied access to formal education, defied all odds to become a literate, free-thinking individual. His journey illustrates that while privilege may provide easier access to resources, it is not a requirement for Humanification—a life of intellectual growth, resilience, and personal liberation.

    For this 300-word reflection, consider a time when you faced a limitation—be it financial, social, or personal—that seemed to restrict your opportunities for growth or learning. How did you respond? Did you find a way to pursue your goals despite this limitation, or were there moments where you struggled to believe you could overcome it? 

    As you reflect, use Douglass’ story as a counterpoint to explore the following:

    1. Defining Your Own Humanification: How might Douglass’ example influence your understanding of Humanification? How can the absence of privilege push us to be more resourceful, determined, or resilient in our pursuit of personal growth?

    2. The Role of Personal Agency: Like Douglass’ commitment to literacy as a path to freedom, think about how you might pursue self-improvement without relying solely on external advantages. What resources—intellectual, emotional, or social—do you already possess that could support your growth?

    3. Examining Modern Privilege and Distraction: How does Douglass’ relentless pursuit of literacy contrast with today’s culture of convenience and distraction? How do you see privilege impacting the way people approach—or avoid—the work of self-education and personal development?

    Reflect on how Douglass’ example might encourage you to resist the temptations of “Ozempification” and choose the more challenging path toward lasting Humanification, regardless of your personal circumstances. Use this assignment to explore your own beliefs about privilege, growth, and the power of intentional, purpose-driven work.

  • AN ESSAY MUST RESIST OZEMPIFICATION

    AN ESSAY MUST RESIST OZEMPIFICATION

    The other day I was listening to Howard Stern and his co-host Robin Quivers talking about how a bunch of celebrities magically slimmed down at the same time. The culprit, they noted, was Ozempic—a drug available mostly to the rich. While they laughed about the side effects, such as incontinence, “Ozempic face” and “Ozempic butt,” I couldn’t help but see these grotesque symptoms as a metaphor for the Ozempification of a society hooked on shortcuts. They enjoyed some short-term benefits but the side effects were far worse than the supposed solution. Ozempification was strikingly evident in AI-generated essays–boring, generic, surface-level, cliche-ridden, just about worthless. Regardless of how well structured and logically composed, these essays have the telltale signs of “Ozempfic face” and “Ozempic butt.” 

    As a college writing instructor, I’m not just trying to sell academic honesty. I’m trying to sell pride. As I face the brave new world of teaching writing in the AI era, I’ve realized that my job as a college instructor has morphed into that of a supercharged salesman. And what am I selling? No less than survival in an age where the very tools meant to empower us—like AI—threaten to bury us alive under layers of polished mediocrity. Imagine it: a spaceship has landed on Earth in the form of ChatGPT. It’s got warp-speed potential, sure, but it can either launch students into the stars of academic brilliance or plunge them into the soulless abyss of bland, AI-generated drivel. My mission? To make them realize that handling this tool without care is like inviting a black hole into their writing.

    As I fine-tune my sales pitch, I think about Ozempic–that magic slimming drug, beloved by celebrities who’ve turned from mid-sized to stick figures overnight. Like AI, Ozempic offers a seductive shortcut. But shortcuts have a price. You see the trade-off in “Ozempic face”—that gaunt, deflated look where once-thriving skin sags like a Shar-Pei’s wrinkles—or, worse still, “Ozempic butt,” where shapely glutes shrink to grim, skeletal wiring. The body wasn’t worked; it was bypassed. No muscle-building, no discipline. Just magic pill ingestion—and what do you get? A husk of your former self. Ozempified.

    Similarly, the AI-ification of writing can result in hollow prose, bloated with clichés, overused expressions, and the tell-tale stench of mediocrity. Just as the human body degrades without effort, so too does writing become a skeletal, soulless exercise when handed over to AI without a second thought. The worst part? Those who haven’t cultivated an appreciation for good writing won’t even see the “Ozempic face” in their own work—they’ll be blind to the sagging prose, the AI-induced atrophy, thinking they’ve hit the jackpot when all they’ve really done is plummet into mediocrity. AI-generated essays often parade around like cheap Hollywood knock-offs: shiny on the surface but empty within.

    The Ozempification of our bodies and the AI-ification of our minds lead to the same dismal place: semi-human expression, death by shortcut, and the creeping sense of quiet despair. It’s my job, then, not just to teach students how to write, but to make them see the power of Humanification—that literacy, real authorial presence, and a deep dive into history, philosophy, and the human condition cannot be faked, much less outsourced to machines.

    In this age of spaceships and shortcuts, I must instill in my students a healthy fear of becoming Ozempified, by giving them the 10 Symptoms of Ozempification:

    1. Superficial Appeal, Hollow Content: Just as Ozempic can give the illusion of a slim figure without underlying health, “Ozempified” writing looks polished but lacks depth, insight, or original thought.

    2. Loss of Authenticity: The student’s unique voice is flattened, replaced by the sanitized, flavorless tone typical of AI-generated text, erasing individuality and personality.

    3. Prose Devoid of Muscle: Like Ozempic reducing muscle tone, AI-generated writing can lack structural rigor or complexity, appearing skeletal and underdeveloped.

    4. Reliance on Clichés and Common Phrases: Ozempified writing often leans heavily on clichés, repeating familiar expressions without genuine creativity or fresh perspective.

    5. Stunted Intellectual Development: Just as Ozempic bypasses the work of physical fitness, reliance on AI deprives students of the mental rigor and discipline needed to build critical thinking skills.

    6. Decline in Problem-Solving Ability: By relying on shortcuts, students lose the chance to grapple with complex ideas and find solutions independently, leading to weaker analytical abilities.

    7. Erosion of Self-Confidence: Ozempified students may become insecure in their writing, increasingly dependent on AI “fixes” rather than trusting their voice or ideas.

    8. Inability to Recognize Quality Writing: Just as people can become blind to “Ozempic face,” students may lose the ability to distinguish high-quality, insightful writing from shallow, formulaic prose.

    9. Shortcut Addiction: Once used to AI assistance, students may find it hard to break free, much like dependency on a slimming drug, leading to a vicious cycle of avoidance and over-reliance.

    10. Mediocrity as the New Normal: Ozempification ultimately means settling for less; students accept superficial results over meaningful mastery, leading to a future of bland, uninspired work.

    These symptoms show how shortcuts, whether in writing or physical health, erode both character and quality, leaving behind a hollow version of one’s former self.

    Teaching writing as a form of resistance against Ozempification is to go against the tide. The students and I discuss that our brains are hardwired in a way to make us vulnerable to being Ozempified. Recognizing that the human default leans toward laziness and the path of least resistance, I’ve come to a sobering conclusion: in the age of AI, we’re on a collision course with our own dependency. AI is to writing what Ozempic is to weight loss—a tempting shortcut, a magic wand that promises effortless success. But make no mistake, this shortcut is a Faustian Bargain, a pact with the devil that erodes discipline, creativity, and originality, leaving us as hollow shells of ourselves. Depend too much on AI, and we risk becoming mere Non-Player Characters in our own lives—passive, predictable, and stripped of free will or self-agency. The allure of “quick fixes” may be strong, but the cost is a slow descent into complacency and mediocrity.

    In the Age of AI, we’re not just teaching students to write. We’re teaching them to navigate a digital landscape more tempting than an all-you-can-eat buffet. So, naturally, I had to begin compiling my Compendium of AI Traps, a sort of Eight Warnings for the 21st-century student who might otherwise be tempted to cheat the system and become AI-sloths. By mid-Fall 2024, I had already concocted Eight AI Traps (with some overlap) that needed to be hammered into their brains—preferably with a sledgehammer. Here they are:

    1. The Magic Wand Trap 

       When you first encounter an AI writing tool like ChatGPT, you may become enchanted like Alice in Wonderland, feel the dopamine rush of omniscience, and delude yourself into believing you can conjure masterpieces out of thin air. In truth, the Magic Wand Trap will render you a writing sample about as glorious as a Wikipedia entry–generic, hackneyed drivel that you hope your instructor will pass with a C grade. You need to replace the Magic Wand Fantasy with the Prep Payoff Principle, which states that the harder you work before bringing your manuscript to ChatGPT, the more impressive the AI revision. You need to treat ChatGPT like your personal trainer at the gym. Asking ChatGPT to write an essay by just typing in the professor’s writing prompt is the equivalent of only working out on the day you meet your trainer and showing up reeking of nicotine and whiskey sweat. You’re on a fool’s errand. If you want the AI magic, bring something to the party! Expecting ChatGPT to churn out brilliance while you sit around lazily smoking metaphorical cigarettes and binge-watching trash TV is like showing up to a personal trainer after a week of whiskey shots and zero gym time. You get what you put in. If your brain is marinated in mediocrity, don’t expect AI to perform miracles. Work out those mental muscles first; give ChatGPT something to work with. Be the student that actually trains before the gym session, not the slob who eats junk and expects to flex.

    2. The Ozempification Trap  

       Less egregious than the Magic Wand Trap is the belief that AI with just a little nudging provides a shortcut in your writing just as Ozempic creates a shortcut in weight loss. But these are delusions. Ozempic can work wonders if you eat a healthy diet and exercise, but expecting Ozempic to be the magic pill that takes you to the promised land is not only delusional, it leads to Ozempficication, the childish belief that you don’t have to work hard to achieve desirable results. If you’re looking for a shortcut, you might just cheat yourself into oblivion. Popping Ozempic might melt away your belly, but it’ll also give you “Ozempic face,” the visage of a withered raisin. Likewise, the practice of Ozempification in a college class that requires writing will produce similar dismal results. If you rely solely on AI to write your essays, your writing will shrivel into an insipid, half-baked mess. Congratulations, you’ve officially downgraded yourself to the bottom of the academic food chain. Enjoy your future career in beige cubicles everywhere. The wisest of students will realize that AI writing tools are not an invitation to shortcuts but the opposite: A form of writing engagement that will actually increase your revision and editing process. Thoughtful use of AI pushes you to confront weaknesses, rethink ideas, and polish rough drafts into compelling narratives. Far from a crutch, it forces you into a rigorous rewriting process that enhances your work rather than dilutes it. The sharpest students will use AI not to replace effort but to amplify it, treating it as a partner in the challenging but rewarding task of crafting writing that stands out. The result? Stronger, more original work, and a writer who’s miles ahead of the cut-and-paste crowd.

    3. The AI Addiction Trap  

       Too much time on AI will initially surge your brain with dopamine as it gives you what seems like Superman-like powers, but over time you will experience the flattening effect in which you become numb and your brain turns into mashed potatoes. At some point, you need to unplug. Staring at ChatGPT for too long is like eating processed cheese for months—you can’t taste the real stuff anymore. Take a break, hike in the wilderness, go off-grid, and read real books—ones made of paper. It’s like an artist stepping away from the canvas to see if the mess they’re creating is actually art. Rejuvenate, recalibrate, then dive back into the digital swamp.

    4. The AI Superpower Trap

       You can get high on AI, but be careful—it’s a drug. You start using ChatGPT to polish a paragraph, and suddenly you’re three essays deep, drunk on dopamine, thinking you’re the next Shakespeare. Chill. The euphoria’s real, but so is the crash. Learn to wield this power with caution. Otherwise, you’re going to be one of those guys who stumbles into class thinking they’ve reinvented the English language when really, they’ve just written a B-minus think piece on why kale is overrated. In a state of intoxication, you may fail to see that your AI-essay is full of hallucinations, the jargon for inaccuracies and “AI detritus,” the jargon for the splatter of verbiage that adds your word count but says nothing. 

    5. The AI Mediocrity Trap  

      When AI makes writing feel easy, it’s tempting for you to become complacent, letting your standards slip. This is the worst trap of all: the slide into mediocrity becomes so gradual that you hardly notice it happening. AI can lull you into a state of intellectual passivity, where “good enough” starts to replace “striving for excellence.” But don’t blame AI for your laziness—blame yourself. Laziness has been hardwired into human DNA since time immemorial, and mediocrity is often the default mode. Most of us instinctively follow the path of least resistance. 

    In the AI Age, you’ll face time and financial pressures to rely on AI. If your competition is using it to save time and cut corners, you’ll feel the pressure to do the same. And as more of the business and academic world acclimate to the mediocrity of AI-generated writing—accepting it as the standard form of communication—a kind of Mediocrity Creep will set in, pushing you to compromise without even realizing it. Instead of aspiring to personal excellence, you may unwittingly settle into the role of a middling functionary, stuck in a job filled with soul-sucking memos, pointless emails, and endless HR training videos that make you question your life choices.

    True mastery isn’t just about producing words; it’s about crafting ideas with precision, critical thought, and effort. Avoid the complacency trap by always aiming for improvement, and use AI as just one tool in your broader toolkit for excellence.

    6. The Originality Decay Trap

    Relying too much on AI can dull your creative edge. The more you depend on AI to brainstorm or develop ideas, the more your own originality and unique style take a backseat. Just like muscles atrophy when they’re not used, creativity weakens when you rely on AI to do the heavy lifting. The antidote? Use AI for support, but always reserve time for free-thinking exercises that help your authentic voice stay strong.

    7. The Overconfidence Trap
    When ChatGPT produces coherent, polished text, it’s easy to start believing that the work is flawless or beyond critique. This is the Overconfidence Trap, where students trust AI output without verification, leading to factual errors, logical gaps, or irrelevant information creeping into their writing. Just as you wouldn’t trust a flashy website without credible sources, don’t take AI’s output as gospel. Every output requires scrutiny, revision, and a healthy dose of skepticism.

    8. The Instant Gratification Trap

    In the AI Age, you can get answers in seconds, but this speed comes with a price: it erodes your patience and capacity for deep thought. By letting ChatGPT spoon-feed you ideas, you miss out on the intellectually rich process of wrestling with a complex concept until it finally clicks. Instant gratification from AI is like binge-watching TV series—you get the quick thrill without truly savoring or understanding the nuances. The result? Shallow understanding, minimal retention, and a false sense of accomplishment. Use AI to support, not replace, your intellectual exploration.