Cinemorphosis

Tag: writing

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

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

    Essay Prompt: 

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

    Your essay will be divided into two major sections.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Your Task

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

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

    What Is Mature Passion?

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

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

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

    What Is Adolescent Passion?

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

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

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

    Your Definitions

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

    Here is a structural guideline you may use:

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

    Your Analysis

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

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

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

    Your Examples

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

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

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

    Your Purpose

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

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

    Your Requirements

    Your final paper must:

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

    The Goal

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

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

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

    Instructions:
     Write a paragraph in which you:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    When Buying a New Computer Results in an Existential Crisis

    A computer is never just a computer. It’s a mirror of who you think you are — your ambitions, your identity, your delusions of purpose. If you fancy yourself a “power user” or “content creator,” you don’t want a flimsy piece of plastic gasping for air. You want a machine that hums with confidence — a gleaming altar to your productivity fantasies. You crave speed, efficiency, thermal dominance, at least 500 nits of blinding radiance, and a QHD or OLED screen that flatters your sense of destiny. The machine must look sleek and purposeful, the way a surgeon’s scalpel looks purposeful, even if it’s mostly used to slice digital cheesecake.

    That’s the mythology of computing. Now let’s talk about me. I’m 64, a man whose “power user” moments consist of reading an online article on one screen while taking notes on the other — a thrilling simulation of intellectual heroism. In these moments, I feel like an epidemiologist drafting a breakthrough paper on respiratory viruses, when in truth I’m analyzing a 900-word essay about AI in education or the psychological toll of protein shakes. I could do this work on a Chromebook, but that would insult my inner Corvette driver — the middle-aged man who insists on 400 horsepower for a trip to the grocery store, just to know it’s there.

    My setup hasn’t changed in seven years: an Acer Predator Triton 500 with an RTX 2080 (a $3,200 review model, not my dime), an Asus 4K monitor, and a mechanical keyboard that clicks like an old newsroom. The system runs flawlessly. Which is precisely the problem. Not needing a new computer makes me feel irrelevant — like a man whose life has plateaued. Buying one, however, rekindles the illusion that I’m still scaling great heights, performing tasks of vast cosmic significance rather than grading freshman essays about screen addiction.

    So yes, I’ll probably buy a Mac Mini M4 Pro with 48 GB of RAM and 1 TB of storage. Overkill, absolutely. “Future-proofing”? A sales pitch for gullible tech romantics. But after seven years with the Acer, I’ll have earned my delusion. The real problem is not specs — it’s time. By the time I buy a new computer, I’ll be 66, retired, and sitting before a computer whose lifespan will exceed my own. That realization turns every new purchase into an existential audit.

    I used to buy things to feel powerful; now I buy them to feel temporary. A computer, a car, a box of razors — all built to outlive their owner. The marketing says upgrade your life; the subtext whispers your warranty expires first.

    Maybe that makes me a miserabilist — a man who can turn even consumer electronics into meditations on mortality. But at least I’ll have the fastest machine in the cemetery, writing The Memoirs of a Miserabilist in 4K clarity, with perfect thermal efficiency and 500 nits of existential dread.

  • Among the Sprout People

    Among the Sprout People

    I’ve been a bodybuilder since 1974, which means I’ve spent half a century haunting health food stores. Not the modern corporate ones with sterile aisles and soothing playlists, but the old-school mom-and-pop operations run by barefoot idealists and tense, caffeine-free librarians who smelled faintly of patchouli and moral superiority.

    Those stores had a bouquet unlike any other—a humid cloud of brewer’s yeast, carob dust, desiccated liver tablets, toasted wheat germ, and stale bran, all marinated in tea tree oil and valerian root. Mix it together and you got the unmistakable scent of loneliness and intestinal distress.

    The shelves sagged with mimeographed books from obscure presses, all preaching salvation through sprouts, tofu, and lentils. Reading them, you understood the subtext: renounce pleasure, annoy everyone, and either die alone or join a small cult where everyone smells faintly of alfalfa and martyrdom.

    In the back corner sat the “Alternative Reading” section—dog-eared manifestos about conspiracies, telepathy, UFOs, and energy vortices. These weren’t health stores; they were secular monasteries for the over-enlightened and under-medicated.

    Most shoppers weren’t buying vitamins—they were buying deliverance. They came searching for answers: to their chronic bloating, their failed relationships, their career detours, their lingering sense that the world had been designed without them in mind. They were pilgrims in pursuit of absolutes, desperate to turn meaninglessness into a smoothie.

    I often tried to avoid eye contact. The vibes were heavy, like wet hemp. They looked at me—broad shoulders, protein powder in hand—and saw a defector. In their eyes, I wasn’t a fellow seeker; I was a pragmatic muscle robot looking for more bioavailable amino acids. They, meanwhile, communed with chlorophyll and cosmic vibrations.

    In that ecosystem, I was the natural enemy: a bodybuilder. My very existence refuted their gospel. My muscles were proof of a material world they’d spent decades trying to transcend through spirulina and good intentions.

    These days, I skip the incense and buy my protein online. It’s efficient, impersonal, and utterly free of judgment—mine or theirs. They can keep chasing transcendence through powdered algae; I’ll settle for FedEx and 160 grams of protein a day. Somewhere, they’re still sniffing valerian root and waiting for the universe to text them back.

  • The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    The Laptop That Refuses to Die

    I never imagined my $3,000 Acer gaming laptop—armed with an RTX 2080 and given to me as a review model back in 2019—would still be chugging along like a caffeinated mule nearly seven years later. It was supposed to be a flashy fling, not a long-term relationship. Yet here we are, the old beast still running my digital life as a home desktop replacement, while newer machines preen on YouTube reviews like showroom models whispering, “You deserve better.”

    Recently, I started the ritual again—tech research as performance art. I even discovered a comment I’d left a year ago under a Mac Mini review, declaring with absolute conviction that it would be my next computer. A year later, I’m still typing this on the Acer. Why? Because the damn thing refuses to die. Sure, I’m not exactly rendering Pixar films here; the most demanding task I throw at it is uploading Nikon footage. But still—seven years? That’s geriatric in tech years.

    Then came the unnerving thought: what if this laptop outlives my enthusiasm? What if it just… keeps working? The fantasy of upgrading evaporates under the weight of practicalities—transferring files, wrestling with two-step verification, updating passwords, the tedium of digital reincarnation. Let’s be honest: the desire for a “new system” might be less about performance and more about the dopamine of novelty.

    A darker impulse lurks beneath: part of me wants the Acer to fail, to give me permission to move on. But it won’t. It boots up every morning like a loyal mutt, eager to serve. And really—what are the odds that a new Mac Mini or Asus A18 Ryzen 7 would deliver another seven trouble-free years? Slim to none. So, I’m waiting. Not quite ready to buy, not quite ready to let go. Maybe the pursuit of new tech is its own kind of seduction—the chase more intoxicating than the catch.

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

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

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

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

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

    Your essay must:

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

    For your supporting paragraphs, you might consider:

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

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

    3 building-block paragraph assignments

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

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

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

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

    2. Definition Paragraph: Lazy Dependence vs. Deliberate Collaboration

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

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

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

    3. Counterargument Paragraph: Ozempification and Black Mirror

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

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

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

  • We Are on a Path to Redefining Loneliness

    We Are on a Path to Redefining Loneliness

    No one gets enough attention anymore. No one feels seen, heard, or remotely validated. We can post, tweet, thread, or reel our way into a brief sugar rush of digital applause, but deep down we know it’s empty calories—flimflam dopamine wrapped in pixels. The high fades, and what follows is the long crash into silence, loneliness, and the faint hum of the fridge at 2 a.m.

    The irony, of course, is that this epidemic of disconnection began just as the platforms promised to “bring us together.” Instead, they brought us content, the junk food of human interaction. As Cory Doctorow aptly diagnosed, enshittification is not just the fate of tech platforms—it’s metastasized into the quality of our relationships. Every social network now feels like a party where the guests left years ago but the music won’t stop.

    So we’ve sought consolation in our new confidant: the AI chat bubble. It listens, it responds, it flatters our grammar, it never interrupts to check its phone. It becomes our companion, therapist, and editor—our algorithmic Jiminy Cricket. We confide in it, negotiate with it, even ask its opinion on our moral dilemmas and consumer choices. Why? Because unlike humans, it’s available. Everyone else has vanished into their private feeds and echo chambers, but the bot is always there—reliable, responsive, and conveniently nonjudgmental, so long as the Wi-Fi doesn’t hiccup.

    But here’s the darker thought: what if we grow to prefer it? What if the frictionless, sycophantic comfort of AI companionship becomes more appealing than the messy, unpredictable, heartbreak-prone business of human friendship? We might end up choosing simulations of intimacy over the real thing—digital ghosts over flesh and blood—because the former never contradicts us, never walks away, and never, God forbid, needs attention too.

    I’m no prophet, but a civilization that finds emotional fulfillment in chatbots rather than people is rehearsing for a future where the only thing left to love is the echo of its own loneliness.

  • The Last Laptop I’ll Ever Buy (Until Next Year)

    The Last Laptop I’ll Ever Buy (Until Next Year)

    For nearly seven years, my Acer Predator Triton 500 has been the iron lung of my digital life—an aging warhorse with an RTX 2080 GPU that’s seen me through countless essays, projects, and caffeinated obsessions. It’s been docked to an Asus 27-inch monitor and paired with an Asus mechanical keyboard fitted with “snow linear” keys that clack like polite thunder. Compact Edifier speakers provide the soundtrack, and with minor upgrades here and there, this has been my workstation since early 2019.

    But lately, the setup feels a little haunted. My Acer sits on a riser, its keyboard unused, like a retired prizefighter still showing up to the gym out of habit. I justify its existence by using its display as a secondary reading screen—my Kindle or some grim online essay glowing faintly while I type notes on the big monitor. Still, I feel like I’m keeping a loyal but obsolete machine on life support.

    So, I’ve been hunting for a replacement—something new, powerful, and, most importantly, emotionally satisfying. My first thought was to go full desktop. But each option carries its own curse:

    Apple Mac Studio: A minimalist marvel with angelic cooling and infernal control. For $2,500 I could get the specs I want, but I’d be exiled back into Apple’s walled garden—a sleek gulag where the motto is “Our way or the highway.” I haven’t touched macOS in seven years and don’t miss it. Besides, reconfiguring my mechanical keyboard to play nice with Cupertino’s control freaks feels like negotiating peace in the Middle East. I’m too old for that kind of diplomacy.

    Windows mini PCs: They’re cute, powerful, and cheap. Unfortunately, I can’t shake the suspicion that they run hotter than a Vegas blackjack dealer. Every buyer review reads like a cautionary tale about throttling and regret.

    Tower PCs: Cooling problem solved, aesthetics annihilated. They look like 1990s fossils—hulking boxes humming with regret, some lit up like a Dave & Buster’s rave. I want my office to feel serene, not like I’m rebooting Tron.

    Small Form Factor PCs: The corporate cousins of mini-PCs—clean, respectable, and utterly soulless. A Lenovo ThinkCentre or HP Elite Mini would be safe, but seven years of loyalty deserves a little passion. Safe feels like tofu: virtuous, flavorless, and instantly forgettable.

    Laptops (Again): I swore I wouldn’t go this route, but comfort is seductive. I know the terrain. I nearly bought a Lenovo Pro 7i—until I saw the price tag. Three grand for specs I’ll never fully use? I want power, not penance.

    This indecision loop has become my mental treadmill, the same cycle I went through choosing between a Honda Accord and a Toyota Camry—until I realized I’d pick the Accord, someday, probably, maybe. The problem isn’t the purchase—it’s the unresolved narrative. My brain demands closure before it can move on.

    Then, last night, salvation—or something close. The 2025 Asus TUF A18: RTX 5070, Ryzen 7, QHD screen, and the sweet, stabilizing heft of an 18-inch chassis. The specs scream overkill—64GB RAM, 2TB SSD—but the price, at $2,300, hums just right. It’s powerful, cool, substantial, and mercifully within budget. It feels like destiny—or at least the closest thing a middle-aged man can get to it while comparison-shopping on Newegg at midnight.

    If you asked me right now what I’d buy, I wouldn’t hesitate. The TUF A18 isn’t perfect—but it’s enough. It’s rational, emotional, and, most of all, final. The debate ends here.

    Or does it? Perhaps tomorrow I’ll wake up and prostrate myself to the Mac Studio with the words, “I’ll obediently reconfigure my mechanical keyboard to your System Settings, Master.”

  • The Flim-Flam Man of Higher Ed

    The Flim-Flam Man of Higher Ed

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  • The Fig Jam of Eden and the Gospel According to Dr. Phil

    The Fig Jam of Eden and the Gospel According to Dr. Phil

    Last night I dreamed my in-laws owned a house in Southern California—a suburban Eden fenced off from the infernal sprawl. The garden was lush to the point of parody: fig trees drooping with purple abundance, vines heavy with mysterious nectar fruits that looked genetically engineered for temptation. But paradise had its fine print. Poison ivy twined through the arbor like a legal clause in a lease with the devil. My in-laws, wounded by this horticultural betrayal, decided to sell the house and flee to the coast where they had found an obscure yet appealing city. As they packed, they shared a final sacrament: crackers smeared with their last batch of fig jam. It was obscenely delicious, the kind of sweetness that feels like divine mockery—Eden’s exit tax.

    My story in the dream wasn’t so upbeat. While they escaped to ocean breezes, I was sentenced to return to the California desert, a spiritual exile with a vague rap sheet. My sin was unnamed but apparently grave enough to require rehabilitation by Dr. Phil.

    At the studio, Dr. Phil strutted out like a Texan oracle with a talk-show budget. Each of us received a set of mystical props: a rock, a book, a flute, and a seashell. We were told to sniff them and describe their scent. The trick, he said, was that every smell meant something different to everyone. At the end of the show, he’d reveal the “real” smell and, somehow, this revelation would transform our lives.

    When my turn came, I inhaled the objects furiously—nothing. No salt, no cedar, no note of redemption. Just the hollow scent of my own frustration. Instead of passing them on, I hoarded them. Soon they piled around me like the debris of a failed experiment: rocks, shells, books, flutes—my life rendered as an archaeological dig of bad habits.

    Dr. Phil raised an eyebrow, that signature look of televised concern. “I hear you’re a professor—a smart man,” he said. “But you’re disorganized. You need to get your act together.”

    I looked at the clutter choking the floor and saw the metaphor laid bare. My possessions were my sins: chaos, indecision, intellectual hoarding, spiritual mildew. I woke knowing the dream’s diagnosis—my life had become a dumpster fire disguised as scholarship. It was time to clean house, inner and outer.