Similar to many 5C students, my courses last semester drove me to write 14 papers, and so did my classes the semester before that. Meanwhile, I worked two to four on-campus jobs, one of which was my former position as Opinions editor for TSL. To sum it up, a paper was always on my mind. While writing these essays, I studied about 12 hours a day most days just to keep up with coursework, and drank at least six coffees, usually more.
In my first year of college, before I experienced that level of academic pressure, I wrote that artificial intelligence would be the downfall of the working classes, the end of the world as we know it, “the new, fun way to create yet another self-inflicted crisis.” Things have changed, at least as far as my opinion is concerned. Now I feel as though, as long as the planet manages not to overheat and spontaneously combust in the meantime, AI might lead to a writing revolution. AI is forcing academia to reconsider what writing is actually supposed to accomplish. This shift could lead to more personal, individualized writing being held in greater esteem, as well as provide some relief from the burnout that comes from writing to stylistic perfection.
Halfway through my sophomore fall, I was sick of having no time to go out, working through every meal and needing to get from point A to point B as quickly as possible in order to not waste time that could be spent doing my homework. And then, one professor summoned me to his office hours after I submitted a paper “to discuss how to improve your essay writing skills.” But when I met with him, the only thing he did was ask if Pitzer College had a writing center I could go to — the Writing Center I was already a frequent visitor of, and that I had already taken that paper to. He didn’t have anything to offer me besides a vague imputation of not being able to write and spoke to me as though I were intellectually behind, when I knew that wasn’t the issue. Really, I was burnt out, sick and tired of writing, of reading my writing, of having to record and translate my thoughts to fit my professor’s whims, which were often both very specific and entirely uncommunicated, only for them to grade and judge my intellect week after week.
The way my writing was being judged felt disjointed from the human process of writing, which very suddenly made the entire endeavor feel unfamiliar and intimidating. This pressure didn’t make me much of a better writer; it only made me better at realizing what parts of my life I could make small so that I’d have more time to read and write. It seemed as though part of getting an education mandated living in hell.
But this semester, I picked up on the fact that my professors have begun shifting their approach to assignments in response to AI. Compared to before, I think we are headed in the right direction. What I’ve gathered from my professors’ own accounts of their syllabi is that they’ve moved away from infrequent big assignments, for which students more often feel pressured to use AI, and towards smaller, weekly assignments that enforce thoughtful reading and short-form interaction with course materials, with less performance pressure and greater AI guardrails.
I only have two papers to write this semester, yet I don’t feel any less connected with my course material. When I read now, I can actually feel my eyes focusing on each word, and when I write, the sentences come smoothly, not painstakingly. I feel my ability to learn new information in my courses has increased, as has the energy I have to do my homework. This in itself has been wonderful, but I suspect that pedagogical changes in response to AI are also creating a different long-term shift that will benefit students who are genuinely committed to reading and writing.
Educational institutions have long privileged certain writing practices: frequent and lengthy formal academic papers, with extensive rubrics detailing exact conventional requirements. But the proliferation of AI use is indicative of a widespread fatigue with the institutions’ demands for writing to conform to those conventions, a bullet wound for which AI serves as the Band-Aid. We’re already seeing this reflected in evolving syllabi and assignment expectations: ‘perfection’ is going out of style precisely because expecting perfection has helped induce AI usage. Instead, more personal and knowledgeable writing now has more room to develop.
As conventional writing becomes increasingly indistinguishable from AI-generated writing, the value of an individual’s diction will rise. AI has a taste for privileged men; thus, it will never write like me. It will never suggest that users copy my voice or plagiarize my sentences because they’ve been informed by my queer, unconventional life. The more people that use AI to cheat their way through learning and communicating, the more valuable it will become to write in a way that is true to yourself.
In the end, it will be my diction, my syntax, my contempt-filled tone, unconventional as it is, that is privileged. Long live writing that explores the joyful and humorous nooks and crannies of the human mind, that synthesizes “neo-butch mogging” with honest conversations about anxiety, that acknowledges itself as “liberal arts college students’ pipe dreams” while calling for world peace, that engages Marxist analyses of the use-value of Grey Goose Vodka and HIV medication.
Inevitably, we will all get tired of reading artless regurgitations of Google search catalogs. Our personal voices will then be in high demand, and writing will lose its power to pressure you to be someone else.
Celeste Cariker PZ ’28 sometimes misses ‘the rage’ but prefers life without it.
Facebook Comments