👏’ forgotten a single story I’ve helped bring to life: the girl who showed up to her chess tournament in a hot pink jacket, the boy who trained a pet chicken, the siblings who learned American Sign Languge to communicate with their grandmother. After all, writing is not just a medium of communication—it is the most powerful tool we have to immortalize our unique experiences.’
Joan Didion wrote the reason she writes or wrote was to find out what she was thinking (but maybe also what she was feeling). And she was brilliant.
Children sometimes get mad at their parents. Don't tell me what to think, they might say. Or don't tell me how to feel. Yet they don't seem to mind being told by a machine or bot when they grow up as long as recycling what AI tells them will result in a gazillion likes, millions of followers and a 6 or 7 figure income.
It's great that you are there as an expert coach for students to be able to be themselves in writing their college entrance essays. And to perhaps realize their actual worth to themselves and to others and how to best navigate their way to still being a fulfilling success without having to bow down to AI.
👏👏👏 Such a great article, Liza and it’s SO good to have you back! Substack simply isn’t the same without you! You are among the best Substackers on the platform whether the numbers reflect that or not is irrelevant, your talent speaks for itself. As to the subject of the piece, you are 100% right. Writing is how we make sense of our thoughts and put them into a form that they can be made clear and understood. Critical thinking allows us to make deductions, construct our values system, understand the world around us, think for ourselves, and to gain insight, wisdom and knowledge. Without it, we’d be lost. Young people need critical thinking and the college essay now more than ever. They have totally lost the ability to think through problems to solve them, to decide for themselves what their political views are and to become full-fledged adults. When their car breaks down, their mugged at gunpoint, they have to pay their bills or taxes, or they are trying to help a friend or family member who’s been injured or is sick, ChatGDP is not going to be there to provide them with easy answers. They MUST learn how to think and can only do so if they’ve got the ability to render their thoughts into existence in word form!
To the people against the college essay, so when your students grow up and their house is on fire, they are raising a child, they get robbed, or they have to figure out how to make a deposit at the bank and they can’t figure it out, how much value will AI be to them then? When they can’t figure out what in life is most important to them or what they value and build a well-rounded, nuanced worldview what then? You’re doing them a huge disservice and making them dependent on technology for the rest of their lives and stunting their mental development! AI is not entirely a bad thing by any means. But we should refrain from adopting it wholesale! There must be strict laws regulating it. For instance, in rare case where Congress did the right thing, a clause forbidding any regulation of AI for decades was removed from the Big Beautiful Bill. That is to be celebrated! AI should never ever be used to help students form their essays or answer questions! They should be given an F if they use AI to write a paper or to get answers. That should be considered plagiarism!
Technology can’t and shouldn’t do everything for us. What’s next? Are robots 🤖 gonna start carrying us around everywhere so we don’t need to walk? Are computers gonna start telling us what to have for dinner every night? “Bleep bloop Pizza Hut 🍕 tonight!” Are we going to start having a machine taking our picture rather than using human photographer 📸 to take a picture? Will AI start telling us what to do so we don’t use our brains 🧠 at all? Come on! We can do so much better than this! The college essay ✍️ must make a return rather than us simply giving them easy multiple choice questions where they are all but given the answer.
To me this is all self-indulgent navel gazing. Asking students to write a personal essay reinforces the false belief that their teachers and future employers care about their personal story and interior world, and that their experience in college and on the job market will be about these things.
I say this from the perspective of someone who has seen student essays submitted for employment purposes and has found them to be a complete waste of time because students are trapped in the mode of talking about how work will be meaningful to them, rather than persuading potential employers that they understand the task and can carry it out with precision.
We'd be much better served by asking students to make a persuasive argument on a topic of their choice. This is a task that they will have to regularly perform in professional life, pretty much whatever they do, so it's a much more useful activity than encouraging students to write about how unique and awesome they are as people.
I fully agree on the point that ChatGPT is stultifying students' brains, and I would offer that having a mentor try to encourage a student to make an argument is an easier task then asking them to review all of their memories and personal experiences to come up with the one cool story that defines them.
👏’ forgotten a single story I’ve helped bring to life: the girl who showed up to her chess tournament in a hot pink jacket, the boy who trained a pet chicken, the siblings who learned American Sign Languge to communicate with their grandmother. After all, writing is not just a medium of communication—it is the most powerful tool we have to immortalize our unique experiences.’
Joan Didion wrote the reason she writes or wrote was to find out what she was thinking (but maybe also what she was feeling). And she was brilliant.
Children sometimes get mad at their parents. Don't tell me what to think, they might say. Or don't tell me how to feel. Yet they don't seem to mind being told by a machine or bot when they grow up as long as recycling what AI tells them will result in a gazillion likes, millions of followers and a 6 or 7 figure income.
It's great that you are there as an expert coach for students to be able to be themselves in writing their college entrance essays. And to perhaps realize their actual worth to themselves and to others and how to best navigate their way to still being a fulfilling success without having to bow down to AI.
👏👏👏 Such a great article, Liza and it’s SO good to have you back! Substack simply isn’t the same without you! You are among the best Substackers on the platform whether the numbers reflect that or not is irrelevant, your talent speaks for itself. As to the subject of the piece, you are 100% right. Writing is how we make sense of our thoughts and put them into a form that they can be made clear and understood. Critical thinking allows us to make deductions, construct our values system, understand the world around us, think for ourselves, and to gain insight, wisdom and knowledge. Without it, we’d be lost. Young people need critical thinking and the college essay now more than ever. They have totally lost the ability to think through problems to solve them, to decide for themselves what their political views are and to become full-fledged adults. When their car breaks down, their mugged at gunpoint, they have to pay their bills or taxes, or they are trying to help a friend or family member who’s been injured or is sick, ChatGDP is not going to be there to provide them with easy answers. They MUST learn how to think and can only do so if they’ve got the ability to render their thoughts into existence in word form!
To the people against the college essay, so when your students grow up and their house is on fire, they are raising a child, they get robbed, or they have to figure out how to make a deposit at the bank and they can’t figure it out, how much value will AI be to them then? When they can’t figure out what in life is most important to them or what they value and build a well-rounded, nuanced worldview what then? You’re doing them a huge disservice and making them dependent on technology for the rest of their lives and stunting their mental development! AI is not entirely a bad thing by any means. But we should refrain from adopting it wholesale! There must be strict laws regulating it. For instance, in rare case where Congress did the right thing, a clause forbidding any regulation of AI for decades was removed from the Big Beautiful Bill. That is to be celebrated! AI should never ever be used to help students form their essays or answer questions! They should be given an F if they use AI to write a paper or to get answers. That should be considered plagiarism!
Technology can’t and shouldn’t do everything for us. What’s next? Are robots 🤖 gonna start carrying us around everywhere so we don’t need to walk? Are computers gonna start telling us what to have for dinner every night? “Bleep bloop Pizza Hut 🍕 tonight!” Are we going to start having a machine taking our picture rather than using human photographer 📸 to take a picture? Will AI start telling us what to do so we don’t use our brains 🧠 at all? Come on! We can do so much better than this! The college essay ✍️ must make a return rather than us simply giving them easy multiple choice questions where they are all but given the answer.
Writing a document is such a tremendous amount, of intense & complex work. But anyone might do it. So its kind of really amazing.
stop supporting student college essays
you can educate yourself in the public library, for free
Credential seeking is for fools
Again, may your tribe increase.
People who enjoy writing will write. Those who don't either won't write or will use AI.
To me this is all self-indulgent navel gazing. Asking students to write a personal essay reinforces the false belief that their teachers and future employers care about their personal story and interior world, and that their experience in college and on the job market will be about these things.
I say this from the perspective of someone who has seen student essays submitted for employment purposes and has found them to be a complete waste of time because students are trapped in the mode of talking about how work will be meaningful to them, rather than persuading potential employers that they understand the task and can carry it out with precision.
We'd be much better served by asking students to make a persuasive argument on a topic of their choice. This is a task that they will have to regularly perform in professional life, pretty much whatever they do, so it's a much more useful activity than encouraging students to write about how unique and awesome they are as people.
I fully agree on the point that ChatGPT is stultifying students' brains, and I would offer that having a mentor try to encourage a student to make an argument is an easier task then asking them to review all of their memories and personal experiences to come up with the one cool story that defines them.