If I'm Not Funny What's The Point

as the snake sheds her skin 🐍🩸

A wall cleared of nails for the ghosts to walk through

And it turned out I also couldn't watch the movie. I fell asleep in class both days we were watching it.

This, of course, meant I had to cheat on my essay.

And I got an A.

The essay was to compare the book and the movie and discuss the changes and how that affected the story.

Well it turned out Sparknotes had an entire section devoted to comparing and contrasting the book and the movie. Using that, and flipping to pages mentioned in Sparknotes to read sections of the book, I was able to bullshit an A paper.

But see the thing is, that this kind of 'cheating' still takes skills, you still learn things.

I had to know how to find the information I needed, I needed to be able to comprehend what sparknotes was saying and the analysis they did, I needed to know how to USE the information I read there to write an essay, I needed to know how to make sure none of it was marked as plagerized. I had to form an opinion on the sparknotes analysis so I could express my own opinions in the essay.

Was it cheating? Yeah, I didn't read the book or watch the movie. I used Sparknotes. It was a lot less work than if I had read the book and watched the movie and done it all myself.

The thing is though, I still had to use my fucking brain. Being able to bullshit an essay like that is a skill in and of itself that is useful. I exercised important skills, and even if it wasnt the intended way I still learned.

ChatGTP and other AI do not give that experience to people, people have to do nothing and gain nothing from it.

Using AI is absolutely different from other ways students have cheated in the past, and I stand by my opinion that its making students dumber, more helpless, and less capable.

So I had a passing knowledge of ww2, as much as anyone, so i figured that I could bluff the context around Churchill and just get some of his details down and I'd be fine.

So I pulled his Wikipedia up and read it. Didn't have time to write a speech, this was gonna be adlib. Then I jumped on google images and pulled a picture that reflected one thing from each of his Wikipedia sections (like, early life (picture of a train set) education (Churchill graduating) early war (you get the idea).

Bunged the pictures into a powerpoint and read the Wikipedia again with the powerpoint alongside, adding subheadings to jog my memory. Pulled a couple links from the bottom of the wiki for the bibliography, opened and skimmed to make sure they weren't wild, and saved the damn thing

We were lining up outside class for history and the guys in the class are telling some classmates about how I'd just smashed out my whole presentation. I asked everyone to let me go first since the knowledge wasn't gonna last long, I was going off having just read Churchill's wiki lol

They all agreed (champions) and one of the girls said she'd read up on Churchill a bit on her presentation about the Queen, so she promised to nod or shake her head if I was completely wrong.

I presented. I know I spent a minute on each slide and spoke relevantly. I remember at one point saying Churchill excelled in school, saw my classmate was shaking her head, and pivoted to say he didn't do well with formal education but got into some of the extracurricular activities that'd benefit him come war time. She nodded. I continued lol. One of the lads complimented me on that one afterwards

I don't think I learnt much about Churchill with this study. But I absolutely learnt about public speaking. I was using skills in research and apply my contextual knowledge. I also learnt to rely on classmates, even tho we weren't friends at all she had my back because it was easy and kind and cost her nothing

I got a B+ and a comment about being one of the more engaging and charismatic presenters (that would've been the adrenaline, and my classmates were watching fascinated to see if I could pull it off lol).

But I COULD write a coherent paper in 45 minutes, which is about the time it took me to slap together a dirty outline and fill it in, the way I had been taught to do in high school in my writing class. It wasn't gonna win any awards but it meant a B+ instead of a zero, and it meant I had an opportunity to work under pressure and practice skills I had learned. Skills I STILL use to this day, skills I have taught to others. Skills I use to help others edit papers. Skills I would not have and certainly wouldn't have been able to hone if chatGPT was doing it poorly instead.

I am so good at papers, I know how to find the relevant information, I know what a reliable source looks like, and in college, I could lock myself in a study room and knock out a several page paper (with references) in just a couple hours.

ALL WITHOUT AI. I used my brain, the skills of information gathering I was taught, and my ability to use books and bibliographies to my advantage. Today, I can write up something tidy for work in a little bit of focus time.

I think my first essay was....third grade? Maybe second? And I wrote hundreds of them just through high school, to say nothing of all I wrote in getting my Bachelor's and Master's degrees. Some of the essays in primary and secondary school were, quite honestly, bullshitting, because they were on topics that didn't interest me and I hadn't yet learned to use my then-undiagnosed anxiety, autism, and ADHD to trick myself into putting real effort into something I found boring. Even the low-effort essays still got me great grades, and they still helped me hone my writing skills. And they did eventually give me the tools to get me to focus on less-fun necessities.

Would I have been able to do that if I had had access to genAI and decided to use it? Doubtful. Would I have been able to write an entire book that was published by one of the Big 5 U.S. publishers? Nope. Because even if i had managed to trick them into thinking an AI-generated manuscript was my work, I wouldn't have survived the editing process without blowing my cover, and I certainly wouldn't have been able to show my expertise in the subject matter.

One of the tricks for articles is read the summary, introductory paragraph, and conclusion and speak early in discussion to show you know what the article is abut.

Another trick is divide articles up with friend(s) and brief each other.

Both in my upper division Medieval History undergraduate classes and in my graduate classes, we'd periodically get assigned the same book for a different class, which was helpful. I could skim my old notes and not reread it or just pick out certain chapters. (Not textbooks, but medieval lit type things. This would happen with classics, philosophy, theology texts, across different under graduate and graduate degrees. It happens).

Usually if I had to skip something important, I'd take notes on the class discussion and it was fine. I was an active class participants, my papers were generally early and heavily well resourced. This can buy you a lot of slack in college when you need it.

One time I got assigned "Little Flowers of St. Francis" and I didn't have time that weekend, so I skipped it. I listened in class, I made good notes. (Paraphrasing things makes them stick in your head the way just reading or listening won't. ChatGP can't stick things in your head the way writing things in your own words will.)

I truly intended to read it, but the back half of semester is busy and I also had two language classes in a full course load and papers and...

I actually used it in an essay question on an exam. Brother Juniper reminded me of the holy Fool archetype from Buddhist writings. I could easily remember a bunch of illustrative stories from class discussion I could use as evidence. I got a perfect score. She could not tell I hadn't read it.

I meant to read it over break, I really did, but there was a bunch of more interesting reading to do and breaks are always too short.

Over the ourse of the last wo under grad years and my medieval Masters program, it was a bout 50/50 it'd get assigned in whole or in part for one class or another, across multiple proffs.

The second time, i didn't even try to read it, but my hand was up in class with relevant comments and opinions. I'd casually reference something in a paper or essay here appropriate. A year went by and then another.

Eventually about a decade after it was first assigned i sold my copy away having never cracked it open.

I am convinced none of the people who assigned this book ever had a clue i hadn't read it.

I am not convinced this was cheating. I knew the information. The information was correct and i was using it correctly with my own spin.

My quality notetaking, my skill at chunking information with other disparate information, my skills at writing essays and papers, all of that was mine from long practice.

My brain doing the work.

via Seattle Times:

Local Ballard raccoon has been spotted thriving in a remarkably unique and charming body

GRAVEWHALE!

Okay seriously this is some fascinating shit.

And I don’t know shit about fossils, marine biology or ocean research.

The charmingly animated witch dance from the 1987 anime film Grimm’s Fairy Tale: The Golden Bird (グリム童話 金の鳥). Directed by the late great Toshio Hirata (平田敏夫).  A hidden cartoony gem from Madhouse & Toei Animation, loosely based on the tale of The Golden Bird that was made famous by The Brothers Grimm.

Special thanks to Animation Obsessive on Twitter for bringing this movie to my attention. Follow them for more rare, interesting & underappreciated animation tidbits from around the world.