Serendipity

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.

There was an older gentleman sitting across from me on the M train.  It was about 6:30am, so I didn’t think much of it when he started leaning over.  It was when he kept going when most people would jerk awake that about 5 of us took action.  We asked if anyone knew CPR in our car, and when we pulled into the next station, we held the doors open and shouted for a doctor (there was a firefighter on the train with us who knew CPR, because that’s how things are in NYC).  No response during CPR.  The older gentleman’s lips were turning blue. 

When the ambulance arrived, the paramedics took over and after 2 minutes of no reaction, I watched something that will always haunt my soul existentially, the way this pic does:  The paramedic yelled at this man that he had to get up because he’d be late for work.  And he got a response.  I don’t know if the older man made it, but he had a pulse when they took him up the stairs to the ambulance.