Every year, as the spring semester comes to a close, I think about some of the things I have tried to teach students over the course of the semester and academic year. As a composition teacher, my main goal is to help students become better writers and readers, and hopefully, through that combination, become better students in the process. If they can hone their critical thinking skills in research and communication, those skills become part of their repotoire that they can take to their other classes and to their lives after college. At its core, that is what I hope to teach students in these classes.

Without fail, I begin every course by asking students what makes a good writer, and I point them to Ernest Gaines’ answer to an audience member when they asked him the same thing. He told the audience that he could tell them how to become a better write in only six words: “Read, read, read, write, write, write.” It sounds so easy, I know, but so many people stand averse to reading, seeing it as useless or merely a hobby that will not impact their careers or lives. That sentiment, of course, turns reading from a fundamental skill to a mere leisure activity, one that can be turned on and off on a whim when time becomes too constrictied. However, we must think about reading as a part of our daily existence, and we must train ourselves to read because if we don’t read we will never become better writers.

Just as we must train ourselves to read, we must train ourselves to write, something I have written about extensively on this very blog. Along with this regimne, I tell students that writing helps them learn more about themselves, and this is something I am not sure students really grasp inititally or when they complete the course. Moving forward, I plan to share with students something that Kim Gordon said in response to a question about whether or not she has ever thought about writing novel. Gordon responded,

I’ve thought about it. I consider myself more as a visual artist who writes, rather than a writer. I won’t say I won’t ever try to write a novel, but writing is always a challenge, just the getting started part, and I’m such a procrastinator. But once I get into it, I really, really enjoy it. It’s the thinking I love. A lot of times I actually don’t know what I think about something until I start writing about it.

Gordon reiterates what I tell students. She says that she procrastinates; I procrastinate. She says that once she starts writing she enjoys it; once I get started writing I enjoy it. She says that she loves the thinking; I love the thinking. She says that writing helps her learn and think about the topic in a more cohesive manner; I learn and think about a topic in a more cohhecive manner when I write. Writing tells us about ourselves and our ideas; it becomes a space where we formulate those ideas. Hell, when I start a blog post, I don’t necessarily know where I’ll go with it. It just starts to form as I peck at the keyboard in front of me.

One of the best writers I have had over the past academic year writes everyday. The student journals, and it shows in their essays. This skill allowed the student to manuver through the course without reading as much of the texts as other students. During the final presentation, the student informed us that they don’t like comics, as I knew, and that they did not read the comics. However, the student succeeded. The student said that they read the academic articles and when it came time to writing the paper they skimmed the comics and found sections that supported their argument. Now, while I do not totally agree with the student because I think they should read the text and learn how to grapple with things that don’t interest them, the student’s comments led to an important moment at the end of the semetser.

I knew that this student didn’t use AI for their essays, and I asked the student about that. The student said that AI produces slop, to which I agree. I asked the student this because I, as anyone who teaches these days knows, have encountered numerous students use AI to write their essays. These are not cases where students write the essay then send it through AI to ask for edits and revisons. No, these are blatant usage of AI to write the essay for the student. I’ve had the slop conversation with students before, and I reititerated it here. However, I also went further and pointed out to students that even by using AI they are wasting just as much if not more effort than if they just read the texts and wrote the essays. I say this because if they really thought about it they would hav eto read what AI produced for them and check it for grammar, format, citations, sources, etc. I know they don’t do this, but I pointed this out to them to show that they are cheating themselves out of an education.

When they learn the tools in a composition course, then they can use AI to benefit them. I know some degrees are heavily incorporating AI and that some professions are and will do the same. However, just typing in a prompt and waiting for a response then using that response without checking it shows laziness. If a student really wants to utilize what AI can do, they must learn how to think critically and ask it the right questions. I have seen students do this recently with images and posters. Those projects, while I disagree with AI on a number of levels, shows that it can be an assesst to those who can think critically and engage with material in a manner that would lead them to prompt AI for such products.

When students don’t first do these things themselves, though, then they rely on AI and other tools as a crutch or an easy escape from work. They fall into the trap of compartmentalizing their education, saying that compsoition has no importance to my other classes, and that compartmentalization hurts them in their other classes and in the long run. They fail, especially when they enter college, to see the interconnectedness of everything. They see anything they don’t like as a hinderance, not as something that they may actually enjoy doing at some point.

On this latter point, I’m drawn to a recent moment in a resent episode of Rooster where the poetry professor Dylan, after reading a poem by her student Eva, asks the student to publish the poem in the college’s literary journal. At first, the student refuses, stating that they don’t want to be that vulnerable and that they don’t see themselves as an artist because they are a business major and their father wants them to be a CEO or Crypto trader. Later, Dylan sits down with Eva and tells her that it bothered her when Eva said she wasn’t going to be an artist, and Eva, after seeing her poem in a mockup of the literary journal, agrees to have it published. This feels ham fisted, I know, but it highlights the point that we contain multitudes. We can be artists and business majors. I know so many people in the science department who perform with our chorale and orchestras. I’m interested in science and music. I love baseball. I am not merely a literature and composition professor and scholar. Students need to see themselves as containing multitudes because they do contain multitudes, and every aspect of their very being overlaps and interconnects.

In the next post, I want to continue this discussion some by looking at Stefan Zweig’s Confusion. Until then, what are your thoughts? As usual, let me know in the comments below. Make sure to follow me on Bluesky @silaslapham.bsky.social‬.