Artificial Sweetener
There may be something to be said for the ability of AI to write admissions application essays; but I am not the one to say it.
Ideally, the response to “some students have a background, identity, interest, or talent that is so meaningful they believe their application would be incomplete without it. If this sounds like you, then please share your story” should be an opportunity for a student to find her voice, speak her truth. Thinking about identity allows a student to communicate her unique story. Revisions over time let her refine her thinking, perfect the vision of herself that she wants to share. Whereas the computer can only find someone else’s truth, share an amalgam of other voices.
Gentle readers may forgive an analogy. When my children were younger, we planned a pleasant 45-minute hike up to a waterfall with a proverbial panoramic view of the valley which turned into (the hike not the waterfall) an arduous six-hour slog through who-knows-where because why-would-anybody-bother-to-bring-a-map-it’s not-even-an-hour-from-the-parking-lot-here-for-goodness-sake and of course we got rained on, didn’t have warm gear or enough food, why do you ask?
What could go wrong? Pretty much everything. Damp, lost, hungry, we reflected on why didn’t we just drive to the top of the stupid mountain, rent a helicopter for that matter, or stay home altogether and ask the computer to show us pictures of the view.
Because in a machine, we wouldn’t have found the field of wild strawberries. We would have driven right past (or, in the case of the rented helicopter, completely flown over) the endless acres of incandescent fruit and I wouldn’t be sitting here 20 years later visualizing the children picking and eating, picking and eating until their hands and faces were brilliant red and I thought our collective heads would all explode from the glory or it all as the sun finally came out and there were more berries than even my ravenous kids could consume.
A computer could not provide us with that memory. And I don’t even want to think about what my laptop would look like covered in strawberries whereas, again, my kids looked absolutely stunning, smiling, sticky, and satiated.
Similarly, it is my understanding that the collection of zeros and ones can now solve problems that have stumped the best homo sapiens mathematicians for generations. Which, again, is great. If what you want is the answer. But if the process is of interest—the camaraderie of working with other mathematicians, the hit of dopamine that comes from stumbling on a new way of approaching the problem, the ultimate joy of discovery—well, I don’t think the machine is going to give you a high five or buy you a beer.
At the risk of giving offense, may I point out that many folks prefer in-person physical intimacy rather than watching somebody else smooch on a screen.
So as the deadline for admissions essays looms, I would encourage my students to obviate the last-minute reliance on AI, to share their stories, to communicate a little of that which is meaningful.
“But everyone else is cheating,” your kids may argue. “All the other seniors are submitting essays written by Claude.” Which certainly may be the case; I haven’t met all the other students at your kids’ school. When Claude and his peers can tell your child’s story better than your child can, go ahead and invite the computer to pick and eat strawberries with you in a sun-drenched field. Let me know how that goes.
