R. Joseph Rodríguez
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escribescribe.bsky.social
R. Joseph Rodríguez
@escribescribe.bsky.social
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Editor | Educator | Hiker | Poet | Reader | Researcher | Scribe | Smiler | Storyteller | Thinker | Austin, Tejas
www.scholarsscribes.com
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Reposted by R. Joseph Rodríguez
jeffsharlet.bsky.social
This, FWIW, is my current teaching policy on AI, always subject to revision. It is, I recognize, easier applied to creative writing, which draws students who *want* to take the course rather than have to.
This is a course for those interested in writing not as means to an end but as an end in itself. Recently a friend and I read a cover story in New York magazine titled, “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College,” by James D. Walsh. My friend has also taught writing. He likes to tell his students, “If you want to be a writer, put on a cool hat and go sit in a bar with cheap beer. If you want to write, write.” I didn’t think AI would be a temptation for creative writing students. “Everyone is Cheating Their Way Through College” persuaded me that for many it’s not a temptation but a condition. You sleep in a bed, you wear clothes, you don’t scream at teachers. Just the way it is. Maybe AI is becoming that, too, part of “just the way it is.” Maybe it is that already. My mind raced through ideas about how to “beat” AI. The article dismantled them. Then I thought, “That’s not my job.” I’m a writer and a teacher, not a cop. If you want to work with me on writing, we can do that. If you want to cheat, you can do that, too, and I probably can’t stop you. I’m interested in working with students for whom writing feels… good. Who seek that feeling. A feeling of being, of alertness. Of purpose; of intention. This is a course for those who are interested in using writing to experience some variation of this feeling. Sometimes this feeling comes in a moment of clarity, sometimes in the making of a lyrical juxtaposition. There are so many more emotional, intellectual, and spiritual possibilities that arise from the act of shaping language. I live off the aftermath of that act—the recognitions, financial and otherwise, I earn from the results—but there is no paycheck, or even a finished book held in hand for the first time, that has ever brought me as much complicated pleasure as the arrangement of words. Maybe you’re like this, too. Or maybe you want to be. If so, I designed this course with someone like you in mind.
October 20, 2025 at 12:11 PM