Random bullets of November, a list not generated by AI

• It’s the day before the election, or should I say the descent into the Maelstrom. I have voted, despite the orange man’s now fancifully named “Department of Justice”’s attempts to stop me. I do not read polls at all, ever, since that fateful night in 2016  when the New York Times’s election needle tracker went from Hillary to you-know-who despite all the polls confidently predicting a win. It’s a horse race for them, as Bert Cooper said in Mad Men, and I don’t have time for watching the ruling class gamble on it.
• Our AI overlord Sam Altman declared that we grimy proles should not have access to RAM for our computers; rather, it should be saved for him and for AI, so that we can rent computer access in the cloud at ever-increasing subscription prices and artificial scarcity of access. As Huck Finn famously said, “I’ve been there before,” back 4 decades ago in the days of VAX terminals and expensive desktops—but at least we could still buy them. My old Kaypro may have had limited power compared to today, but it was mine: I owned it and could use it any time. 
• Speaking of AI (and how could I not?): I’m mystified and a little horrified by people using it to do things like choose food for them, but if they can afford it and it entertains them, that’s their choice. I’m still at the “call me when AI can snake out a drain or change a diaper” stage, but others, like that NY Times columnist who uses the AI agent Muse to harass Etsy sellers and those who use it to spam restaurant reservation systems, are apparently forging ahead in this brave new world. I am extremely horrified by the “let’s be friends” AI that is damaging and killing the psychologically vulnerable. 
• AI agents seem like Instacart or UberEats or DoorDash: those must be a valuable monetized service for people who can’t get out to shop on their own (elderly, persons with disabilities, etc.), but if you are able to choose a 3-D world like the grocery store or the farmer’s market or a kitchen to cook in (not everyone has this, I know), I’d choose that. Again, people who use those services must have a lot more money than I do, and it’s their money, so why not? It’s a resources issue: where do you want to put your time and money? We’re all going to make different choices about that. And if you can’t think on your own and choose to outsource your thinking to AI, no one will stop you—until you find no one reading your emails, responding to requests, etc. As one meme has it: “ai;DR” or “ai; didn’t read” instead of “tl:DR” “too long; didn’t read.” 
• I’m trying to be reasonable here and not angry, but do not write with AI and try to pawn it off as your own writing, and do not GRADE writing with AI and try to pawn it off on students. Do not. Do. Not. This semester is all on paper, all the time (purple or green ink for the win) for in-person classes and handwritten and typewritten notes on the iPad for the others. Northern Clime, like other universities, is hearing complaints from students who think their instructors are using AI for grading, and over the weekend I saw one instructor (not from Northern Clime) brag about using some AI grading app to grade all their papers. The same law in reverse applies for them as for us: if you can’t be bothered to read it, why should they be bothered to write it? 
• On a positive note: the fall has been lovely, as have classes, and my writing is moving along. 

Random bullets of September: so far, so good, and a measure of balance

Our semester began a few weeks ago, and so far, everything's moving along. 

Teaching: 

 I'm repeating the "no tech--write everything in class" experiment from a few years ago, and so far it's going well. I told them on the first day that this was a space walled off from technology for our mutual attention to reading and discussion in a world of distractions, and they knew coming in that they'd write something on most days.

• As the syllabus says, no, you can't find these readings online (many are contemporary and copyrighted), and yes, you need to bring your book--an actual, honest-to-god paper book--to class. 
•  I write on the whiteboard and sometimes on paper via the doc cam, and we have actual, in-person, non-mediated-by-whatever-shiny-thing-edtech-is-pushing-on-administrators this semester discussions. You know, party like it's 1999. Following my mantra of a few years ago (in the link above), "Write big & move big is the lesson here, I guess"
• If they want to let AI do the work, there are online sections that they can take, so I'm not uniquely depriving them of their Precious; they just have to go somewhere else to use it. 
• Yes, we will have quizzes that help them to retain information, and yes, I will call on students, and yes, they will talk in groups and present their findings at the front of the room. 
• Yes, I can read their handwriting. I've been doing it for decades and have concluded this: (1) they're doing the best that they can, and more practice can only improve handwriting for those for whom it is a challenge; and (2) yes, I grant a sweeping dispensation to those with 200 or 500-person classes to have them type or Scantron instead (that's not my situation); but (3) those of us with smaller humanities classes ought to meet them halfway and at least try to encourage their writing in class, even if it's a bit more work for us.
• And yes, we're going to the actual library where print books live and I will be turning them loose for a scavenger hunt.  
• So far, so good, and they seem eager to learn. 

Research:

Last year I spent a ridiculous amount of time on campus and living just off-campus, creating teaching materials and showing up for everything. I learned my lesson, and this year I am making a point not to do that. Some might call it "spite commuting," and those people would not be wrong.

• I'm keeping track of my time to distribute it in ways specified by my contract. 
• By keeping away from campus physically, I'm not tempted to ignore the hard work of research in favor of the low-hanging fruit of improving this lesson or lecture or exercise, because (1) it already works well and (2) the maybe 2% additional improvement does not justify the hours I put into it.
• In other news, I worked so hard on teaching last year that I have a lot of good stuff to work with already. 
• By being physically surrounded by my research materials, I'm working with them more and getting more ideas.  
•  As I've deliberately cut back the hours of creating teaching materials, my research brain has slowly come back online, and I'm writing more. 

Service: 

I'm doing my share of service, but I'm not hanging around the office ready to volunteer or be helpful or show up for a meeting in person when no one else does. Zoom exists for a reason. 

Hope your semester is going well! 

 

Queen Anne's lace is blooming, and you know what that means

 

For the past few weeks, I've been giving a sharp look to every white flower with a flat top and tiny flowers that I see on my walks.

"Don't worry--that one's yarrow," I said to myself a few weeks ago with some relief. 

But when the flower has a tiny purple flower in the middle of the white ones, I can't deny it any more: it's Queen Anne's lace. 

Why do I dread seeing this innocent flower? Because it signals that the summer is well and truly almost over and that the fall semester is just around the corner. 

When Queen Anne's lace appears, you can count on getting email requests that, when you respond to them, lead to the inevitable autoreply: I am on vacation-away from my desk (etc.) and will respond in a few weeks when I return. Their request is urgent, but reading my response is not, I guess. Did I make a rule in Outlook for everyone from whom I got an autoreply, and am I declining to respond for a few weeks until I'm good and ready to look in the folder (after they return)? Yup. 

You know that you have to start thinking about your classes, but during this few weeks--the season of Queen Anne's lace--they are Schroedinger's Canvas course space, so to speak: They exist in the state of being both ready to go (alive) and in need to lots of work (dead), but if you open them, you'll have killed them and will spend the last few precious weeks bringing them back to life. 

Since you only have about two or three weeks left, you have to decide where to gamble with your money, by which I mean brainpower, time, and attention: the mind-numbingly dull task that you have to finish, or the creative one that you want to throw caution to the winds and work on. You realize that you can't do both, so which do you choose? 

Both the literal weather and the academic climate are--let's call it extremely challenging--right now, so I will close by noting something positive: I've been swimming a lot this summer, something I enjoy. I am by no means a "real swimmer," with goggles & metrics about distance, but "a person who swims," which is to say getting into the cold water and swimming for enjoyment. 

But those flowers are reminding me that this part of the summer is rapidly drawing to a close. 

I like the summer air (a summer activities post)

 Over at nicoleandmaggie's, there's a post about what seasonal activities people enjoy. 

Here's ten things that I like:

1. The smell and feeling of the summer air, very early in the morning when it's still chilly and there's a bite to it so it's cold on your skin when you walk or run.

2. The smell of the summer night air in May, when there are lilacs.

3. The kind of conference where you're hearing about actual discoveries in your field rather than just interpretations of familiar lines of study. 

4. The kind of conference where you meet new people but can also sit on a porch in the dusk after sessions are over for the day, watching fireflies and talking with old friends and colleagues.

5.  Coming back from a conference and realizing, with deep relief, that you don't have to go to another one for a while. 

6.  Fending off, with a smile, recent retirees who are as eager as Crossfit enthusiasts or vegans to convert you to their way of life. 

7. Walking on hills, because it feels so good when you're going downhill. Walking by water, for the negative ions or whatever makes you feel better. Walking in the woods with the smell of dry pine needles underfoot. 

8. Staying off social media as much as possible and buying almost nothing online (see: Costco cult).  Fun fact: the airports now show influencers on TVs at the gate rather than news so that you can learn tips that you have already known for decades, like how to make festive ice cubes, and you can watch YouTube stars as in-flight entertainment.

9. Reading actual books.  My most recent read is Richard Yates's Revolutionary Road, which I read carefully twice. I know--another mid-century male--but he catches something about that time differently or in more depth than Updike or Cheever, and his evocative prose is not composed of chunky rocks.   

10. Picking sun-warmed strawberries in the garden and eating them right then.

Academic Year in Review and next steps

 Apologies for the long silence (March, really?). 

The semester and the academic year is over, so herewith is a reminder/self-reminder about this year, including what to repeat & what not to repeat, as I look forward. 

1. I poured my heart into my teaching this year. I came up with new assignments and added new readings. I tried to reach out to every student every week and definitely did so in the online classes. I figured out how to temper my rage at AI, which does not seem to bother anyone else at Northern Clime, and came up with a solution (hint: better rubrics) that addresses the issue without sending me on a pointless quest to report it to admin. 

I met with students. I was on campus and in my office all day multiple days each week. I went to student presentations and supported them. In other words, I showed up. 

I loved it. I loved the reading and the teaching and the students. No regrets about that part. 

Would I do it again? Not on your tintype. 

Did my students appreciate it, and did I gain new majors for us? Absolutely yes. Did I give them the best experience that I could devise? Yes. 

Did the administration value it? What do you think? As you may have heard about a billion times, teaching at an R1 is not highly valued unless I am "reflecting on my teaching" in a public performance countable for annual review metrics. I am not the boasting type, so what I heard back was "yeah, okay, teaching--well, moving on, what did you publish?"

Don't love something that doesn't love you back. 

2. I didn't publish much because see #1 above. Will I change my priorities next year? You bet. 

3. For the first time since I gave up administration, I had an extremely heavy service load this year, which counts for the width of a gnat's eyebrow in terms of value. 

So now, having Learned My Lesson, I'm looking forward to the summer and the next year with energy and hope. 

1. The big archival project I've been working on for years: moving forward more swiftly to completion.

2. The book project: I hope the same.

Here's wishing everyone a happy and productive summer! 

In which I am Ahab, and AI is guess who

 You would think that someone who has taught Moby-Dick would understand the dangers of becoming Ahab and giving in to monomania and hunting the white whale because "I'd strike the sun if it insulted me." 

I am really trying to learn this lesson. 

AI is not completely pervasive, as best I can judge, but the 3 or 4 students in each class who keep using it madden me: "He tasks me, he heaps me." It's like getting a bad student evaluation out of 25 good ones: you can't let it go. 

And I am alone in this quest: for in-class courses, in-class writing is the answer, but for asynchronous ones we're on our own.  

Neither the university's academic honesty policy nor its guidance are of any help. If students are using AI it is definitely our fault for failing to be understanding, or nice, or write AI-proof composition-style assignments asking for personal narratives about their childhoods or a local issue (guess what? determined AI-ers fabricate those, too). 

The official policy is to teach them how to use AI "responsibly" by rewriting it, and I'm stuck back in the 20th century trying to get them to read and think and analyze using their brains, so I'm the one out of step. 

Yes, AI detectors are unreliable (though some are better than others), but when you get a piece of writing about a complex novel 2 hours after it was assigned, and said writing does not sound like human writing (it's perfect and soulless), it's a little confirming so that I don't feel that I'm nuts for seeing it. 

Yet it gets to me. I know that academic dishonesty has now been handed over to instructors as a "you problem," but that doesn't mean it's easy to drop it. 

The rubrics take care of some of it, but not all. I hate having to call them in to talk to them about possible AI use, because I want them to be ethical and do the work because they want to and because I have killed countless hours trying to make it interesting and accessible. I want to think well of them. Before those meetings, I'm torn up about it and can't think of other work. 

So I try not to stew about it, and then I can't stop thinking about it, and then I spend inordinate amounts of time thinking about ways to get that white whale, and that way lies madness. 

Today when I sat down to grade, my eyes just plain shut (I am very tired). 

I don't know the answer, but I need to become Ishmael to find some balance. 

Two views of AI-assisted teaching (spoiler: I think I'm right and they're wrong)

When I teach online, I use tools that allow students to comment, some of which allow a longer response in a discussion board, and some of which allow line-by-line annotation of the kind you would get in hypothes.is. and assign an auto-grade. Let's call it hypothes.is for short. 

But based on the teaching philosophy I outlined in an earlier post--"I’m paying attention, and I hope that they are as well"--I have told them that I am reading everything they write in my class, and I am doing it, too. I turn off all the intrusive "AI can generate the instructor's responses for you" defaults lest they infect what's left of my brain. 

It is my (possibly touching and naive belief) that if you connect individually with students by responding to them, even if they are online, they will have a better experience and might be less likely to plop everything into ChatGPT or its numerous hellspawn siblings and give me AI instead of their thoughts. 

There are a few concessions to knowing that they might try AI. I've disabled copying and pasting, to "encourage" them to write their own stuff for two reasons. 

• First, if they use AI, they still have to type it out, and given how low-stakes this is, some of them might choose to do the work as the path of least resistance. I had a student inquire about not being able to copy and paste, and I said, "nope, not in this class."
• Some students in previous semesters have copied and pasted from another student's work, a bold move given that I comment and say things on the board like "that's what X said above" and privately "see me." If they don't think I'm reading responses, they might think I won't notice. I notice. 

The other day, I was talking to a colleague ("they" for anonymity) and mentioned that I had just spent a couple of hours responding to students in hypothes.is and writing individual comments. 

Colleague looked at me as if I had grown two heads. "Here's a tip. Don't you know that hypothes.is grades them? You don't have to read all those."

Me: "Yes, but I want to respond to the students."

Colleague: "I never read them! They talk to each other! I look at their questions and once in a while dip into the comments for fun. The grades post themselves."

Me: "I think it's important." 

Colleague just stares at me as if their opinion of my intelligence has just dropped by double digits. Clearly anyone who had any smarts at all, in their view, would stop paying attention to stuff like student comments.

My first thought was "IDGAF what you think."

My second thought was "Your poor students. No wonder they pile on the AI garbage and think no one is reading, because in some cases no one is."

Yes, all this time is time and brainpower I could spend writing. 

But doesn't someone have to pay attention?