Writer, Professor, and Everything Else
(h/t to the 1975 New York Daily News for the headline. Also, a warning that this is long and perhaps self-indulgent in places.) Around a week ago, the Conference for College Composition and Communications was chugging along as usual– at least from my perspective as a rank-and-file member. After all, it is (was) an institution … Continue reading "NCTE to CCCC: Drop Dead"
Even before I started reading Rose Horowitch’s long essay in The Atlantic, the title, “The End of Reading is Here,” both aggravated me– because no, it’s not!— and also brought back a memory from my days as an MFA student in creative writing from 1988 to 90. I earned that degree at Virginia Commonwealth University and … Continue reading "Zero Books Read"
Jay Caspian Kong’s New Yorker article “The Despair of the Professor in the Age of A.I.” is about, well, some professors in “despair” about teaching in the age of AI. This is a late May 2026 entry in Fault Lines, Kong’s “weekly column on politics and the media,” which has lately been a lot about AI … Continue reading "Sad Professors"
Chances are, you have heard of/seen various viral clips of commencement speakers talking about AI getting booed by the graduating students. If you’re anything like me, you have also read various social media posts and many other commentaries about what this all means; here are several different recent examples of the sorts of things I’ve … Continue reading "Three Thoughts on Booing AI at…
This past semester was an odd one for me. One of my sections of first-year writing started with 22 students and finished with 10, the highest withdrawal/fail rate I’ve ever had. (My other section started with 25 and finished with 19, which is more typical). In my Writing, Rhetoric, and AI class, I had an … Continue reading "Ghosts in the (Online Teaching) Machine"
I have a vague (and likely mostly an imaginary) memory of turning 10 in 1976, thinking how it was cool my age was in double-digits and vaguely wondering what it would be like to be 20 or 30, figuring out that when I turned 40, it would be the next century. I definitely remember turning … Continue reading "60"
In all three of the classes I’m teaching this semester (and, like last semester, I’m teaching two sections of first-year writing and Writing, Rhetoric, and AI), I am once again having students read and discuss Hua Hsu’s New Yorker essay from last summer, “What Happens After AI Destroys College Writing?” I blogged about this essay … Continue reading "What Happens After AI Destroys Gen Ed?"
The two things that ran continuously in the background for me in 2025 (when they weren’t in the foreground) were AI and Trump, Trump and AI, AI AI, Trump Trump, again and again and again. So there’s not a lot of need to say too much about all that, no reason to remind myself about … Continue reading "The Year that was 2025"
It’s been three years since ChatGPT was released and AI exploded all over the place, causing a whole new moral panic in academia that is still going strong. And some of these panicking professors are on the verge of losing their minds! For example, consider Ronald Purser’s Current Affairs essay “AI is Destroying the University … Continue reading "Advice from IHE for Teaching With and Around AI"
It’s been a while since I’ve written much here, especially about AI things, I think mainly because of teaching. I am once again “all AI/all the time” with two sections of first year writing and an advanced “special topics” course called “Writing, Rhetoric, and AI.” It’s all going well, but because I’ve been reading and … Continue reading "Zepbound Thoughts, Almost Two Years In"