Grasping onto my integrity as a junior in a time when Chat GPT is beginning to flourish has never been harder. The worst part is that it’s become normalized.
Last year, I had the privilege of living in blissful ignorance, manipulated into believing that at least most of my peers’ work was authentic. I was naïve enough to see Chat GPT as simply being the next calculator for math, the next google translate for languages. But I was wrong. We were all wrong.
The realization truly settled in the aftermath of my second major In Class Write (ICW) in AP Lang. AP Lang has been one of the highlights of my junior year. My engaging teacher, fun peers, and fascinating content have kept me on my feet all year. Unfortunately, I was unable to complete my first major ICW, so I set a plan to ensure I improved next time. I reflected on the mistakes I made and completed three practice ICW leading to our second attempt. Leaving the classroom of our second ICW, I felt proud. Not only had I completed the paper in time, but I was proud of the content of my writing. Two weeks later, that joy was replaced with something else.
The choice to take the ICW off the grade book is one I painfully agree with. However, it brings up a question I wasn’t aware I had. Why even try? One of my peers who admitted to utilizing Chat GPT tried consoling me “Why do you care, it’s just an hour of your life? It’s not that deep”. Wrong. It was hours of effort over the course of a month to improve a mistake I made. It was my chance to show the improvement and display what I was capable of. It was an opportunity to gain feedback on my work now that I had significantly improved. A little fear and laziness within a few people took all of that away. All of that stress, hard work, and hope. For nothing.
Part of me feels sympathy for them. I watched someone in A block get peer pressured into sharing the prompt. He was clearly uncomfortable and didn’t have any intention of sharing. But this group was able to slip it out of him, and now he’s an accomplice in their crime simply because he wanted to fit in.
I don’t know if it’s something I’m supposed to get used to. Walking out of the ICW, they were celebrating and screaming “Oh my god I can’t believe it was actually the prompt”. One of the AP Lang teachers was in the classroom behind them, the other was in a class down the hall. No one likes snitches. They know that. That’s why they brag about how successful they are in their schemes to Chat GPT entire projects. And it’s not just AP Lang.
The part that hurts the most is that I am watching my own integrity wash away as these allegations go on. I go back to that question, why even try? I hear about people who Chat GPT their history presentations, science labs, language papers, etc. and I have the “honor” of integrity, knowing I have refused to install the software in the first place. That honor comes with the grand reward of the lower grade. And yes, I am the one who has become infamous for claiming grades don’t matter as much as we trick ourselves into thinking. But at a certain point, it gets exhausting. It’s exhausting hearing teachers praise the work a student used Chat GPT to complete. It’s exhausting putting hours of work in an assignment only for the grade to not count because others got caught utilizing Chat GPT. It’s exhausting having to watch students brag about their successful attempt to Chat GPT an assignment and the higher grade they achieved as a result.
Why even try?
On the SAT math section Desmos is purposefully built in because the test is designed to be completed utilizing a graphing calculator. If someone were to complete the math section of this exam using simply their paper and pencil for the sake of pride, it would be universally considered a very. stupid. move. Recently, I have felt like the very stupid person who decided to avoid Desmos on the SAT for the sake of pride. Having Chat GPT do your assignments is something so universally accepted, we’ve evolved to the point of talking about it while teachers are in the same room as us. So universally accepted that I feel like the weird one for being left uncomfortable by the idea of having Chat GPT complete my work for me.
So, what now?
Truthfully, I don’t know. I am not one who likes to complain without providing solutions, but this mess has left me at a loss for words. The issue of Chat GPT and cheating comes with so many nuances that are hard to untangle. On the one hand, it is important for us to learn how to use this software as it will likely dictate our future in the workforce. On the other hand, we learn better when we have the capacity to truly do the thinking on our own without letting a computer do it for us. If teachers try to give zeroes to everyone who is flagged for using Chat GPT, they may risk missing a few who are guilty or punishing some who are innocent. If teachers let their mistakes catch up to them in the future by not doing anything, they allow those who use Chat GPT the confidence to continue to do so in other classes. If they take assignments off the grade book, they undermine the hours other students put in to create original work. And eventually, everything will have to end up ungraded, which is not a reasonable solution either.
I cannot offer solutions, but I can offer a point of view. A point of view of a student who has been utterly exhausted by the hold ChatGPT has taken on her peers and who thinks the current measures taken to control AI usage are not enough. I’m uncertain what direction we should take in regard to this issue but I know the one we are currently on is not the right one, and it’s time to start brainstorming some changes.
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