I am an Educator™
Apr. 11th, 2026 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rynlingIf you're wondering how I've been handling the near-total use of Gen-AI among my students this semester, pretty early on I just threw my hands up and said: Okay you win, no more papers. Class is now more or less an in-person interactive podcast with pictures (PowerPoint standup with crowdwork?) and that's fine. Less work for me.
I do feel kind of bad about how functionally illiterate this cohort is, but honestly. Giving graded assignments is a relatively recent development in higher education, and "ranking students based on performance" is a very American thing to begin with. For most of the history of universities, classes were just a dude talking. Graded assignments were a measure of liberalization meant to prevent professors from rewarding or punishing students based on vibes, but if this tool isn't working, then it's not working.
In any case, I just got the pre-registration enrollment numbers for the fall, and my classes are once again full. Given falling enrollments in Humanities courses across the board, I feel like my classes are meeting some sort of demand. If I had to guess, I'd say that this demand probably has something to do with the fact that these kids do actually want an education in literature and culture, but they don't want to have to deal with the bullshit of some miserable grad student TA being an officious little prick about how they use commas or whatever. And I respect that.
Anyway my actual job is to be a researcher. I'm not getting paid to reform higher education.
I do feel kind of bad about how functionally illiterate this cohort is, but honestly. Giving graded assignments is a relatively recent development in higher education, and "ranking students based on performance" is a very American thing to begin with. For most of the history of universities, classes were just a dude talking. Graded assignments were a measure of liberalization meant to prevent professors from rewarding or punishing students based on vibes, but if this tool isn't working, then it's not working.
In any case, I just got the pre-registration enrollment numbers for the fall, and my classes are once again full. Given falling enrollments in Humanities courses across the board, I feel like my classes are meeting some sort of demand. If I had to guess, I'd say that this demand probably has something to do with the fact that these kids do actually want an education in literature and culture, but they don't want to have to deal with the bullshit of some miserable grad student TA being an officious little prick about how they use commas or whatever. And I respect that.
Anyway my actual job is to be a researcher. I'm not getting paid to reform higher education.
