A Suggested Graduation Present (and an Essay)
Tap the photo for a larger version (once, even twice).
A Suggested Graduation Present (and an Essay)
I just refer to the programs that can now “write” (or assemble) college term papers as “AI.” I understand there are some other numbers and letters involved, but, as a retired professor, it makes me ill to think about the issue. I saw too many “students” work hard not to work, strive to just get by, to cheat, to rob themselves. I write this essay in May of 2023, a month when much of the world was taken with the ceremonies concerning the royal family in London. The idea of the monarchy also makes me sick. I really like my Mac computer and some programs I can run on it. I really like London. However, I’m glad I wrote all my assigned essays as an undergraduate on a machine like the one you see above, a Royal portable typewriter, a “manual” typewriter. I recently photographed this page from LIFE magazine, an issue dated 5-17-54. I’m also glad I assigned university students writing by the Marquis de Sade making a solid case for getting rid of the king and then God.
As I worked on revisions of my essays in college, I cut my typed-and-marked-up pages with scissors and spread these sections out and moved them around on the bedspread that covered my unmade bed. It wasn’t “cut and paste” like many see it in Word; it was “cut and tape.” I used Liquid Paper on my typos for the final copy, or, that is, for the best version I could create by the due date. (I was being taught process; a “final” version began to seem impossible.)
One of my first essays for English class was a paper advocating total victory for the United States through military might in Vietnam. Only a few weeks before writing this paper I’d told my draft board I was a “conscientious objector,” knowing full well they wouldn’t take my word for this, and I’d only started a process I didn’t want to go through to try to prove that status, and without any kind of pastor or priest to go with me and assert that I was for real, that I was “authentic”; and I was only a few months away from voting for McGovern, the peace candidate, for President. I had to struggle to write a paper advocating total victory in Vietnam through military might; but my professor in my expository writing course made us all take a position contrary to our own on some topic of interest to us and write a paper supporting that position. He wasn’t interested in reading some virtue signaling; he didn’t want to plow through whining; he didn’t want to hear the same old piece of Groupthink, no matter which group it came from. He set up an assignment that forced us to see our position from the opposite side, not to write a paper mocking our opponents in real life, but trying to figure out what their best argument was, thinking that we might grow in the process. He called on me to read my paper to the class. (I experienced quite a leap from my senior year in high school to my freshman year in college. In high school, I felt censored. But in college I was expected to read, to think, to speak, to stand and deliver as an individual. I was praised for working—i.e., reading, thinking, and writing—not expected to repeat some politically correct, secular Nicene Creed.)
My favorite philosophy professor wouldn’t have given a damn about whatever I might have presented as my “identity.” He probably would have wondered what I was yapping about. He was concerned with what I might become. How thrilling for me! I, too, was interested in the same thing. He was clearly on my team. He once gave me (and, yes, I did write “gave me”) the lowest grade I’d ever received on an in-class essay. And, when the shock wore off, when I showed up at his office, uncrumpled the essay I’d stashed in the pocket of my overcoat and asked him, “How can I beat this?,” he laughed hard and told me he wanted to get my attention, and he then gave me three hours of his time on a Friday afternoon. It was, for me, a great conversation, and I walked out of his office with a list of authors I was to go read. And I wanted to take on that task. These dead authors were people I was willing to work to hear. It would never have occurred to me to be so arrogant as to dismiss any of the thinkers my professor had alluded to as somehow beneath contempt because of their gender or race or age or whether, in their private lives, they’d ever stepped over a red line drawn by tight-ass gossips.
I wasn’t reading and thinking and writing for grades. How sad that would have been. I was doing that work for my life. Nothing could have done that work for me. I had to do that myself. I had to make something out of myself. That meant reading, thinking, and writing. That possibility for growth, that responsibility to grow, had nothing to do with making claims for myself that I could then force others to memorize so that I might then force them to tiptoe around me. That possibility, that responsibility, had everything to do with my earning credits through work in the fields of language, literature, philosophy, history, politics, music, art, film, science, etc.
I’m white. I’m male. I’m heterosexual. I’m not “proud” of any of these facts. I’m not embarrassed by them. I’m not ashamed of them. I have no need to apologize to anyone concerning these three facts. But “proud”? No, I think one can only take pride in what one has achieved, and not one of these three conditions of life is an achievement. These three aspects of myself I received in my DNA packet. I did not, however, inherit one ounce of royal blood. But what does royalty mean, especially now in 2023? It’s too hard for me to think of the history of kings and queens without laughing to myself and pitying the many people who so desperately prostrated themselves before or desperately needed that mommy and daddy figure. What did King Charles do that placed him on the throne? Don’t give me silly talk about a “life of service.” I can point to nurses who’ve done more and don’t earn the wages they’re worth. How does one “achieve” royalty? A sperm and egg meet; that’s it. What would that prince among men, Thoreau, say, seated on his pumpkin, about a “king”? Given an anecdote left to us from ancient Greece, it’s not hard to imagine how chilling the response concerning royalty would be today coming from the mouth of Diogenes of Sinope to King Charles III as opposed to Alexander the Great. The three conditions mentioned above—being white, being male, being heterosexual--I merely inherited in my DNA. A college essay is something one works on to build the self. Just because one can purchase an escape from an assignment, an excuse for an essay, and maybe get away with turning it in for credit, doesn’t mean one has accomplished something worth doing. It was Nietzsche’s Zarathustra who said, “If you would go high, use your own legs.”
A Suggested Graduation Present (and an Essay)
Tap the photo for a larger version (once, even twice).
A Suggested Graduation Present (and an Essay)
I just refer to the programs that can now “write” (or assemble) college term papers as “AI.” I understand there are some other numbers and letters involved, but, as a retired professor, it makes me ill to think about the issue. I saw too many “students” work hard not to work, strive to just get by, to cheat, to rob themselves. I write this essay in May of 2023, a month when much of the world was taken with the ceremonies concerning the royal family in London. The idea of the monarchy also makes me sick. I really like my Mac computer and some programs I can run on it. I really like London. However, I’m glad I wrote all my assigned essays as an undergraduate on a machine like the one you see above, a Royal portable typewriter, a “manual” typewriter. I recently photographed this page from LIFE magazine, an issue dated 5-17-54. I’m also glad I assigned university students writing by the Marquis de Sade making a solid case for getting rid of the king and then God.
As I worked on revisions of my essays in college, I cut my typed-and-marked-up pages with scissors and spread these sections out and moved them around on the bedspread that covered my unmade bed. It wasn’t “cut and paste” like many see it in Word; it was “cut and tape.” I used Liquid Paper on my typos for the final copy, or, that is, for the best version I could create by the due date. (I was being taught process; a “final” version began to seem impossible.)
One of my first essays for English class was a paper advocating total victory for the United States through military might in Vietnam. Only a few weeks before writing this paper I’d told my draft board I was a “conscientious objector,” knowing full well they wouldn’t take my word for this, and I’d only started a process I didn’t want to go through to try to prove that status, and without any kind of pastor or priest to go with me and assert that I was for real, that I was “authentic”; and I was only a few months away from voting for McGovern, the peace candidate, for President. I had to struggle to write a paper advocating total victory in Vietnam through military might; but my professor in my expository writing course made us all take a position contrary to our own on some topic of interest to us and write a paper supporting that position. He wasn’t interested in reading some virtue signaling; he didn’t want to plow through whining; he didn’t want to hear the same old piece of Groupthink, no matter which group it came from. He set up an assignment that forced us to see our position from the opposite side, not to write a paper mocking our opponents in real life, but trying to figure out what their best argument was, thinking that we might grow in the process. He called on me to read my paper to the class. (I experienced quite a leap from my senior year in high school to my freshman year in college. In high school, I felt censored. But in college I was expected to read, to think, to speak, to stand and deliver as an individual. I was praised for working—i.e., reading, thinking, and writing—not expected to repeat some politically correct, secular Nicene Creed.)
My favorite philosophy professor wouldn’t have given a damn about whatever I might have presented as my “identity.” He probably would have wondered what I was yapping about. He was concerned with what I might become. How thrilling for me! I, too, was interested in the same thing. He was clearly on my team. He once gave me (and, yes, I did write “gave me”) the lowest grade I’d ever received on an in-class essay. And, when the shock wore off, when I showed up at his office, uncrumpled the essay I’d stashed in the pocket of my overcoat and asked him, “How can I beat this?,” he laughed hard and told me he wanted to get my attention, and he then gave me three hours of his time on a Friday afternoon. It was, for me, a great conversation, and I walked out of his office with a list of authors I was to go read. And I wanted to take on that task. These dead authors were people I was willing to work to hear. It would never have occurred to me to be so arrogant as to dismiss any of the thinkers my professor had alluded to as somehow beneath contempt because of their gender or race or age or whether, in their private lives, they’d ever stepped over a red line drawn by tight-ass gossips.
I wasn’t reading and thinking and writing for grades. How sad that would have been. I was doing that work for my life. Nothing could have done that work for me. I had to do that myself. I had to make something out of myself. That meant reading, thinking, and writing. That possibility for growth, that responsibility to grow, had nothing to do with making claims for myself that I could then force others to memorize so that I might then force them to tiptoe around me. That possibility, that responsibility, had everything to do with my earning credits through work in the fields of language, literature, philosophy, history, politics, music, art, film, science, etc.
I’m white. I’m male. I’m heterosexual. I’m not “proud” of any of these facts. I’m not embarrassed by them. I’m not ashamed of them. I have no need to apologize to anyone concerning these three facts. But “proud”? No, I think one can only take pride in what one has achieved, and not one of these three conditions of life is an achievement. These three aspects of myself I received in my DNA packet. I did not, however, inherit one ounce of royal blood. But what does royalty mean, especially now in 2023? It’s too hard for me to think of the history of kings and queens without laughing to myself and pitying the many people who so desperately prostrated themselves before or desperately needed that mommy and daddy figure. What did King Charles do that placed him on the throne? Don’t give me silly talk about a “life of service.” I can point to nurses who’ve done more and don’t earn the wages they’re worth. How does one “achieve” royalty? A sperm and egg meet; that’s it. What would that prince among men, Thoreau, say, seated on his pumpkin, about a “king”? Given an anecdote left to us from ancient Greece, it’s not hard to imagine how chilling the response concerning royalty would be today coming from the mouth of Diogenes of Sinope to King Charles III as opposed to Alexander the Great. The three conditions mentioned above—being white, being male, being heterosexual--I merely inherited in my DNA. A college essay is something one works on to build the self. Just because one can purchase an escape from an assignment, an excuse for an essay, and maybe get away with turning it in for credit, doesn’t mean one has accomplished something worth doing. It was Nietzsche’s Zarathustra who said, “If you would go high, use your own legs.”