Project 2 Rough Draft 2.0 by Bailey Lim

What Happens After A.I. Destroys College Writing?

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:12:24 UTC

By Hua Hsu:

https://www.newyorker.com/contributors/hua-hsu

A.I use becomes normalized, pushing schools from policing to integration.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:18:53 UTC

Original, authentic human writing gains value

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:20:53 UTC

A reset towards in-person, process-heavy testing to preserve integrity.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:23:11 UTC

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:26:52 UTC

"A Harvard undergraduate... [A.I] skated by with a 3.57 G.P.A." (Hsu 7)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:28:28 UTC

"Unable to keep pace, academic administrations largely stopped trying to control students’ use of artificial intelligence and adopted an attitude of hopeful resignation, encouraging teachers to explore the practical, pedagogical applications of A.I." (Hsu 7)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:31:01 UTC

As Hsu states, schools can no longer keep up with students' A.I. use, and are therefore forced to compromise. This supports Hsu's claim that schools are being forced to move from policing A.I. to integrating it.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:32:03 UTC

This shows A.I. can meet grading standards, illustrating why simple enforcing is losing power. If simple enforcing is losing traction according to this evidence, then Hsu's claim is supported: schools are policing A.I. less and integrating instead.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:33:42 UTC

"The way we write shapes our thinking. We process the world through the composition of text dozens of times a day, in what the literary scholar Deborah Brandt calls our era of “mass writing.” It’s possible that the ability to write original and interesting sentences will become only more important in a future where everyone has access to the same A.I. assistants." (Hsu 7)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:34:55 UTC

"As the craft of writing is degraded by A.I., original writing has become a valuable resource for training language models." (Hsu 15)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:39:30 UTC

This evidence establishes that writing is a cognitive act, and with A.I becoming more and more common, the human voice becomes more and more uncommon, raising its premium. This shows how authentic human writing gains value after A.I.'s destruction of college writing, which supports Hsu's claim.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:43:10 UTC

If authentic text gains value, curriculum will center originality rather than template-driven writing, and if originality is the focus of curriculum, Hsu's claim that original, authentic human writing gains value is proven.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:45:46 UTC

"The return to pen and paper has been a common response to A.I. among professors, with sales of blue books rising significantly at certain universities in the past two years." (Hsu 8)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:47:26 UTC

"But neuroscientists have found that the 'embodied experience' of writing by hand taps into parts of the brain that typing does not... the handwritten paragraph also begins a paper trail, attesting to voice and style, that a teaching assistant can consult..." (Hsu 11)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:48:59 UTC

This reveals that analog, proctored assessments stop generic A.I writing and re-emphasize direct engagement with texts. This supports Hsu's claim, showing how physical, overseen assessments can improve integrity.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 19:52:19 UTC

This shows that handwriting has its own benefits besides limiting A.I. use, but can also be used by teachers to verify authorship and mentor students more accurately than take-home essays can. This supports Hsu's claim that moving toward in-person, process heavy testing would preserve academic integrity, and also shows how handwriting can be useful beyond that, allowing teachers to mentor students more easily.

A.I isn't the problem; the essay assignment itself was already broken.

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 20:06:12 UTC

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 20:08:27 UTC

"Dan Melzer, the director of the first-year composition program at the University of California, Davis... called the five-paragraph essay—the classic 'hamburger' structure, consisting of an introduction, three supporting body paragraphs, and a conclusion—'outdated,'" (Hsu 9)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 20:10:54 UTC

"The No Child Left Behind Act, from 2002, instituted standards-based reforms across all public schools, resulting in generations of students being taught to write according to rigid testing rubrics. As one teacher wrote in the Washington Post in 2013, students excelled when they mastered a form of 'bad writing.' (Hsu 9)

bd2006lim — 2025-10-09 20:12:38 UTC

These pieces of evidence both reveal how weak forms invite weak writing, and if the task design is poor, A.I. misuse is not the disease, but a symptom. This supports Hsu's claim that the real disease is the essay assignment itself.