Movies watched: 2 (Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes & The Comeback Trail)
Times I dropped my phone in a play on the way to my seat, but an usher grabbed it and they got it back to me: 1
Books: 5 (Quietly Hostile; When the Moon Hits Your Eye; Eleanore of Avignon; To Shape a Dragon’s Breath; Life Hacks for a Little Alien)
Classes ended: 4
Classes started: 1 (two more start today)
Spring “Breaks”: 1
Seeing the author of Weathering at the Mondavi Center: 1
Gasping when I learned the author got death threats when she first published her research: 1
Seeing Soledad O’Brien at the Mondavi center: 1
Comedy performances with the club: 2
Comedy performances with my class: 1
Seeing Russell Howard, one of my absolute favorite UK comedians: 1
Abstracts submitted for a conference in Paris: 1
Meetings to help set up an Atwood conference in Spain: 1
Breathing tests: 1
Nerve burn tests: 1
St. Urho’s Days celebrated: 1
Plays: 2 (Jeeves and Wooster; Everything Beautiful Happens at Night)
Times I wanted to hem a pair of pajama pants and so I got out a little sewing machine I had bought for exactly times like these, but it outsmarted me, and I gave up after a couple of hours: 1
Times Snowball gave me a heart attack by briefly getting over the fence: 1
Hubby ER visits: 2
Cat ER visits: 1 (Thoth was hospitalized for two days)
Interviewers who said, “Give my best to your cat and your husband, in that order”: 1
New Recipes Tried: 3: (a Bolognese with Thai red curry paste; Katsu Curry; Chicken Florentine)
New Recipes Loved: 0
Catch ups with friends: 4
Days that Anubis was diagnosed with a heart murmur: 1
Times it was sunny, so I put on a new sun dress and then Snowball jumped on my lap and a little nail ripped the dress (this was predictable, so D’oh): 1
Days in which I thought we’d reached a new low in our country, worse than the day before: 31
(As I write this, I’m listening to Trump explain that he’s not kidding about serving a third term.)
What I’m watching: Doctor Who; Seth Meyers; John Oliver; The Daily Show; Call the Midwife; Slow Horses; Abbot Elementary; The Simpsons; Harley Quinn; The Pitt; Matlock; 30 Rock; Elsbeth.
What I’m listening to and reading: The New Yorker; Discover; The Smithsonian Magazine; National Geographic; Morning Edition; All Things Considered; Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; This American Life; Savage Lovecast; New Music Friday; The Moth; American History Tellers; American Scandal; Fresh Air; This is History; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Asimov’s; Sidedoor; Pretend
Today is the birthday of my father’s father, George Sims Norris, who resided on this earth from 1905-1980.
I have two memories of him. The first is just an image: I’m in a kitchen, looking at him–his belt line was about the same height as the kitchen counter; I wasn’t as tall as either yet.
The other is a memory of seeing Pinocchio and being afraid of the whale. My family says George took me to see that; the internet says it would have been December of 1978, when I was three.
It’s possible the kitchen and the movie happened on the same day. My parents split up when I was only a few months old, and my father and his family weren’t really part of my life after. My father and George both died in 1980.
He was originally a farmer from Tennessee, and I have evidence he registered for the WWII draft, but I don’t know if he served. He likely didn’t know what to make of his son, my father, a hippy, who was likely a surprise baby, born twenty years after his other child.
I’ve been trying to learn more about his life, but I only have this one picture.
I’ve been more successful with his ancestors, including the discovery that George’s parents were first cousins (his grandmothers were sisters).
I don’t know what led him to migrate to California, where my father was born, and then to Florida, where he’s buried, beside his wife, who died the year I was born.
My family didn’t talk about my father or his family much. I was an adult by the time I consciously knew his name was George, but I wish I had had his name in my mind when I was much younger. I could have pictured him getting out of bed to take me to a movie, just as Grandpa George got out of bed to accompany Charlie to the Chocolate Factory.
Saturday Night Live 50th Anniversaries celebrated: 1
Oscar nominees watched in preparation for the ceremony: 25 of the 35 (full length) & 11 of 15 (shorts)
Oscar nominees enjoyed: 14 (full length) & 7 (shorts)
Plays: 3 (Macbeth; The Importance of Being Earnest; English)
People behind me in the theatre who complained that English was actually about identity and culture, when she was hoping it would be about grammar: 1
New roombas: 1
Trips to the Indian grocery store in Sacramento, during which an Indian woman expressed happiness that I love Indian food & attempt to make it myself: 1
Days I was horrified/ashamed/terrified to be American: 28
Nights of good sleep: 0
Comedy performances with my students, on Valentine’s Day: 1
“Bad pick-up line” jokes I had to write for our performance slideshow: 1
Comedy performances that were just me for 1.5 hours: 1 (Chronic Pain: A Comedy)
Former students who flew in from Colorado to see the show and who brought flowers: 1
Outpatient procedures: 2 (on the same day)
Live Comedy shows attended: 2 (Maria Bamford & Mike E. Winfield)
Paintings by my (Grand)Daddy that found places on my walls: 3
Drawings and paintings by my (Grand)Daddy that are at the Paint Chip waiting for frames: 4
New restaurants in Sacramento tried: 2
Times I realized I had eggs about to go bad & I rushed to eat them all because it seemed very wrong to waste eggs right now: 1
Guest speakers in my Health Science Writing Class: 1
Servings of lamb: 2
Pilgrimages to the oldest continuous Chinese restaurant in California (and possibly in the US) before it closes: 1
Times I was low-key stalked by a guy in an Amazon delivery vest: 1
What I’m watching: The West Wing; Sisi; Black Box Diaries; Seth Meyers; Elsbeth; Groundhog Day; Sugarcane; Memoir of a Snail; A Different Man; Flow; Doctor Who; SNL; Yellowjackets; Slow Horses; I’m Still Here; The Oscar Live Action Shorts; The Oscar Animated Shorts; Wicked; Anora; Harley Quinn; The Daily Show; Last Week Tonight with John Oliver; Wicked; Sing Sing; The Substance; I Am Ready, Warden; The Brutalist; Flow; I’m Still Here; Maria; The Girl with the Needle
Mason Locke Weems wrote a blockbuster biography of our first president: The Life of Washington. In one edition, he added a story about Washington chopping down a cherry tree and refusing to lie about it when caught.
The story was a lie.
Weems wanted schoolchildren to learn a lesson about honesty, so he lied.
I was taught that lie in elementary school.
I prefer George Bluth Sr’s way of teaching lessons and lying to children:
On this President’s Day, I’m ruminating about Presidents and lying and hypocrisy.
Each day, the news shows me Republicans railing against waste and fraud, while wasting our money with fraudulent claims.
An unelected appointee keeps committing crimes (e.g. accessing and sometimes sharing confidential information; impounding) with no oversight and then explains to reporters that he has to, because unelected employees were acting without oversight, despite the employees having had oversight (the overseers are fired).
The President signed an order to “protect women,” while threatening women’s right to vote, to serve in the military, to have agency over their own bodies, to not be discriminated against in hiring, to be seen as professionals instead of DEI hires, to have medical studies that include us, to have medical studies on problems unique to us…
Times I decided it was too much to wait to wrap everything up at the end of the year: 1
Nights I had gin and tonics with my brother, with a lemon twist provided by our great grandmother’s lemon tree, and, in reminiscing about childhood, discovered that I was mixing up a time we were robbed with a time we were almost murdered (but the man who was going to murder us was killed by his sister that night instead): 1
Times my (Grand)Daddy’s office had been dusted before he died 7 years ago: 0
Times I was able to breathe well when trying to find hardcopies of (Grand)Daddy’s autobio: 0
Parts of the autobio I was able to find: ~20
Parts of the autobio found that he wrote about taking me in when I was a toddler, which he’d let me read years ago: 0
Hearts broken: 1
Bottles of wine shared with my uncle: 1
Times my youngest relative almost took her very first steps, to me: 7
Times we found a weird newspaper clipping pile that made us wonder what (Grand)Daddy was up to: 1
Times we found porny things, meaning we knew what he was up to: 8
Times my cousin was trying to clean the wrap around porch, which had turned into a junkyard, & I heard my mother say, “Tessa, the dynamite box goes with the dynamite!”
Discovering which of my cousins’ kids will be the one to take over all of the ancestry stuff when I’m gone.
Steps onto the beach it took for my husband to realize why I’ve always been such a beach snob: 4
Servings of gulf fish: 5
Servings of fried okra: 3
Times I almost murdered by husband because he ate a serving of my gulf fish in the middle of the night and then threw away what would have been my fourth serving of okra: 1 (it’s one time, but it’s not over yet)
Relatives who wanted to make sure I knew it was my husband, not them, who betrayed me, since they know that fresh fish and fried okra is my favorite meal: 3
(Grand)Daddy’s paintings and drawings we found that we’d never seen before: ~24
Strange evidence of Florida weather encountered: 1
Eggs my mother boiled on a Monday morning, to be turned into deviled eggs: 12
Times a day, each day, that she would get up to go make the deviled eggs: 14
Deviled eggs made, by the time I left, 6.5 days after the eggs were boiled: 0
Times my cousin and Kelly and I complained that the well water back home didn’t taste like home anymore, which was terrible, because we love how our well water tasted, and then my mom’s partner said they replaced the corroded pipes, and Kelly and I realized maybe we love the taste of corroded pipes: 1
Extra suitcases appropriated so that I could bring back files, pictures to digitize, etc: 1
Flights to bring me back to California from a post-Christmas family visit in Florida: 3
Migraines: 4
Fall classes started: 4
Days taken completely down by a terrible cold/cough, which spread into pink eye and a nasty ear infection: 10
Health appointments (treatments) rescheduled or cancelled due to my illness: 7
Student comedy shows missed: 1
New recipes tried: 1 (Slow Cooker Parmesan Garlic Chicken and Potatoes)
Books finished: 5
Pages of Margaret Atwood Studies edited: 355
Day I picked to listen to my Chronic Pain: A Comedy video, since I need to revise it and perform it again next month: the 25th
Days I procrastinated & didn’t listen to it: 4
Presidents: 2
Presidents who shouldn’t have been allowed to take office after committing treason: 1
Days I’ve been able to listen to the news without wondering what new lows the other party and its leaders will sink to: 0
Severe close and extended family problems (mostly medical) that are stressing me the fuck out: 5
Miracles (when I realized I would need a new OSC for my Oxford course and then got a message from someone confessing she’d always wanted to do it): 1
Oxford AirBnBs, Stonehenge visits, and Wilton House visits booked for this summer’s Oxford class: 1 (each)
Times my car’s trunk wouldn’t open, and I was able to figure out that it’s because a reusable grocery bag’s handle got stuck in the mechanism, and I needed to fix it, but my car is a mini cooper, so it’s not really possible to get into the back seat, much less the trunk area, at least not without bruises, so I got bruises, but I fixed it: 1
What I’m watching: The West Wing*; Randy Feltface: Smug Druggles; Randy Feltface: Book of Randicus; Elsbeth; Futurama; The Conclave; Star Trek: Section 31; All Creatures Great and Small; Harley Quinn; Gladiator 2; St. Denis Medical; Your Friend, Nate Bargatze; Abbot Elementary; A Real Pain; Roy Wood Jr: Lonely Flowers; Vienna Blood; The Sticky; Seth Meyers; SNL; The Wild Robot; Jim Gaffigan: The Skinny
What I’m listening to: Various NPR shows, including This American Life & Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me; Savage Lovecast; Serial; Working it Out; Levar Burton Reads; Conan O’Brien Needs a Friend; American History Tellers; Radiolab; This is History
What I read every morning: Heather Cox Richardson’s “Letters From An American”
*I restarted The West Wing on 1/20. I said to myself, I’m going to skip that stressful season when Zoe’s kidnapped. I can’t handle it when the Republican Speaker of the House tries to ram his stuff through while he’s in charge. While I remembered it as a season, it’s two episodes. Two very traumatizing episodes.
Please help me spread the word about my film class in Oxford this summer!
We tour film and tv sites (including the home of Bridgerton’s Duke of Hastings), learn from Dr. Liam Creighton (a filmmaker and scholar), and get a private tour of Stonehenge!
This is a pretty sparse list. I usually try to flesh these out with my notes from conferences and overseas trips, but I’m visiting my hometown and the notes are in Davis …
Things missed due to illness: 8 live comedy shows; 1 film festival; 3 plays; 1 book release; 1 dear friend’s birthday party; 2 conferences in Spring; 1 opera, staring a friend
Times Thoth broke a neighbor’s heart, when she thought he was her long-lost kitty, but then he turned out to be ours: 1
Wineries visited: 8
Times I was driving to see Vanessa for a brief moment when our schedules in California could overlap and my car completely died: 1
New cars: 1
ER visits: 5
ADD diagnoses: 1
Seeing Deborah Harkness live: 1
Grad school mentors and friends lost: 2
Poetry books I wrote blurbs for: 1
Poetry books blurbed: 1
Ancestors added to my tree: 1101
Atwood journals out: 1 (449 pages)
Times a boss sent a cryptic email about how we were all being forcibly moved out of the University Writing Program but refused to answer any follow-up questions: 1
Massive job reorganizations, the consequences of which are as of yet unknown: 1
New ergonomic office set ups: 1
New air fryers: 1
Times I was in the waiting room for a online panel at WorldCon, and I talked a little to myself and to the cats, including telling myself that of course I was going to try to have diarrhea just before it started, and then finally being added to the online room, where I could see a tech guy’s message that said “I can hear you”: 1
Wedding anniversaries: 1
Times Jeff and I got a hotel room in Woodland just so we could get into a pool once that summer, only to find that the pool was closed: 1
Windshields destroyed during atmospheric rivers: 1
Broken computers / new computers: 1
Phones that broke in Vienna: 1
New phones that I dropped within 24 hours, shattering the screen: 1
New phones total: 2
Times a student’s parent wrote me to complain about the course schedule: 1
Times a student’s parent apologized, after seeing the actual schedule: 1
Cancer scares: 1
Days in winter quarter that I couldn’t move my neck: 5
Hosting the campus femme show: 1
Times a guest speaker in my stand-up class asked me afterwards if two particular students were giving me problems. They were, I confirmed. “They’re just so smug,” he said. “I wanted to slap them”: 1
Times I thought I lost my glasses: daily
Times I actually lost my glasses: 1
Times Anubis was jealous that Snowball was getting goo in a tube, so he just licked it out of her mouth: 1
Times I fell: 1
Oxford wine bars and shops where they knew Vanessa and I by name: 2
Roses from a former student: 6
Noroviruses: 1
Getting to see my college friend, Kaaron: 1
Getting to see Tiffany, Liam, and Courtney, with Vanessa, in London: 1
MRIs and X Rays, etc: 5
Times I got to give a talk at the amazing Woodland Shakespeare Club: 1
Days I couldn’t walk well in Fall Quarter: 15
Really fancy lunches in London: 1
Times when Dr. Liam got to guest lecture in Oxford: 1
Cold, rainy summers in Oxford: 1
Visits to Dishoom in London: 2
Times Vanessa and I had to keep a window open in London with medicine bottles: 2
Times I watched the World Cup in my local pub: 1
Explaining how American healthcare works to horrified Brits: 2
Times Vanessa and I stumbled across the ruins of an abbey where King Henry II’s mistress was sent to retire: 1
Rum Festivals with Vanessa in Oxford: 1
Times we thought we were fine at the rum festival, until it was time to walk down the stairs: 1
Wine tastings in Oxford, after which we were better on the stairs: 1
Times I got Covid in Oxford: 1
Vienna trips in which Melissa and I were confronted by a the equivalent of a hurricane (the storm had a name: Boris): 1
Purses lost or stolen in Vienna: 1
Visits to Nandos in the UK: 7
Living rooms I couldn’t hang out in in Oxford, because I was allergic to something: 1
Side trips to Salisbury, to visit the museums and the famous cathedral, where one of my ancestors is entombed: 1
Trips to Stonehenge and the Wilton House: 1
Ways venison was prepared for my lunch at the Haunch of Venison in Salisbury: 3
Museums: if I had my notes, I would know: probably about twenty
Visits home: 1
New Recipes Tried: 69: Slow Cooker Mississippi Pork Roast; Bison Noodle Bowls; Garlic Rosemary Lamb Chops in the Air Fryer; Indian Lamb and Spinach Curry; Garlic Paprika Chicken!!!; Air Fryer Maple Dijon Salmon; Pork Pernil; Salmon en Croute with dill hollandaise; Farfalle Pasta with Zucchini and Ham; Ground Beef Noodle Bowls; Three-Cup Chicken; Prairie Pie; Sauteed Chicken with Meyer Lemon; Chicken Gratin with Turnips; Beef Tortilla Soup; Creamy Chicken Casserole with a Cheddar Biscuit Crust; Air Fryer Corned Beef; Shrimp Scampi with Garlicky Miso Butter; Orange-Glazed Baked Salmon; Baked Blueberry Pancakes; Puff Pastry Chicken and Leek Casserole; Shrimp, Cilantro, and Tamarind Soup; Pork with Grapes and Tarragon; The Best Baked Salmon (Food Kitchen Network); Honey Garlic Shrimp; Cucumber Salad (from Food and Wine); Potato, Steak, and Chorizo Pie; Sheet Pan Pesto Chicken; Skillet Shrimp and Corn with Lime Dressing; One Pan Garlic Butter Chicken; Sauteed Salmon with Leeks and Tomatoes; Creamy Asparagus Pasta with Peas and Mint; Creamy One-Pot Spaghetti with Leeks; Pan-Seared Ranch Chicken; Sheet Pan Roasted Salmon Nicoise Salad; Lamb Biryani; Lamb Makhani; Slow Cooker Lemon Piccata; Zatarchicken; Grown up fish filet; Chicken, pesto, couscous, balsamic, mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, garlic, olive oil salad; Air fryer shawarma lamb; Honey and soy glazed chicken; Chicken lazone; Pistachio cake; Honey and miso glazed; Tri tip in the air fryer; One-pan-shrimp-enchiladas-verde; Chicken-stuffed bell peppers with orzo; Chicken Cordon Bleu Casserole; chicken noodle salad by Chef John; italian pork in the crock pot; sheet pan salmon and crispy rice (F&W); Tomato Butter Salmon; Lamb Stew; Lo Mein; another Dutch Baby; Apple and Persimmon Crisp in the crock pot; Thai Red Curry Butternut Squash; Cilantro Lime Butter Shrimp; Potato and Bacon Quiche; Smashed Cucumber, Avocado and Shrimp Salad; Chicken in Basil Cream; Black Pepper Chicken; Pumpkin Bread; Brussels, Squash, and Fried Sage; Air Fryer Chicken Bites; Creamy Italian Sausage Soup; Voodoo Pasta
New Cocktails Tried: 5: Fool’s Gold (with lemoncello and bourbon; Full Monte #2 (bourbon & Amara Montenegro); Vesper; Italian Sunset; One Dance (gin, lemon, lillet)
Stand-up specials (live and recorded): 28: Gary Gulman: Born on 3rd Base; Randy Feltface: Smug Druggles; Alex Edelman: Just for Us ; Randy Feltface: Feltopia; Taylor Tomlinson: Have it All; Daniel Sloss: Dark; Daniel Sloss: Jigsaw; Daniel Sloss: X; Jimmy Carr; Neal Brennan: Crazy Good; Rachel Feinstein: Big Guy; Daniel Sloss: Can’t; Chelsea Handler: Big Little Bitch; Jim Gaffigan: Dark Pale; Natasha Leggero & Riki Lindholm at the Punchline; Nurse John; Seth Meyers: Dad Man Walking; Ali Wong: Single Lady; sStuuc or treat; Eddie Izzard: The Remix Tour; Mulaney: Kid Gorgeous; Nikkie Glazer: Someday You’ll Die; Gaffigan: Comedy Monster; Rachel Bloom: Death, Let Me Do My Special; Eddie Izzard: Dress to Kill; Russell Howard: Lubricant; Whose Live Anyway?
Plays 5: Six!; Vanya; Now Circa Then; Operation Mincemeat; Richard III
Movies: 131: The Holdovers; The Color Purple; Oppenheimer; May December; Elemental; Indiscreet; My Favorite Wife; Arsenic and Old Lace; Killers of the Flower Moon; Maestro; Nyad; Rustin; Society of the Snow; the new Mission Impossible; Godzilla Minus One; The Marvels; 3000 Years of Longing; Dune 2; American Fiction; Anatomy of a Fall; Poor Things; The Zone of Interest; Rustin; The Boy and the Heron; Nimona; El Conde; Napoleon; Bobi Wine: the People’s President; Golda; Perfect Days; The Teachers’ Lounge; American Symphony; The Creator; The Goldman Case; Memento; The Seventh Seal; Mean Girls; Kick-Ass; Scoop; My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3; Brideshead Revisited; Nausicaa of Valley of the Wind; The 39 Steps; To Catch a Thief; Lawrence of Arabia (twice); Deadpool; Deadpool 2; Aquaman 2; Easy A; Anyone But You; Madame Webb; Ghostbusters: When Hell’s Kitchen Freezes Over; The Saint (twice); Delicious; Ghosted; Bridesmaids; Marcel the Shell with Shoes On; The Marvels (again); The Third Man (twice); Lilo & Stitch; WALL-E; In & Out; Hot Fuzz; Runaway Bride; Shaun of the Dead (twice); Notting Hill; Jim Hensen: Idea Man; Bridget Jones’s Diary; Priscilla; Hamilton; The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare; About a Boy (twice); The Fall Guy; Lightyear; Roxanne; Sense & Sensibility; Inside Out 2: Inside Outer; Deadpool & Wolverine: Horny Like the Wolf; If; Minions: Rise of Gru; Fallen Leaves; Dirty Little Letters; Imitation Game; Problemista; The Martin (extended cut); Alien: Romulus; Forgetting Sarah Marshall; The Proposal; Nandor Fodor and the Talking Mongoose; Gosford Park; Man Up; Dr. Horrible’s Singalong Blog; Love Actually; Spirited; A Clüsterfünke Christmas; While You Were Sleeping; The Happiest Millionaire; Betelguese Betelguese; Scrooged; Die Hard; Damsel; The Adam Project; Lover Come Back; Nosferatu; Emilia Perez; Shadow of the Vampire; The Shop Around the Corner; Paddington 2; Persuasion (twice); An Education; They Shall Not Grow Old; Chicken Run; A Fish Called Wanda; Labyrinth
3 of 5 Documentary Shorts nominated for an Oscar
New Shows: 31: The Serpent Queen; Rome; Beef; Murder at the End of the World; Girls5Eva; Elsbeth; Funny Woman; Manhunt; Lessons in Chemistry; Astrid; Nolly; True Detective; Mr. and Mrs. Smith; Mr Bates vs. the Post Office; Franklin; The Sympathizer; Mary and George; Star Trek: Short Treks; Baby Reindeer; Renegade Nell; The Three Body Problem; Acolyte; Ms Marvel; House of the Dragon (season 1); Loot; Palm Beach; Bletchly Circle; Bad Sisters; Man on the Inside; Nobody Wants This.; Monsters; Black Doves
Old Shows Kept Up With: 25: Miss Scarlet and the Duke; All Creatures Great and Small; Loki (fin); Sisi; Resident Alien; Call the Midwife; For All Mankind; Abbot Elementary; The Simpsons; SNL; Bob’s; Seth Meyers; The Daily Show; Star Trek: Discovery; Hacks; Doctor Who; Star Trek: Lower Decks; What We Do in the Shadows; Last Week Tonight; Colin From Accounts; Shrinking; The Diplomat; The Empress; Star Trek: Lower Decks
Shows Re-binged: 14: Brooklyn 99; Unbreakable Kimmie Schmidt; Schitt’s Creek (twice); Malcolm in the Middle; Bridgerton; the Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance; The Umbrella Academy; The Bear; A Discovery of Witches; Staged; The Good Place; 30 Rock; The Great
A student just cited the magic toaster as a source in her essay.
Explanation: I am a visual thinker; AI is nebulous, so I envision it as a magic toaster. It’s not a great toaster, as it routinely makes shit up (aka hallucinating), cites things published in predatory journals, etc. It’s also a terrible writer.
I spend a lot of time telling my students why I don’t want them to use it. I have no interest in what the toaster thinks, and I shouldn’t spend the too-little time I have on this planet commenting on its nonsense. I also ask them what will happen when I give AI a bad grade: will they go to the toaster and explain that I hated that introduction?
Despite this, I’ve seen an explosion of AI use, and now I’m spending more time turning people in to SJA than in trying to warn them.
I have an online freshman course at SCC, and it’s been most destructive there. One homework assignment was to gear us up for an analysis of a film of their choosing: the students will argue whether the film ultimately upholds traditional gender roles and stereotypes or subverts them.
The assignment asked for a one-paragraph summary of the film and a one-paragraph explanation of why it would be a good fit for this assignment.
1/3rd of the students had AI write those paragraphs. How could I tell? The paragraphs didn’t sound like any other writing the students had done, and they all sounded the same. Each assignment ended, for example, with AI saying the film would make a “nuanced case study …”
None of the students denied using AI. And none of them apologized for it.
Several of them later turned in drafts written by AI; I wrote them all notes about how they were going to fail the assignment. I also told them all I would be running each essay through an AI detector, and stressed that AI should not be used on this essay, other than for grammar/spelling.
As I was glancing through the essays yesterday morning, my heart dropped. Students were required to use three secondary sources. One had AI as her third source. “According to AI, Moana is a movie about . . .” The Works Cited page entry was “AI. Google.”
I emailed the student, who said she remembered me saying they could use AI if they cited it.
Here’s what the syllabus says: “… You may use Grammarly and other editing programs to identify and fix typos, spelling errors, punctuation, and sentence errors. You may not use these editors to add new words, sentences, or ideas. I’m fine with you using [AI] to brainstorm and to edit/proofread (as long as you cite and talk about it in the memo). What’s not okay: letting AI write a draft for you. If you can point to sentence in your paper and say, ‘AI wrote that part,’ then something’s wrong.”
I have also done extensive source work with the students, going over reliable sources and how to find them. I have stressed that AI is unreliable, and I have forbidden students to use sources with no authors and cheat sites. AI, in this context, is a combo of both.
AI isn’t an expert on Moana, I explained to the student; it hasn’t actually seen the film.
My last message to the students before the paper was due said: “Don’t use one of the four forbidden sources. Don’t use AI.”
The only comfort I have is reminding myself that the student doesn’t watch most of the videos and didn’t do all of the homework on sources, but I still feel like a new line has been crossed.
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