It has been several months since I’ve posted any writing on my site.

Why?

AI.

When ChatGPT came on the market, I experimented with it and eventually discovered many other tools. I found tools that could make my life easier and save me time so I could explore other hobbies. When I entered my writing and asked ChatGPT for suggestions, corrections, or citations, I received fully revised articles. The revisions may have lacked my voice, but no matter, I now had time. What used to take me hours, sometimes days, to complete was done in seconds. Literally seconds. I no longer had to wrack my brain for the perfect word or phrase. Deleting entire paragraphs and moving sentences around was no longer part of my struggle with writing. I should be happy.

I’m not happy.

I actually like reworking paragraphs and struggling to find the perfect word. I enjoy the initial brainstorming where I think about topics that might be beneficial to my target audience. Playing with my writing (yes, playing) is my kind of fun; it’s my hobby. The ease of writing does not necessarily equate to satisfaction, especially when the process is what I enjoy most. I don’t want a tool to take my fun away.

Even though this might be “my” kind of fun, I think about all the students who give away their voices to a bot. They are giving away what writing does for all of us: thinking, meaning-making, and creativity. Writing is a valuable process; it’s how we discover more about ourselves and the world around us. But now, many may never know the benefits of writing because they will always have a tool ready to take it over for them. The thinking, the writing, the revising, the editing—all gone.

I understand that many students do not see the fun in writing and allow large language models (LLMs) to take away their burdens and struggles. But when students outsource their thinking and drafting to AI, they lose the learning that happens through writing. I worry about students losing their voices to AI. Voice is formed through practice and intellectual friction. It can take years to develop, but it is the unique voice of each student that needs to be heard.

My suggestion for students who struggle with writing is this: take a chance and write down any thoughts you have on the topic. Get out all your ideas in whatever way feels natural. Then, after the struggle is over, ask the LLM to make grammatical corrections and offer suggestions for clarity, but tell the tool to maintain your voice.

Although much of the struggle is gone, the voice remains, but only if we insist on keeping it. AI can polish our writing, but it cannot replace the joy of wrestling with an idea until it finally clicks. As I return to writing, I’m choosing to embrace the struggle again, the many drafts and all the rewriting, because that’s where my voice lives.

And I hope our students discover that their voice is worth wrestling for too.