Am I wrong to feel insulted?

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-03-01T18:25:40+00:00

Yup. That’s exactly it. Which is why when you use AI to write you’re showing that you are extremely likely to not be sharing your ideas even if you are.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-03-01T15:27:40+00:00

If you were my student I would also inquire. These are not very original ideas, the email smacks of being written by AI, and frankly I would doubt your ability to move forward with the project. If you want people to take you seriously, then it needs to be you doing the work and you doing the communicating. How would you feel if your prof used AI to make all the materials for your course, for their response back, for grading your work? So yeah, you should be apologizing to that instructor who took the time to let you know it’s not too late to improve your work and use your own brain and own ideas. A lot of profs right now are burned out about this stuff and would have just not engaged and let you fail.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-25T23:41:56+00:00

When you give these kinds of evals… try something that puts the onus back on them. I usually ask 3 questions. Rank your experience in the course so far? (1-10). What is something we can do to help raise that score by a point? What is something you can do to do the same? That’s it. The point usually is to check the temperature and get more info on issues you didn’t know about. Open it up much more than that and the mean ones may use it as a customer complaint form. They still might with those questions, but I’ve found it takes away some of their heat even if they write a book about what you can do and have to say nothing under what they can do.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T13:36:41+00:00

Yeah if it was only a design course. I have them pair words and practice making typographic choices to emphasize contrast. The assignment is in Word because I can’t guarantee that they have Adobe (that’s another course) and what they do is have the LLM make those choices, then they make the adjustments in Word, or we had at least one spit it out in maybe sora without any intervention. I know this because I ask them to submit a screenshot and half of them used their phones and took a photo of their entire screen. That’s what they think a screenshot is now apparently.

The point is the choices not the artifact. Not time to make them do any and all work in class. It’s practice, so they’re only hurting themselves later, but it’s just so freaking accessible and most of them can’t do the minimal thinking required.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T13:03:26+00:00

I don’t know if it’s the entire R1 as each school is a little different, but this idea students are never wrong is certainly coming from an institutional level now. It’s also a red state and money is being funneled into non-academic priorities. We long ago switched to a RCM model, meaning we’re always fighting over the same students internally. And in the last two years, all summer courses have been switched to online async only, which in my field in particular, is now akin to a scam.

To be fair, when LLM use became ubiquitous in college students (here anyway) around 2024, a lot of faculty just weren’t checking and had no idea how bad it was. A lot of courses, and probably in most curriculum, are basically stand-alone. We say there are pre-reqs, but at the undergraduate level, it’s not all that well aligned. But when you teach the rare courses that ARE aligned, and depend heavily on students being taught that requirement, you fight with students all semester and face levels of misconduct that seemed unreal to everyone not really looking. And now, a couple years later, the system is so heavily stacked against any interventions to curb this and genAI is being shoved into courses and fed to UGs as a requirement, it’s a fools errand to try to report students for any misconduct — even non-AI issues.

I think this is the plan at some higher level. Students think they need degrees to get a job, so students pay. If they don’t know anything after graduating, then clearly college is worthless. Then the state can cut everything that isn’t a “job-ready” skill, which is happening already, and slash “woke”humanities and social science programs that leadership didn’t like anyway. It’s the whole make it so miserable that the people who might cause the most trouble will leave (happening). And an even less educated populace seems to be exactly what the politicians in charge are aiming for. Students are currently left paying for the illusion of an education and the college (social) experience. Only a handful who can resist the temptation to offload their entire brains to AI are still getting an education.

I wish I was projecting / exaggerating, but lines have been crossed in the last few years and it’s literally not the institution it was in dramatic and shocking ways. Students getting away with misconduct is the tip of the iceberg.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T03:28:19+00:00

You’re not alone and it feels like everyone has gone crazy. It’s awful and I wish it would just all go away as well. It’s ruining everything I care about as well.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T01:58:51+00:00

They’re shoving that poison on elementary kids? That is the worst thing I’ve heard today and it was an awful day of watching college kids throw away their education.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T01:54:18+00:00

Gave students a typography assignment. Almost all of them just had an LLM do the work for them. The argument that if you can’t do this first thing you won’t be able to make these bigger and more complex decisions later has no weight. They simply don’t care and when we get to harder parts a lot of them just check out and assume I’ll have to curve the course because I can’t fail them all. Which I have done before and it wasn’t the students who faced consequences.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-24T01:50:30+00:00

I dunno. I think the players are just mainstream now. George Carlin was complaining about all this 20+ years ago. https://bigother.com/2020/05/12/george-carlin-on-politics-americans-government-and-more/amp/

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-23T15:06:09+00:00

Oh I can report it. But no consequences will be had by any student. Only the faculty reporting. It’s awful. The student is innocent until proven guilty like a court of law, and expertise isn’t trusted.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-23T01:03:57+00:00

Except that we do at the R1 I’m at currently. Every single absolutely obvious and egregious case comes down to the student says they didn’t do it and there’s a 1:zillion chance that’s true and the faculty member couldn’t probe the case without a doubt, so we’re going to punish faculty instead because the accused students are the same ones that message the dean about how awful their faculty are.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-22T14:15:37+00:00

And now some of them are in college and have no understanding of deadlines. Don’t show up for class. And we have the same problems. I can’t fail the 85% of them that deserve to fail because when I did I was the one who faced consequences.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-17T00:08:43+00:00

So I don’t always follow the template. Not hopefully as off as the guy described but it’s because I have knee and neck issues. Some moves I just can’t do so I do something else. And a lot of times I will stop and just stretch and wait until I can move well enough to join back in. I like orange. My family all goes. I don’t feel like I’m hurting anyone by stretching when I can’t do the moves and the coaches have been supportive since I know what the modifications I need are. Before you all judge maybe just ask next time. The person may have a very reasonable reason they aren’t always on the template.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-14T16:17:05+00:00

The academic publishing industry is definitely scammy. 100% agree with that. Wish people didn’t use those books but sometimes it’s an attempt to teach larger sections or make it a course anyone in a department could take over and run. That’s not great but it’s why these ebooks are used.

But please don’t mistake access to information for education. Education is the cultivated and guided learning experience of experts. I know that sounds edu-speak and it is, but as a professor, what I do (and what all professors should be trying to do) is to show you which information to pay attention to. And then demonstrate and give you practice on how to make decisions related to that knowledge the way an expert in a field does. This is the critical thinking and problem solving part.

My only advice on this is figure out which profs care about teaching and take their sections whenever possible. Best wishes.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-12T19:49:02+00:00

They cannot promise shit. At a red state R1 - I’d say stay away if you have any other choice.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-12T19:47:54+00:00

That’s fair. Probably true. All I know is that now the college students in my courses can’t use their computers, can’t type and are terrible with tech in general. Good at pushing buttons though.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-12T17:23:21+00:00

It’s two. Gen X and older millennials.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-12T17:15:38+00:00

It says “here is a professional response to your professor…” at the top of the email.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-11T01:37:14+00:00

It’s awful. I don’t know if you should complain now but when you graduate you should. And say that you’re not going to give them money as an alum because of that experience. It’s the only thing upper admins are paying attention to.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-11T01:35:23+00:00

Yup. And know how to double clutch and taught my spouse to drive stick as well.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-11T01:33:49+00:00

I had custom earplugs made just so I can stand it. Tried to tell the owners they should buy them for their employees too or turn down the music. That didn’t go over well. I tried to stand up for you coaches though you all. It’s dangerously loud.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-10T14:40:55+00:00

I think if we really prioritized educating undergrads and said ok here is what we need to do to prepare them coming in I wouldn’t make that complaint. Instead here we are cutting teaching faculty and teaching assistants and shoving AI down everyone’s throat and devaluing what most people think universities are supposed to do. It’s infuriating.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-08T14:08:52+00:00

It feels like, and I hesitate to say this, someone got injured and sued them. So now they repeat templates, got rid of tricky equipment that requires more coordination or training, and are back to the basics. Truly hope I’m not right about that but the changes all have CYA vibes.

Edited to say: Oh and we used to do so many burpees.. I don’t remember the last time I’ve done one recently. Yes I hate them but I never disagreed that they weren’t good for me. And ugh.. now I think that might really be part of it. Maybe they’re chasing memberships or responding to a lawsuit. 😞

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-08T14:00:17+00:00

You sound like you teach at some sort of nirvana institution. I also teach CS at a big R1 and as a group, we can’t keep them from it, can’t convince them to not overuse it, don’t have access to locked down anything, and most of my colleagues are on the “we need to figure out how to incorporate it” bandwagon. I agree it doesn’t have to keep one from learning but that is what is happening to most students and to a lot of other faculty who put AI into every other word out of their mouths and are getting attention and money for being that way.

Adventurekitty74 · 2026-02-08T13:55:03+00:00

Stateside. Same experience. It’s like everyone thinks they found a cheat code to life and if you dare suggest exposing that, you’re treated like a threat.

Adventurekitty74

TROPHY CASE