Building these fall classes I’m coming around to a way of thinking about writing that is inclusive of the ChatGPT and all the other tools students are already using to complete work. These tools are not evil. Spell check isn’t evil. We used to have spelling tests in classes beyond spelling bee age. Now it seems to be a bit extra because we know we have tools to get that right for us, so we teach students more of the fundamental understanding of how and why words are spelled a certain way and hope they can advance that forward to knowing how to maybe recognize mistakes on their own. ChatGPT is clearly different, but it is progress. We cannot stand in the way of progress. We grow with it. Thus brings me to the Unified Theory of Writing.
I am attempting to join together what I know about communication, persuasion, and sociology into a unified theory of writing. Written communication is far from dead. In fact, we communicate far more with less words (tweets, texts, instagram descriptions, hashtags, short emails, blurbs, memes, etc.). In the limited amount of characters we have there is so much to accomplish. We need to create a written persona. We need to manage context (especially in memes), we need to persuade, we need to insure understanding. These things are the tenets of any good writing, thus they are the things I must be teaching moving forward. This semester I shall do exactly that.
Some Thoughts:
- Often the reason writers go back for the MFA is to be more employable in higher education. I think, should I return, It will be for this reason. I didn’t finish the MFA and I should have.