“Writing your own work are important because if you don’t, then who will write it for you? Many peoples want to be writers, but they don’t know how to start writing their own things.” -ChatGPT
The statement above was provided by ChatGPT as a motivational quote on the importance of writing your own work. Moving past all of the grammatical mistakes, I was surprisingly able to find motivation in the chaos of the sentences: the beauty of creating your own work.
Amongst our technologically advanced society, artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT have slowly crept into education. With this, sadly comes the trend of using an AI chatbot to complete assignments and write papers.
However, writing your own papers and not using a tool like AI can have a variety of benefits.
Plagiarism
A huge benefit of writing your papers is not violating plagiarism rules set by your university.
The issue arising is students using these generative AI tools to create their papers and then claiming the credit of the work. With the tools becoming more common, universities are beginning to restrict their usage to uphold standards of academic integrity.
This can be seen as limiting the usage or flat-out prohibiting the usage, which varies based on the university and teacher. For example, Harvard Summer School and Harvard Extension School strictly prohibit the usage of generative AI tools in all their programs.
As a fellow student, I have also been in situations where I procrastinated a paper or dreaded the topic. Yet, I have never fallen back on AI… I know, crazy. Therefore, when I completed the paper, I received more satisfaction and fulfillment from overcoming the challenges. Along with this, I continued to uphold my own ethical standards and my academic integrity.
Development of skills
Guess what? Completing the work and not relying on a robot can help you develop skills. I know it’s crazy, but writing is beneficiary.
While it can help your grades, writing also strengthens your ability to communicate and create ideas. As you put the blood, sweat and tears into writing an essay, your thoughts and opinions regarding the subject matter develop and grow. With this, comes the skills of critical thinking as you analyze texts to compose the paper.
Even if writing is not your forte, it is a skill that will help you throughout your journey after college. Whether it is writing an email or writing in a journal, it can be found all throughout your life. Even as an English major, I have shocked myself as I continue to learn about all of the things writing applies to. Do you want a website that runs smoothly? Proper writing would be found throughout it. Want to suddenly become a songwriter? Once again, it won’t be accomplished without writing.
Self-expression
One of the greatest aspects of writing is the opportunity for self-expression. It could be anything from using a certain introductory clause or expressing your emotions; writing allows a distinctive form of creativity to arise as you put words on a page.
Your writing style is completely unique. No other person has the same thought processes and ideas that you transfer onto a paper. This is something a generative AI tool takes away. All of the writing AI tools generate is based on the content of already published information. It sounds bland and a majority of the time the reader can tell it was not human-written.
As technology continues to advance, remember that it is merely a tool and not something to completely replace your work. As you ponder your next written paper, think about the benefits of simply writing and not letting a generative AI tool do it for you.
Beauty in writing is found as random words come together to create a message. Don’t let a robot steal that from you. Write your own work.
