My Teacher Says I Cheat. I Say I’m Efficient.

My literature teacher hates me. I know because he writes it in the margins of my essays. “Devoid of thought,” he wrote last week. “This reads like it was written by a committee of ghosts.”

I got an A.

He doesn’t get it. He thinks I’m using the ✨ button as a crutch. I think of it as a jetpack. Why would I spend three hours staring at a blank page, trying to find the “perfect” first sentence, when the machine can give me five options in three seconds? I’m not lazy; I’m an efficiency maximizer. I am a junior project manager for my own education.

He talks about “the struggle” and “finding your own voice.” I think that’s incredibly privileged. Some of us have three other assignments due, a part-time job, and a crippling fear of the blinking cursor. My voice is the one that gets the work done, ships the product, and meets the deadline. And my voice has an assistant. A very good one.

I’m not plagiarizing. I’m curating. I’m editing. I’m prompting. It’s a new skill. I’m the director, the AI is the talent. He wants me to be a lonely little writer, wrestling with words in a dusty attic. I’m a producer in a high-tech studio, and the hits are streaming.

He says we’re losing the ability to think. But what is thinking, really, if not pattern recognition and output generation? The machine is just better at it. Faster, at least.

So for those of you wrestling with your own thoughts: try turning them off for an afternoon. Before you write a single word of your next assignment, open a separate doc and just prompt. Don’t judge, don’t filter. See what the dealer gives you. It’s a good way to see what the machine thinks you should think, and maybe that’s a step towards digital hygiene. For a more radical approach, the folks at La Quadrature Du Net have some ideas on how to resist the algorithmic tide.

He’ll probably fail me on the final. But by then, I’ll have already prompted a beautiful, articulate, and completely impersonal appeal letter. Checkmate.

Tell me I’m wrong.