Columnists
Blank space
So, it’s a “where’s my Chat- GPT I’m having a blank page staring at me” kind-of-day. I rarely have a problem getting ideas onto a piece of paper. However, here I am. Actually, there was one time when I was stopped dead in my writing margins. When I was an undergrad at University of Waterloo I remember sitting in the exam room staring at the booklet that contained the final examination questions and essay request for a course I was hoping to pass with flying colours. I knew for a fact the essay would be about how landscape affected housing and lifestyle. It was a topic I knew really well and one I loved. I was an older student. In most cases I was twenty years older than other students taking the course. Most of the other students had only ever lived at home and never had to think about why houses were built where they were built or looked they way they looked. And there I was, knowing what was in the booklet, paralyzed. Suddenly, I had no idea where to start. I was afraid if I got started I wouldn’t be able to stop, but I was afraid I’d never get started. I glanced around the room at heads bent over booklets and the sound of pencils and pens scratching away. A cold sweat trickled down my back. Ten minutes passed before I got a grip and started writing. I only had three and a half hours to let the Professor know I’d been listening and researching. And it seemed as if time had slowed to a crawl. And then?
Well, and then the buzzer went and it was all over except for the marking. I definitely couldn’t remember what I had written. I remember shakily taking my booklet to the exam proctor and then I raced to the washroom. I had a lot on my mind and the washroom seemed like a good place to get rid of a year’s worth of studying. In the washroom I remembered all of the things I’d wanted to write but wasn’t sure I had. In the washroom I remembered what a wise graduate had said to me about finals. “Just give the Professor what s/he wants to read.” I do remember I had to write three finals that day. Each time the booklet was slapped down in front of me I reacted the same way. No amount of wiggling and waggling could change the exam schedule of hundreds to accommodate one. Three finals. One day. It felt, at the time, like the longest day of my life. It wasn’t.
So my point is, in spite of having one of those days I’ve never really felt the need of artificial intelligence, such as the ChatGPT programme, to get me through a writing project. Y’all have heard of ChatGPT, right? Honestly, I just heard about it this morning on CBS Sunday Morning. Heck, I still have my Style books, my MLA Handbook for Writers of Research Papers and a copy of The Canadian Writer’s Handbook. I also am the proud hoarder of a mountain of handwritten notes from lectures and binders filled with rough drafts of essays which were, eventually, typed. As an undergraduate, in the olden days, artificial intelligence was still in its “Promo the Robot” phase—awkward and unbelievable. AI was laughable and a bit scary, the general public had barely embraced the possibility of the Internet as a source for research. Email was slow, iffy and painfully annoying. In those days, as we waited for the IBM clone to run through its diagnostics on the monochromatic screen we could have Mop and Glo’d the kitchen floor waiting for the DOS prompt. I can still hear “weewah” of dialup trying to establish a connection.
No, I don’t need to download the ChatGPT programme to write my thesis or finish my Christmas Newsletter or get this column to Corey. I need coffee, imagination and a sense of humour—and plenty of each. Who knows, there maybe be a “style of me” on that programme, but it’s TextEdit and Gmail I’m relying upon this morning.
Comments (0)