#i might be a bit naive in still having a modicum of hope that academia can live up to its mythos

[kittykatinabag]

Before I went on this 11 day long trip because I was losing my mind trying to work but not being able to, my ridiculous academic morals or whatever finally broke down and I experimented a bit with chatgpt just to see what was up.

After banishing the guilt that started to leak out of a whole mess of academic trauma from my younger years that I did not want to deal with right at that moment, I have realized that this tool is scary good. You can't write a whole paper on it and have it sound natural without a lot of training and back and forth, but I asked it to do an outline for the topic I was asking about and fuck man, that shit is so good. It's so clear but also easily tweakable, and if this was available to me back in undergrad, I wouldn't have nearly as many issues surrounding academia and studying. It helps with the biggest issues I have while writing papers, organization and the curation of initial research.

I asked the same question regarding what and who to read to my thesis advisor and yeah she rattled off some authors in the field, which I did search up and bookmark any study that seemed semi-relevant, but all that curation work took me quite a few hours- and I didn't even read the papers and books I saved. Once I established a brief foundation of the subjects on chatgpt, it gave me more precise results in less than half an hour including the time I was experimenting with asking questions. While I haven't read those yet either, they seemed very much more pinpointed to the subjects rather than tangentially related things. Of course the real test will be once I read everything and figure out which pieces are most helpful to my paper.

But fuck man. It didn't feel like I was talking in a foreign language while interacting with chatgpt. Maybe that's just some of the social anxiety coming through when I'm talking with my thesis advisor in person, especially when she whiplashes to something she's more interested in but could be helpful to me. And I could take my time collecting my thoughts without feeling pressured to get an answer or a question to ask right away. Once I beat back the guilt about using a tool to help me, it was such a more pleasant experience.

If that's going to be considered "cheating" in academic settings, then academia really has lost its way and just becomes a process to create people who will be cogs in the capitalist machine of society.