Most of the in-class essays I’ve had to write throughout my academic career have ended in a similar scene. With a cramped right hand, I frantically flip through my blue book reviewing my work, all the while nervously glancing back at the clock to check how many seconds I have left. As I try to read over my panicked, borderline-illegible handwriting, I make peace with an inevitable truth: The essay I just wrote sucks. It’s shallow. It’s a desperate attempt to string together ideas from course readings and namedrop theories for the sake of it, and it’s mostly just nonsense. But despite the stressful process of writing it, I’m never very concerned about the quality of the final product. Why? Because I know no higher standard can be expected of in-class writing.
As artificial intelligence has become the hardest working student at Dartmouth, some of my peers have floated the idea of making this very pleasurable experience a requirement in almost all classrooms. Ana Arzoumanidis ’28 recently added a well-argued column to the debate, in which she explained that blue book writing assignments are the only way to ensure a student doesn’t use AI in their writing, instead forcing them to apply their own thought.
This argument, however, is built on the assumption that in-class writing — even if it isn’t a perfect substitute for long-term research skills — still tests the same core thinking skills as long-form writing. It doesn’t. In-class writing does not allow students to apply the same creative or analytical skills as does long-form writing, and phasing out the latter would do much more to encourage AI use than it would to combat it.
The problem is in what a student is — or rather isn’t — able to achieve within a blue book format. A student responding to a question on the spot is not given nearly enough time to push their thinking to its limit. Whatever analysis that results will be a hollowed out impression of a student’s true potential. Even if they are given open access to the course readings as they write their essay, they are bound to miss details. Every fine point in a text provides its own opportunity for the student to create a whole new line of thought. Just imagine how many potentially brilliant ideas are lost as a student frantically skims over a text during a timed essay when they could’ve instead carefully reread each line in search of inspiration. As it turns out, research skills and critical thinking skills cannot be so easily isolated from each other.
Under time pressure, students come to a compromise. They understand that they won’t be able to engage in deep analysis, so they decide to throw everything at the wall and see what sticks in an attempt to prove they have at least a basic understanding of the course material. They know they’ll likely get away with it because they’re also aware that their professors understand the limitations of the blue book format and will grade more leniently as a result.
It’s not just that students don’t have time to produce creative thought during in-class essays, either: Their brains literally won’t let them. There is an extensive body of research documenting the physiological responses that manifest when people are under stress and inhibit the brain’s ability to engage in deep and creative thinking. Now, there’s no doubting the importance of having students practice performing under pressure, and the occasional in-class essay has its place for this reason. But to treat in-class writing as if it even roughly approximates the skills that long-form writing does would leave students grossly underprepared to think for themselves for any longer than 30 minutes.
Arzoumanidis also argues that the integrity of in-class writing allows students to build more trusting relationships with their professors. This I don’t doubt, but I fear it comes at the cost of the student’s relationship with their own writing. Converting nearly every essay a student writes into a timed trial by fire is perhaps the fastest way to make students permanently dread writing and idea generation.
When students associate writing and analysis with stress, they’re more likely to avoid it in their futures. Add to that the fact that all in-class writing teaches students is to produce shallow thoughts in a short amount of time, then ask yourself: What else can produce shallow thoughts in an even shorter amount of time? Need I say the answer?
To advocate for blue books in every classroom is to focus on preventing AI use merely as a short-term end — as long as a student’s final product has no AI, then that’s all that matters. But this kind of thinking completely overlooks the long-term implications of how students engage in the writing process itself. When students are forced to write in-class, they’re taught a skill that AI can already replicate. What AI can’t quite replicate is long-form creative analysis, but that’s exactly what those students are missing out on. They’re prevented from using AI in classes, sure, but this comes at the delayed cost of producing a graduate who is at great risk of reverting back to AI dependence the moment they’re out of the classroom simply because they haven’t learned any skills that AI can’t already reproduce more efficiently.
With this in mind, it might seem like we’re at a dead end. Assign students take-home essays or journals, and they’ll probably use AI to write them. Assign students in-class essays, and they’ll definitely use it later on. I admit the outlook seems bleak, but I still think it’s worth revisiting long-form, take-home writing assignments, perhaps with more inventive parameters.
One strategy I’ve found effective is when professors assign extended reading responses in which they are required to implement a personal experience of theirs into their analyses. This is pure conjecture, but I’d wager that students would draw the line at having AI write a personal account on their behalf. We treat our own life and experiences with a certain sanctity that we don’t apply to other aspects of our thought, and the notion of using AI to fake a personal experience on one’s behalf is likely to trigger a disgust reaction deep within any student confronted with such a choice.
At the very least, implementing personal recollection into writing assignments would force students to come to terms with the sacredness of human experience and thought in the face of AI. That’s a lesson they’ll carry with them after graduation, and that lesson alone will do far more to shield their humanity from AI than a pencil and a blue book ever could.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
