Oh no—I’ve decided to start blogging!
That’s right. I’m revamping my blog—hopefully more successfully this time—in the age of generative AI and zero time for reading long form writing. It may sound like a bad idea, but the timing is actually perfect because I want to hone my writing skills without AI and post without a glowering audience (just kidding, I’m glad you’re here).
I’m a PhD student, which means I’m supposed to be reading and writing every day. And technically I have been, but not in ways that are serving me well. I skim papers regularly and go into deep reading mode when it’s absolutely necessary. I write emails and assignments with no problem and even completed an entire manuscript on my own last semester. But I haven’t developed a daily practice of deep reading and free long form writing.
The distinction between skimming and deep reading is quite obvious. And writing emails and structured assignments (e.g., proposals, summaries, and question responses) is different than long form writing, however the distinction is more subtle. When I wrote the manuscript last semester, the process felt very frantic and choppy. What I envision is a writing process that feels fluid, genuine, and above all, free.
I want to achieve this without generative AI. I was cautious to avoid AI-written and AI-refined passages in my manuscript, which made the process even more painful. For other writing tasks, though, I’ve gotten used to tossing slipshod ideas and careless passages at ChatGPT for refinement because it’s easier to edit than to generate from scratch. While I don’t see much wrong with others harnessing generative AI for scholarly writing, I feel more fulfilled having an independent voice. I expect the process of regularly and independently producing long form compositions on this blog will make my next manuscript writing process feel more free.
With that said, I do plan to blog about the complexity of addressing generative AI in academia and beyond. There are plenty of non-generative applications of AI in writing, which I will discuss. Additionally, there’s the use of generative AI when working with programming languages and other quantitative research techniques. I’ll talk about that, too. I might even want to discuss the ethics, awkwardness, and pervasiveness of AI in academia at some point. There’s lots to explore!
I will probably also end up talking about swimming. Or Denmark. Or grapefruits. There’s a lot more to my life than being a PhD student, and while I will always find a way to keep things at least PhD-adjacent, topics will vary. This blog is an exercise in writing more freely about disparate subjects, and luckily, I never seem to run out of ideas.
