In preparation for the now postponed until April. 9 career fair, I sat down at my desk and stared at a blank document that would soon become my résumé. With so much on my mind and so much that I could put down for it, I struggled with piecing it all together into one cohesive page. I asked for help, for some suggestions to make it easier, and I received the dreaded answer: just use ChatGPT.

If I wanted to use ChatGPT, then I would be using ChatGPT instead of asking for help. What signal would it send to a future employer if the first thing they see of me wasn’t even made by me? How would I feel knowing I’m putting someone else’s foot forward instead of my own when handing in my résumé? Why did such a comment bother me so much, even ignoring the moral complications in doing so?

Then it dawned on me that ChatGPT has effectively become a cure-all for any minute thing. Struggling with understanding a book? Physics got you down? Unable to do everything at a moment’s notice? Simply have generative AI do it for you. If at first you don’t succeed, have ChatGPT try again for you.

I understand why doing so has become so popular: it’s a shortcut for so many minor things. It’d take longer to invest the time and energy into understanding the motions of a process, especially when it’s not something that’ll be consistently done. A résumé template really isn’t changing over the course of a year; it’s really only the added experience that separates the past and present versions of a résumé. 

However, that is not the person I’ve grown up to be, and it is not the person that I plan to grow into. Not once would I want to submit something knowing that I didn’t at least see it all the way through. If I simply used generative AI at any roadblock, then I’d become over-reliant on it for anything. 

When ChatGPT becomes plan B for everything, one is effectively riding a bicycle with its training wheels until the end of time. I don’t want to come across as hyperbolic, but ChatGPT usage hinders one’s ability to problem-solve and learn from one’s mistakes. As an undergraduate, I want to make as many mistakes as I can, so once I get that degree, I know what does and doesn’t work. This is the education that my parents are paying for, and they’re not paying for these AI algorithms to grow even stronger. I’m thankful for them, and I feel it’d be a massive disservice to them and myself to just ChatGPT my way to a degree.

I’m not writing this to vilify the usage of generative AI; the statistics already do that, but I want my time at Rowan to be my time. I want my curiosity to guide me through classes and their projects. I want my work to be only my work, and I want to be able to solve my own problems as they come. There is no reason, in my eyes, to outsource tasks that take 10-minutes to ChatGPT. It pains me how my résumé will most likely be screened by an algorithm instead of read by human eyes, but it’d pain me more to hand something in that wasn’t my best work. When I encounter an obstacle in the road, that is an obstacle for me to deal with. It is an opportunity for me to better myself, and I will not give up that opportunity out of convenience. 

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