The worst criticism I’ve ever received from an editor is “it sounds like ChatGPT wrote this.” But as soon as Melissa told me that I thought: she’s right. Unfortunately, she said this about the post I wrote about my son getting into Duke. So I’m trying again because I need to tell you that he was homeschooled since first grade, and he had a traumatic brain injury in high school, and I’m completely thrilled for him that he got into his first-choice college.
And I also need to tell you one more thing. This is a message for everyone who told me I should have just sent him to school instead of spending way too much money on tutors: fuck off. He got a full scholarship. It’s true that I spent a huge amounts of money on homeschooling, but Duke’s tuition is $250K.
Back to my rejected post about Duke. I was planning to take 500 victory laps which is how long it would take to tell you how great I am while pretending to make it all about my kid and not about me. But I can’t do that because what I learned from hearing I wrote something like ChatGPT is that the more general a person’s writing is, the more likely AI could have written it.
If we write very specific, based on our own experience — with a person, idea or process, for example — then AI can’t know enough about it to write about it.
In the olden days — the 2000s — I accepted guest posts on my blog. I used to tell people that for me to post it they needed to have these three things:
1. A fresh opinion that I can’t find online
2. A personal angle that shows me why they’re writing about the topic
3. A takeaway for the reader to make their life better.
Only about 5% of people who inquired about guest posts could actually meet my requirements for guest posts. Frankly, I can’t really meet the requirements either: Melissa throws out most of what I write because it’s missing one of those three things.
But sometimes I sneak. I tell myself I’m so funny/smart/insightful that I don’t need all three items. Those post never do well. We intuitively know to stay away from stuff that sounds like AI — in fact my blog is evidence that we have intuitively known this even before there was AI. Because before there was AI there was still really shitty writing.
Back when my son first started homeschooling I read that Stanford accepts 5% of applicants but 27% of homeschoolers. It makes total sense. You can’t stand out by doing what school tells you to do. You can only show you’re one of the kids who is good at school. Top colleges look for kids who are remarkable, but most people are scared to be remarkable (and that sounds like, How will you teach math? and How will he socialize? and Practicing that much isn’t good for a kid his age!)
Additionally, college applications give school counselors outsized power over which students in their school get accepted where. But with a homeschooled kid, the parent is the school counselor. This completely undermines the impact of school counselor on the application so the student can shine on their own — no mediator.
You’ll never read that on ChatGPT. Because it’s trained to not say anything controversial.
Someone recommended to my son that he practice writing papers over the summer because Duke will be a lot more difficult than homeschooling.
My son said, “I don’t need to practice. I’ll do the triple AI approach: ask ChatGPT write the paper, tell ChatGPT to rewrite the paper to not sound like ChatGPT, and then use ChatGPT to check the grammar.”
I am so excited to watch my son in this next phase of his life.
