- Abby Rabinowitz, Editor
- Leeore Schnairsohn, Managing Editor
- Jacqueline LeKachman, Megan Maxfield, and Samantha Ngai, Junior Editors
You, reading this edition of Mercer Street, are the first class our writing program has welcomed alongside Chat GPT, GPT4 and, more broadly, generative AI. Just as you may be considering these technologies, thinking of how to use or not use them, so have we, your professors.
Together, we are joining a high-stakes global experiment. For its creators, Chat GPT is one step toward the larger research objective of developing artificial general intelligence (AGI), described by Open AI founder Sam Altman as “AI systems that are generally smarter than humans” poised to rewrite our world (“Planning for AI and Beyond”). With this free beta product, Open AI encourages us to “get instant answers, find creative inspiration and learn something new,” positioning Chat GPT as an educational tool (“Chat GPT”). But how might getting “instant answers” affect how we create and learn through writing? If it’s no longer self-evident that we need to write ourselves, unless we really want to, and given that writing is often “a horrible, exhausting struggle,” as George Orwell put it, why might we want to continue to write ourselves? What could make it worthwhile?
As a professor and writer, I find these questions existential. As I’ve pondered them over the summer, I’ve felt fortunate to have these texts in front of me, written last year by students like you.
In their essays, some writers speak to these questions explicitly. Beyond serving as a communication tool, they claim, writing has the power to shape our thinking and identities. For her part, Maria Silva closely reads the work of Audre Lorde, who frames writing personal poetry as, Silva writes, “an essential tool for helping us understand ourselves.” Silva unpacks the tensions Lorde names —English is laced with colonial, racist and patriarchal frameworks—as well the potential for such critical reflection to question and change “oppressive social structures.” Along similar lines, Hana Grief invites us into conversation with bell hooks, who describes the revolutionary potential of teaching African American Vernacular English. For all the constraints coded into language, they suggest, we can claim power by writing and reflecting on language.
What does that power look like in action? For a vivid illustration, I encourage you to read Ayslin Exum, who begins, “I was born with a tremendous hunger in my body.” I encourage you to read Sunny Qi, who makes his voice heard in a complicated debate about work practices in China. I encourage you to read Torie George, as she wrestles with the seemingly benevolent convention of land acknowledgements. Even as these essay subjects are seemingly quite different, on a deeper level, each writer is interrogating how peoples’ stories are being told and mistold, finding their own terms to expose and recast these narratives. In doing so, these writers show the stakes of reflecting on language, which is so close to consciousness. Like our senses, language shapes how we perceive, behave and collectively construct our societies. So language demands vigilance.
Like many in this collection, these essays are so long, complex and packed with research that they raise a fresh question: given all there is to do in an extended essay project, it’s possible a writer could outsource parts of the work to Chat GPT and still do plenty of thinking. So how about using Chat GPT for the parts of writing that are hard, like outlining a complex argument, or seemingly boring, like defining a technical term? There are arguments out there that, mindfully used, Chat GPT can be a useful tool. But even that prospect worries me, as do many tools and technologies that have had unintended consequences.
For one, even a single word and its selection can hold great power. Recognizing that there is no word for gender identity in Chinese, for instance, Wang analyzes the consequences of this missing word, warning, “Without critically reflecting on our words’ underlying assumptions and implications, we risk unthinkingly accepting the language and culture as representations of how the world should be.” A single word, thoughtlessly used, could derail important research, as Luiza Ghazaryan shows tracking the neologism “mini-brain.” A single word can reveal and obscure our lives, as Jaeyeong Jeong finds investigating the histories woven into his own three names (Chinese, English, and Korean). So I worry about surrendering any aspect of choosing words, which are the names for everything.
Writing is not just a product: it’s a process. Reflecting on her essay, Zining Wang writes, “I discovered an important truth: writing is less of a sprint and more of a marathon, a gradual process where a unique viewpoint emerges only after several rounds of revision and refinement. This understanding shifted my perspective on writing. Instead of viewing it as just a medium of articulation, I began to see it as a powerful tool for intellectual exploration.” The parts of a writing process Wang describes here, as well as the parts she doesn’t (in my experience, “writing process” is shorthand for a highly individualistic, very social, somewhat patterned, incredibly time-consuming, often onerous, sometimes exhilarating and totally unrecreatable stew) are the opposite of getting “instant answers,” to borrow Open AI’s promise. I suspect this process (or stew) is precisely how we “find creative inspiration and learn something new” in the first place. So while I see what could be gained with Chat GPT if writing were merely a work product—perhaps efficiency and correct grammar (if not facts)—I also see what might be lost: our thinking, our creativity and our own minds.
But to be honest, I’m troubled by something even more fundamental than those risks, and certainly more fundamental than whether or not my Chat GPT syllabus policy ought to include AI detection tools. Here’s a way of getting at it: rather than asking why anyone should write an essay, let’s ask why anyone should read one, even paid professors. With Chat GPT, we can feed essays into the robot to analyze their structure and argument, propose revisions and offer a grade. So what would be lost if you didn’t write essays for us? What would be lost for us if we didn’t get to read them? I feel something wordless at the thought—loss, or a feeling of being lost. Ask yourself: what would be lost for you if your reader wasn’t the human being teaching you, but an algorithm? How would you feel?
Editing these essays, I felt myself to be in good company, even when I was alone. Reading and rereading each sentence, trying to clarify rather than change a writer’s meaning, I felt in deep conversation with such fresh voices and ideas, such careful readings, such authentic investment. I know every writer here, even though I’ve never met them, even though many wrote not a word about themselves. So maybe that’s why you might still want to write: to be known by another human being, and to better know yourself and the world.
In closing, I encourage you to read every essay in this collection on its own terms, not mine. I encourage you to consider Chat GPT and generative AI on their own terms, not mine. I am sure I’ve missed many important things in this forward, and to encourage you to problematize, disagree with, question, complicate, expand on, or protest anything I’ve written, ideally in essay form, with citations. Or you can send me an email at afr229@nyu.edu. I only ask that whatever you write, you write it, because you’re the one I care to read. Just you.
Wishing you a happy semester,
Professor Abby Rabinowitz
This collection of essays is as close to a campus as anything you are likely to encounter at NYU. Students from CAS, Tisch, Steinhardt, and Tandon find a voice here; international students share this forum with those brought up in the US. If you read it front to back, you will hear a deep conversation—about race, technology, gender, the relationship between people and images, and many other vital avenues of interest—a conversation, moreover, between people who have likely never met in person. As you read the essays, you will also see: these are the kinds of things that NYU students think about, talk about, write about.
There are two things I should make clear. First: these essays very often do not reflect topics taught in class, but result from the writers’ following their own interests, using tools and methods taught in class to develop these interests into ideas. Second: without coming from the same courses or using the same approaches, many of these essays have something to say to each other. As you read them, you’ll hear echoes that one essay sends to another; you’ll find clusters forming among them and larger, more complex ideas beginning to grow—in your mind. This feeling of recognition, when you realize that one text has something to say to another, even though the second text has no idea that the first exists—even though they may be about different topics altogether—this is the feeling of idea. This is your mind telling you, through the signaling system of emotion, that you are creating something.
Your instructors are going to teach you about creation: that there is a methodology to the creative process, that you can practice it and gain mastery. This methodology of creation—which leads toward soul as well as toward innovation—is most universally practiced in writing. You will find it applicable in other areas, whether you are an artist, an engineer, a scholar, a nurse, whatever corner of this universe you occupy. Any vocation well heeded requires some skill in responding; this year, you are going to learn something you don’t yet know about response.
My best to you,
Leeore Schnairsohn
Clinical Professor, Expository Writing Program
Managing Editor, Mercer Street
To the Class of 2027 (and other readers of the 2022-2023 edition of Mercer Street),
It’s not very common to have the opportunity to engage with writing as deeply as we, the junior editors, were able to engage with the nineteen essays published in this edition of Mercer Street. Throughout the process of reading, editing, internalizing, fact-checking, and reflecting, we sought to amplify writers’ voices by clarifying ideas while honoring the authors’ authority over their own stories.
In reflecting on their writing processes, the Mercer Street authors often cited professors’ contributions and feedback as pivotal to their drafts and final pieces. These acknowledgements are a testimony to how much effort and how many people are involved in getting an essay to evolve from a nebulous idea to a first draft to a polished and publishable piece. Our work as editors is an extension of what began in the classroom, a process that involves hours of researching, outlining, drafting, seeking feedback, and editing (and editing, and editing some more). We are incredibly thankful that we were trusted to play a part in this journey.
The essays in this year’s Mercer Street span across a myriad of topics—from the implications of cerebral organoids, to the origins of the Minion phenomenon, to the complexities of falling in love with AI, to the experience of reckoning with your third-generation Vietnamese identity while lacking fluency in the language. This year’s publication also includes a number of unique forms: video essays and bibliographies. Despite these fascinating differences, almost all of these took inspiration from the same place: the writers’ personal experiences.
Even if some writers didn’t explicitly write themselves into their essays, they each had to consider their identities as writers and how they wanted to show up on the page. For instance, Ava Wolesky reflected that “In the past, I designed essays to erase myself, the author. Showing the reader my thinking and allowing my specific voice to color my piece was foreign to me and forced me to change my approach to academic writing.” Each writer had a different role in crafting their piece; some writers used reflection on their personal life as the driving force of their essay while others used their STEM-backgrounds to analyze scientific evidence and present it in a concise way. Whatever approach the authors adopted, each of these writers drew from something personal, whether it be academic interests, familial relationships, or a favorite film.
Several writers’ essays were driven by a desire to express their own ideas—to color their writing with their voices, as Wolesky remarked—while considering the context of a complicated cultural heritage. As he composed his essay, Jaeyeong Jeong “realized that though more than a decade of Korean education taught me what I should feel about the historical events of my country, I was never given an opportunity to scrutinize what they meant for me as an individual being.” Jeong’s essay thus provided him with a chance to reclaim his agency to decide how he wants to think about his past, present, and future. Ting Ting Wang similarly strove to express individual ideas while navigating cultural tensions. Wang stated that “While drafting and writing this essay, I was troubled by many doubts. Am I critiquing Chinese culture too harshly and thus betraying my roots and country? What position am I in to evaluate a culture with the ideologies of another? And how can I ensure that my advocacies are for the betterment of those in China?” Wang’s reflection on these complexities reveals a strong commitment to her homeland and careful deliberation over how to criticize a culture fairly without dismissing it altogether. Her essay, like many of the other Mercer Street pieces, provides a valuable model of how to apply an analytical lens to the world around us and above all, how to deeply consider your relationship to the issues you write about.
Even though this year’s writers explored far-reaching and often unanswerable questions, the joy of simply writing shines through in their essays and reflections. The authors often discussed their sources of inspiration for writing in their reflections, including volunteering during the Mount Sinai Hospital nurses’ strike, falling in love with Audre Lorde, or seizing an opportunity to write about a favorite music artist or an underappreciated movie. Most authors did not credit some moment of divine inspiration, but rather more quotidian interactions—the type of experiences that are once familiar and thought-provoking.
Even as these essays are published, they are never exactly complete; the ideas go on to live in the minds of the readers. These essays are an invitation for you to keep critically engaging with and writing about these problems, questions, passions—to make what is personal to these authors personal to you. As Hana Greif reflects on her essay: “I present no real solutions. I simply open a conversation, as much for myself as for any reader; and inviting conversation is, I think, what all writing ought to do.”
—Jacqueline LeKachman, Megan Maxfield, and Samantha Ngai, Junior Editors