r/Advice • u/Tight_Steak_232 • 21h ago
My daughter's professor is accusing her of using AI to write a creative writing assignment I helped her write. Do I chat with him?
FINAL UPDATE: A few hours ago, I had shared with my daughter a suggestion by one of the reddit commenters below to submit the original as well as the edits. Apparently, that process was part of the required assignment. She provided her professor with the notes I typed and disclosed the process INCLUDING my involvement in it (he LOLed it) as well as the outline for what her original plot was going to entail about two weeks ago. He approved it. She submitted a plot change when she edited it and received approval on it. These were in simple paragraph formats and were not given to the professor in a rough draft format. His reason for rejecting the final draft was that he felt it exceeded what he anticipated would be the final submission, which generally only happens when students utilize AI. However, after he reviewed her 30-minute proof assignment, he not only accepted the first assignment and gave her 98% on it but also accepted her second submission and gave her another 10 points!! Best yet? He said if he felt like continuing the story, he'd enjoy reading it. I strongly suspect she won't hate creative writing anymore, thanks to the guy who taught me to love it, too.
ORIGINAL: My daughter isn't exactly the most creative when it comes to writing. She does wonderfully when it's a research assignment. But having to write about something in her past or a fiction essay is difficult for her. She asked me if I could help her do it.
The requirements were that it had to be pertaining to her in a different setting and different year. It also had to be third person and a minimum of six pages. So, she chose a moment in the civil war, where she is a young girl living on the edge of a location where a battle had occurred the night before the story started. She made four paragraphs and scrapped it several times before enlisting my help.
I told her to close her eyes and envision the setting. Was the sun up? Were there dead or wounded soldiers on the ground? Does she smell the gun powder or blood? Are there sounds from soldiers in the distance? Is there any signs of normalcy interwoven in that setting? She closed her eyes, and she started telling me what she saw. I typed as she talked. It really helped her get into her assignment on a personal level. She actually dug in and really came up with good details and a very clever plot.
She ended up with eight pages, and after her fourth edit and my proof reading, she submitted it. Her professor read it, said it was "too good not to be AI" and told her she had to write a second essay to prove it was her vision and her story. Her second story was a continuation of her first story, but because she only had a half an hour to write it instead of multiple times to rewrite it, she didn't feel it was as good. As of now, she hasn't received it back from him and is concerned.
I know who her professor is. I also know how to reach him. Do I connect with him and let him know how she arrived at her essay? Or would he consider it to have been done in concert with an adult, thereby "cheating" in a sense? Do I just leave well enough alone? She's going to be an anesthesiologist, so a historical essay isn't exactly the foundation of her career, but she needs to keep her grades above a B to continue receiving her scholarship. She's also never been accused of cheating before, and it's tearing her up.
I have no idea why he would have accused it of being AI, either, because it had a ton of creative license in it. AI wouldn't create imperatives, clause combinations or have verbless sentences. And she never even touched ChatGPT for any phrases. Do I step in on her behalf?
EDIT: I did not type her paper. I typed her notes as she spoke. She took the content and modified it, added to it, subtracted it, and wrote her own paper. All I did is direct her to be in that moment, then type as she talked. The first format looks nothing like the finished format. The notes I took didn't even make up 25% of her final product.
I also did not help her invent a plot. All I did was remove her writer's block.
And in her defense, she is not a timid person. She is reserved. She volunteered for the Peace Corps for 27 months in the health and welfare areas, so she's not lacking in courage. She is a STEM student on a full scholarship because she's really good at science and mathematics. She has all kinds of confidence when it comes to those courses. It's just creative writing that was her "stumbling block". And after all the work she did for her assignment, to have it challenged as AI crushed her.
But as a reminder, she did remit her 30-minute follow up story. She doesn't have the results yet and will not reach out any further until she gets it.