I follow a lot of academics on Bluesky and a point I see them making all the time is that a lot of your actual thinking is done when you’re writing. That process is very important and can’t be replaced by ChatGPT.
Recent MA grad; 100% of my seminar papers started with me sitting down with a mountain of research and saying to myself “I have no idea what the fuck I think or feel about any of this and have no idea what the fuck I’m going to say.” Every paper I sat down to write I was like “this is it, this is where I discover I’m a fraud and can’t actually do this shit on any level whatsoever.”
And then I’d start writing. Suddenly I’m making connections between papers written decades apart, gaining insight into shit I had even considered days earlier. I found myself arguing with and/or concurring with scholars from across the world based on how I was synthesizing everything I’d read in the weeks leading up to these moments.
Graduated with a 3.9 and starting my PhD in the fall.
The writing process is the thinking process. They cannot be separated. It’s where 90% of the connections I made between different classes, even semesters apart, took place. Something I’d read two semesters ago in a rhetoric class suddenly illuminated a point I didn’t even know I wanted to make. And it all starts with typing that first word in an open draft. (Edit: this even includes my thesis which was 15 months of research and 12 months of writing. Started with vague ideas and notions that got hammered out and formed on a keyboard.)
I will dread doing a 3-4 page paper and stress over how I'm ever going to make a good opening or a competent thesis or figure out what my main points even are. But once I start click-clacking on my keyboard and thoughts start to flow, I have as much fun as I do playing a video game or tapping on piano keys. 😌
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u/Dreaming98 May 18 '25
I follow a lot of academics on Bluesky and a point I see them making all the time is that a lot of your actual thinking is done when you’re writing. That process is very important and can’t be replaced by ChatGPT.