AZCoordinator

  What’s the deal with poetry? That is the question on the mind of every high-schooler in their English class. “We’ll never need to use this in real life,” they cry, never realizing they’ve become ignorant to any complex meaning, satire, implications, or effects that can come from artistic literature. These are the people that might come across, if anything, a glimpse of “The Road Not Taken” by Robert Frost and reflect on their entire lives, lost in the profoundness of an idea that most have already contemplated. We only get so long to live, so how can you judge what’s worthwhile and what’s a waste without a long-term plan in mind? Is anything really more important than learning how to think and understand, learning how others think and understand, and learning what it means to be human? Perhaps you think the latter is better suited for real-world experiences. This is a fair point, but trivial. Everything we “experience” is done through a filter that is our senses. Remember that yo...

  There is a person who lives in the world. They wake up but don’t get up. Then, they go to school, where they be with no one. Then, they perform tasks which all include hiding from others. Then, they go home. This person isn’t very identifiable. What makes this person their own person? Identity is complicated because it’s not clear what it really is. I often wonder two things: is one’s identity defined by society? Is it defined by themselves? Philosophical books, such as the Alchemist or Siddhartha, seem to agree with the latter. In fact, they seem to completely disregard the importance of society, prioritize individuality, and portray common people as inherently worse than the ones who reach enlightenment. I personally find it a bit immature to have such a superiority complex and disregard the importance of community in ones identity. It surprises me because from personal experience, I hate society. I hate community. I hate these things becaus...

 It's been no secret for several years that Santa Claus is a fraudster, yet he has somehow always been able to escape scrutiny from the public without a scratch. Let's not forget that in 2009, the Christmas Papers were released -- a 70-page document authored by an anonymous North Pole escapee detailing the inhumane and horrific working conditions of Santa's Toy Factory. The factory is not as inspiring and dream-like as Christmas ™ 's marketing team would lead you to believe. The Elves are forced into horrible 80-hour work weeks with low pay, working in the cold thin walls and the disgusting floors wet with dirt and grime. There are numerous incidents of Elves becoming hurt, sick, or dead at the workplace with no compensation besides unemployment. That's not to mention that Santa has no qualms about child labor. That new iPad your kid got from Christmas ™ could very well have been built by an elf a couple years younger than them.   You should be able to understand ev...

               Friendship – in literature, less about supporting each other and having fun together, and  more about proceeding the plot. As B.D. McClay writes, “when dramatized, friendship  often becomes retrospective: it’s about the friends you left behind.”               Of course, no-one expects fictional stories to have an accurate and life-like representation of friendship. However, why must friendship, in all of its positive, blissful pleasures and  spiteful drama, be reduced to the gap it leaves after it’s gone? McCray brings up an  interesting point on the under-representation of friendship in literature: friendship in and of  itself can be distant without suffering. “How do you tell a story about a relationship that  remains, at heart, stable and that has no endpoint toward which to go?” In addition to that,  friendship is at its most passionate during c...

       How could a simple piece of paper hide so much within? My mind raced through backlogs of math and language, wondering how the two natural phenomena could be so intertwined when stripped of all their syntax and formalities. And machine could understand this simplicity because machine was likewise simple. I adored machine because of its honesty and humbleness. Not a machine, but every machine together, growing stronger and becoming better each time through Moore’s Law. Those who understand machine’s methods see their future prosperity. Since machine is simple, they perform simple observations of the world which humans are incapable of. As a result, they create simulations more vivid than my own life. The artistry brought tears to my eyes.

Dear ChatLET: Is it alright to ask AI for help on writing my college essays? Will I get in trouble? What a great question! It’s true, the use of AI is becoming more rampant in the world of college applications and essays. While your English teacher may dismiss this as “cheating”, it’s fair to consider the extent of which you take advantage of AI language tools. Alyson Klein publicized that 1 in 3 students applying to college in the previous school year had used AI for “essay help” ranging from ideas for oddly specific essay prompts to fixing grammatical errors. However, if the writing is still their own, or even 98% their own, does this still count as “cheating”? And to what point should we consider the use of AI “cheating”? There are many points we can set, as humans consider the creation of ideas by AI to be “cheating” and the formal writing written by AI to also be “cheating”. So, when does the “cheating” begin? This is more subjective. Besides, teenagers before public AI mod...