I remember I discovered ChatGPT while in my junior year of high school. I heard people were using it to write papers for them, so I was curious myself. I remember the class had a system where AI would grade it so I took that as an opportunity to test it because if my teacher wasn't putting in the effort to grade, why should I put effort into a paper going unread? Though I was never dumb enough to submit a paper as is, I still used it to generate a paper, and I then went in to change phrases and words I wouldn't use along with citations and I looked for. From then on, I have been using it, and I am now in college. I feel like I have fucked myself over.
I have ADHD and I get burnt out easily, so I honestly have found ChatGPT to be a big help, but I don't want to be dumber. I love creative courses like English, but I even used AI to check my writing and even generate sentences when I couldn't think of any. For classes I care more about I tend to use it less, but I still feel reliant on it in the sense that my writing is no good if not checked by ChatGPT. I tend to use it to fix my wording and even help me generate conclusion ideas and I think that it is stopping me from learning how to get through the difficult parts of problem solving.
For classes where I don't like the subject as much or tend to get super burnt out in, I use AI to write larger chunks of the essay. I just finished an essay where I wrote a few summary sections and told it to expand upon those and write paragraphs where I didn't have anything. I feel absolutely pathetic and embarrassed. I just copy and paste questions from quizzes I have to take from online courses, and have it answer those as well because I have been so worried about maintain a perfect grade. I honestly think my grades wouldn't be as good if I didn't have this. I find it difficult to focus or stay motivated to do work and with my online courses having an overwhelming number of assignments each week--more than my in-person classes--I don't think I could realistically have enough time in the week to get it done.
Maybe I have just become too reliant on it to do the hard part of getting over this rough patch, but I still put effort into courses like math where I actually need to study for my tests. I feel so mixed because I care about effort, but I also care about good grades, and I think because of that I am becoming absolutely stupid. I want to stop using it so much, but I find it so difficult when I have come so far to develop a voice that intertwines mine with ChatGPT so that if I just switched to fully myself, I would look suspicious. I feel like a fraud when people compliment my writing even if my original ideas are there because AI had a part in it. People call me smart and well-spoken, but I feel like a fraud because they don't know how I get through my assignments.
This might be unnecessary, but I think I should clarify that I did not use AI to write this. It makes sense to me only because I talked about its heavy involvement in my writing.
I just want to stop using it and I just need some help in doing that. It probably just that I need to stop plain and simple but that seems difficult to do at the moment. I don't want to keep living like this and I want to be proud of my own work. I am transferring soon, so I want to use that as a fresh slate. I just need to make sure I stop myself from using AI now so I can fall through with my goals. I just need to hear some sort of feedback.