It is pronounced—the student has ceased being themself.
Early in the semester, hundreds of students find themselves filling out club application questions. These questions mostly require the student to talk about what they have done, and what they want to do; this forces the student to make sense of their past and then tie it coherently to their future. An application must be somewhat coherent, after all.
After probably four or five or more applications, the student starts feeling almost completely separated from their responses. Their past is not theirs, but Claude’s version that makes their tone more genuine, and their future becomes a mixture of AI and “helping humanity stay on track”.
Feeling disconnected from who they are, the student receives a Round 2 letter the following; yet, the student who will be attending is dissociated from the coherently polished reused self.
Interviews, the club’s email says, make the application process more human. But when the student arrives in the well lit, air conditioned room, all they see is a Google Form wearing business casual. The student feels disoriented.
Having been forced to develop a justified account of their past (what is a CV if not that), and tying that coherently to an AI-proof vision of the future, the student’s present sense of self is squeezed out. Quickly, what seemed to be just a week or two of club applications, weaves itself among a culture of coffee chats, networking events, and “what did you do this summer?”.
Yet, the real tragedy has not yet occurred, for the student is initially aware of the distance between their true and packaged selves. The student still laughs at themself when answering behavioral questions, and chuckles as they put up a fancy front. In their solitude, the student still remains there.
One Wednesday morning, when the student wakes up slightly more tired than usual, tragedy has struck. The packaged self is great at scheduling meetings, so for the past week the student has been going through all those motions. Tired of being a player in the awfully orchestrated game of “let’s grab a meal”, the student unconsciously stops playing it. Unfortunately, it is not that they reject the mask, but begin taking it as their real face to avoid the friction of knowing it is not.
In a small and quiet death, the student merges with the students, becoming one more.
