A Day in the Life of an AI-dependent Freshman

Jimothy wakes up. He shoves his hand under his pillow and moves his arm up and down. His hand closes around the familiar rectangle. 

There it is.

Unlocking the phone, his fingers dance as if from muscle memory, opening the Instagram app. The next hour flies by. He’s not sure if he brushed his teeth, or flushed, or ate his breakfast. None of it matters anyway.

Then the 8 AM bell rings, and Jimothy is forced to put his phone in his backpack. Ugh, Humanities teachers. So uptight. They couldn’t even indulge a little scroll every five minutes? It’s not like that would take up the entire block.

And why does the class have to watch the Romeo and Juliet movie? Jimothy has already seen three reels about it. He even knows the entire plot: teenage couple falls in love, guy has to run away, girl runs away with him, they live happily ever after. 

The class is tasked to write a 100 word reflection on what they think about the movie. What does Jimothy think about the movie? He doesn’t care. He clicks on a certain pinned tab and types: “write me a 100 word reflction on romeo n juliet movie what i think very detail no mistakes…”

Then comes Biology. Mrs. Teacher hands back their tests. On Jimothy’s paper is a glaring B+, in red pen, circled three times over. Frantically, Jimothy flips through the packet. Question six, how does an extremely high temperature affect transcription and translation, is marked wrong. Jimothy marches up to Mrs. Teacher.

“You marked my test wrong!”

Mrs. Teacher has the audacity to roll her eyes.

“Explain your answer to me then."

Jimothy feels his heart speeding up.

What would Chat say?

Utter silence: Chat wasn’t there. If only he could talk to Chat without the barrier of a device. Jimothy had to generate some response on his own, to keep his teacher off his tail. 

Panicked, Jimothy squints at his test paper.

“So, like, high temperatures disrupt transcription and translation by denaturing DNA, RNA, um, poly-merases? Is that how you say it? And ribosomes, and um, like, other essential proteins.”

Mrs. Teacher sighs.

“We didn't learn about denaturation in class.”

“I don’t know!” Jimothy explodes. “But it doesn’t matter. My answer was literally right! You marked it wrong! You just have something against me!”

Mrs. Teacher cocks her head. “From the way I see it, you wrote something that we haven’t learned in class, and you can’t explain it. Clearly, you don’t even know what it means. That looks like academic dishonesty to me.”

“No, no, no!” Jimothy is desperate now. “I swear I didn’t cheat! I knew what it meant then, I just forgot!”

The bell rings—thank goodness—cutting class short. Jimothy rushes out of the Biology classroom and into the library. He takes his phone back out and opens Instagram again.

At some point, he must have wandered onto the bus, for the next thing Jimothy knew, his mother was scolding him at the dinner table.

“Jimothy,” she mutters. “Put your phone down. This is disrespectful.”

He shoots up. “It’s literally not! Look,” he pleads, opening up Chat. He types in “is scroljing reelz disrespectful at dinner tabl chat,” and reads the output aloud.

“Scrolling reels at the dinner table is not inherently disrespectful because respect is determined by intention, communication, and social context — not by the mere use of a device. See? Chat never lies.”

His mother storms off, something sounding suspiciously like what can I do on her lips. Jimothy doesn’t care. He won the argument! Oh, thank Chat. It has never let him down, and it never will. Jimothy opens Instagram again, letting the feed wash over him.

Oh, thank Chat. It has never let him down, and it never will.

Some time later, he’s in bed, phone in hand, face illuminated by the familiar glow of reels. At some point his eyelids droop down. He tucks his phone under his pillow, and drifts off to sleep.