I sound like A.I. :(

I am frustrated as I write this because no matter how well I word and rework my applications and emails for new opportunities, it reads unappetizing. It feels like I have come full circle with my communication skills and now I am struggling with it. I worry if it is too verbose or too bland, if it sounds like A.I. or if it sounds human, and most importantly if it sounds like me. Writing, both creative and technical, was once on of those things I never thought twice about. I am a polyglot, so in all senses of the term, I have a pretty solid grasp of words. My vocabulary cultivated upon reading dictionaries and thesauruses for fun while giggling silently at the naughty words my immigrant parents couldn’t fathom. During halcyon days of yore, I even prolifically authored lauded fanfics under cringey pseudonyms, submitting them towards my annual NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) quota. [Side note: My youth was full of creative shenanigans that I hid from family, perhaps a story for another time.] This skilled up to moonlighting as a ghostwriter for random blogs until the advent of ChatGPT. I enjoyed using fancy words and breaking the rules the same way a painter swirls with a flourish.

As I advanced in my career, I reined back the loquaciousness of my writing. I quickly learned that people don’t like it when you throw complex and “above pay-grade” terms around casually, it’s like telling inside jokes that the reader is not intelligent enough to understand, and rubbing that ignorance in their face makes them upset. The result of this is writing that is casual, friendly, albeit banal - with syntax and structure that follows the predictable speech and patterns of college freshman essays. Now I hardly recognize what I started with. It looks good, passes all the automated requirements. Without using A.I., I already sound like it. It makes me so upset because that is not the overachieving, nerdy weirdo I cultivated even in the most mundane of circumstances.

Now my writing fits the average standard because we have standardized the average.