Writing in Inner Space: Ground Control to Major Tom
What is it like to be a bat or a beetle in a box?
Leanne recoils from the cloud of noise in the cafeteria—peals of laughter, adolescent catcalls and wolf whistles, teenage lunchtime raucousness running wild. The noise cloud is a multicolored fog engulfing her consciousness. Her hands tremble as she grips her lunch bag.
Slowly making her way toward a corner table through the devilish noise, she feels the fluorescent lights beam harsh blue wavelengths directly into her skull. Increasing amplitudes of throbbing pain pulse behind her eyes, right behind her forehead. Trembling now, she finds an empty chair in a dark corner where nobody is sitting.
This noise pattern is too complex for the human brain to unravel under the best of circumstances. Because of what's happening inside Leanne's head, light transmitted through her retina is engaging nerve fibers in the trigeminal system, the largest nerve in her brain. It controls sensory information and movement functions in her face and head.
Her brain has lost control of its input. Located deep within her three pounds of meat, her thalamus—which manages pain perception—is responding with trigeminal pain sensations.1
Leanne is processing information, but she's hurting, overwhelmed, fearful, disoriented. These internal states represent a realm of experience existing beyond the reach of even the most advanced artificial intelligence, which can hallucinate but can’t get migraines.
And this matters more than you might think.
The Phenomenology of Migraine
When her first migraine hit during freshman biology, Leanne thought she was hallucinating—and she was right. A shimmering distortion appeared at the edge of her vision, like looking through a heat wave rising from pavement, expanding into pulsating zigzag lines that obscured half her field of view.
Over the past year, Leanne became a reluctant phenomenologist, mapping the territory of her altered consciousness during auras in a journal with scientific precision .
She learned to distinguish between scintillating scotoma (those crescent-shaped visual disturbances that neuroscientists trace to wave-like activity across her visual cortex) and stranger sensory disruptions—moments when her left hand feels impossibly distant from her body, or when language itself dissolves.
What fascinates her most is how these experiences exist beyond simple description. No matter how precisely she documents each symptom, she can never quite capture what it's like to experience reality during this altered state. Unaffected people don't know what a migraine feels like. But Leanne has empathy for werewolves.
During her worst episode yet, voices sounded muffled and delayed, like she was hearing them through a broken phone connection.
She'd watch people's lips moving and wait—one second, two—before their words became words. Even then she didn't always know what they meant. After it was over, the disconnect terrified her more than the pain.
When she tried explaining it to her sister later, all she could manage was: "It was like my brain forgot how to work. Everything took too long. Everything hurt."
The Phenomenology of the Ordinary
When Leanne's brain functions normally, the same cafeteria becomes navigable. She reads the space fluently, savoring the laid-back energy from outbursts of performative catcalls and wolf whistles while reveling in the glee of Friday afternoon. She picks up on excited chatter about weekend plans, remembers that today is the last day before spring break, and easily places the faces of classmates she associates with different social circles.
She scans the tables as she enters, quickly assessing the usual social clusters while surveying available seating options. She notices her lab partner waving from across the room, recognizes the sophomore from her English class sitting alone by the windows, and spots an empty table near the back where she can eat in peace if she chooses.
Leanne plans her route through the crowded tables, targeting an empty chair she spotted earlier and walking toward it with purpose, seeking the perfect balance of solitude and social observation for her lunch break.
The contrast is stark: when her consciousness operates normally, the cafeteria becomes a rich text she can read fluently—social dynamics, spatial arrangements, interpersonal possibilities. Her mind functions as an interpretive instrument. During a migraine, all bets are off.
It's passive endurance time.
Through Joseph's Eyes: The Phenomenology of Compliance Writing
Now consider Joseph, a bright student trapped in a different kind of sensory assault. He resents the arbitrary topics his teacher assigns, feeling trapped by prompts that bore him senseless.
He knows he should do what he's told, but he rebels against writing on command about subjects he couldn't care less about, viewing each essay as another hoop to jump through in an endless educational obstacle course.
What bothers him most is the pretense that his thoughts matter when the teacher doesn't actually read them—just grades them. He stopped being disappointed when his essays come back with minimal feedback, maybe a grade and a generic "you can do better than this" comment that could apply to anyone.
Joseph feels insulted that teachers just skim for length and basic requirements, using rubrics so they don't have to read. He dismisses the entire exercise as busywork, reasoning that if the teacher won't invest attention, why should he?
He refuses to feel guilty about using AI when the whole system feels fraudulent to begin with.
He tolerates English class as dead time he must endure, moving from an essay about free will in Frost's "The Road Not Taken" to a rhetorical analysis of the Gettysburg Address, counting down the days until the semester ends.
Joseph anticipates the relief of never having to write another forced essay about themes in texts he didn't choose to read. He hopes someday to escape this mental prison run by rubrics where teachers care more about what they're teaching than what their students are learning.
What hurts is he knows a different way. In seventh grade he had a teacher who turned the classroom into a writing workshop. Everyone wrote, everyone was a writer, and everyone published their stuff for the class to read.
The AI simply helps him survive a system he believes has already given up on him.
Through Joseph's Eyes: The Phenomenology of Authentic Inquiry
But watch what happens when the same student encounters a different kind of assignment. Joseph finds himself in an English class divided into small groups for investigative writing. For once in high school, there is no rubric.
Part of the work is to figure out for themselves what forms would be good to publish on the class website. The purpose is clear. The writers need to give insights about how well-known adults made their decisions to attend or to skip college. Everyone in the group is fired up.
This is personal, too. He's not the only one who isn't looking forward to college if it's anything like high school.
Joseph's group chose to explore athletes who made it in professional sports leagues. One group chose tech entrepreneurs—Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and Steve Jobs who dropped out to build companies alongside successful tech leaders who stayed in college.
Another chose recording artists, visual artists, and performers who went to conservatories, entered the industry directly, or completed traditional degrees.
Digging In
His work tonight is to prepare for his interview tomorrow with Coach Martinez, his PE teacher, who's followed LeBron since his high school days. To learn facts about LeBron for the interview with Coach, he consults Perplexity and locates several interesting websites. He reads with interest and takes notes, documenting his sources.
Joseph anticipates the conversation as he writes down questions to ask the Coach. He's curious about what the coach knows about the adults in LeBron's life. He wonders how LeBron's mother felt, whether his coaches worried about his future, and what kind of pressure everyone put on a teenager making such a momentous decision.
It dawns on him that James's decision was a collective phenomenon. It wasn't just LeBron affected by the moment. How different his own situation is!
His father is a plumber, his mother passed away, and only one other person in his family went to college, an uncle who lives in California whom he doesn’t know well. His dad isn't pressuring him one way or the other.
Seizing the Day
Refocusing, he uses AI to help him brainstorm good questions for Coach, wanting to understand the Coach’s inside-the-head world, not public information. One theme the bot suggested intrigued him:
Ask the Coach if he was personally afraid for LeBron back in the day.
Ask what he would have said to Lebron.
Ask if he'd ever faced a similar situation with a player.
Ask Coach what his advice about college is for teen-agers today.
Seizing the Moment
The million-dollar question the bot suggested he hadn’t thought of sent a jolt of adrenaline through him: What about an athlete who skipped college, went into the NBA, and washed out? He would ask Coach Martinez, but he would also ask Perplexity.
Sebastian Telfair, he learns, skipped college and entered the NBA draft in 2004. Drafted 13th overall by the Portland Trail Blazers, he averaged only 6.8 points per game his rookie season with low shooting percentages.
According to several sources he found through Perplexity, analysts thought that skipping college deprived Telfair of learning under a college coach and maturing both on and off the court.
He clicked on another source, read, and felt the satisfaction of seeing clean through to the bottom of the matter. Lebron shows why college isn’t for everybody. Telfair makes the case for college.
Taking It to Heart
He imagines how terrifying it must have been for LeBron's family to trust their son's judgment against conventional wisdom. He imagines how embarrassed Telfair must have been when everyone expected so much of him.
He connects this to his own frustrations with adults who think they know what's best for teenagers.
Joseph begins to feel the power of being excited about this project. The writing feels purposeful because he's uncovering real stories rather than filling in blanks left by a prompt.
He loves how his group members are discovering different angles that will create a complete picture together.
Joseph envisions himself as a real journalist uncovering insights about decision-making, family pressure, and the courage to choose an unconventional path whether it’s college or something else.
For once, the writing assignment connects to something he truly wants to explore rather than something he has to endure.
The Parallel Breakdown
The connection between Leanne's migraine and Joseph's educational experience reveals the nature of consciousness and learning. Both scenarios show how external environments can either support or systematically undermine the natural functioning of the mind.
During her migraine, Leanne's consciousness shifts from active engagement—reading social cues, planning routes, making choices—to passive endurance: recoiling, struggling, fragmenting. The migraine doesn't just cause pain; it reorganizes how her mind can interact with reality.
She becomes a receiver rather than an agent.
Joseph's experience with prompt-driven assignments creates a remarkably similar internal state. The assigned essay prompt functions like Leanne's fluorescent lights: an external stimulus that triggers internal breakdown.
His mind shifts from active exploration to passive compliance or rebellion through AI use.
Both Leanne (with migraine) and Joseph (under institutional pressure) experience:
Loss of cognitive agency
Fragmented attention
Defensive rather than exploratory thinking
Passive reception rather than active engagement
Disconnection from their authentic capacities
But when Leanne's brain functions normally and when Joseph engages in authentic inquiry, we see consciousness operating as it should: fluidly, purposefully, with curiosity, precision, and control.
The implication is profound: external environments can create states that mirror pathological conditions even in healthy minds.
From Cognitive Control to Intellectual Community
Teachers cannot cure neurological conditions, but they can eliminate the institutional practices that create "cognitive migraines" in healthy minds. The key to reducing AI misuse lies not in better detection or stricter policies, but in refocusing on motivation and student commitment to meaningful work.
Traditional writing instruction focuses on prescribing cognitive gymnastics under the vague term "critical thinking," or on text production—on writing processes, text structures, voice lessons, paragraph and sentence structures.
This approach misses the point: students don't cheat because they're lazy or dishonest, but because institutional structures create states of cognitive dysfunction.
The transformation requires abandoning the illusion that learning happens through prescriptive control and embracing authentic intellectual community. Here are some specific steps to consider for making this shift.
Inviting Writers Like Joseph to Come Inside Out of the Cold
Replace Individual Compliance with Collaborative Inquiry. Instead of assigning discrete essays to individual students, create sustained group investigations where students pursue questions they genuinely want to answer. Joseph's engagement with LeBron's decision emerges from community purpose, not personal compliance.
Rethink Rubrics That Fragment Thinking. Rubrics often function as external tools for internal control—prescriptive frameworks that reduce complex human writing to mechanical checkbox completion. Replace them with community-generated criteria that emerge organically from each project's specific needs and audiences.
Create Authentic Stakes Beyond Grades. When Joseph writes for his class website about college alternatives, he participates in genuine discourse with real consequences for his community. Establish partnerships with local organizations, publish student research, or create peer-review processes where writing serves purposes beyond teacher evaluation.
Teach AI as a Community Research Tool. Show students how to integrate AI transparently into collaborative knowledge-building, as Joseph does when brainstorming interview questions. The goal isn't eliminating AI but demonstrating its ethical and intentional use within intellectual communities rather than as an escape from academic compliance.
Focus on Projects Requiring Human Experience. Design investigations that center on consciousness verbs—empathizing with LeBron's family pressure, imagining Telfair's embarrassment, seeking deeper understanding of Coaches and Teachers, wondering about teenage decision-making. These naturally resist AI substitution because they demand participation in forms of life that AI cannot access.
Build Sustained Communities of Practice. Move beyond individual assignments to sustained collaborations where students develop expertise together. When Joseph becomes his community's expert on athletes' college decisions, he contributes to collective understanding.
The Real Question
The question isn't whether AI can replicate consciousness verbs like wonder, doubt, or feel, but whether our educational institutions create the conditions where human consciousness can flourish. When that happens, AI becomes what it should be: a research tool within genuine intellectual community, not an escape route from educational dysfunction.
The path forward requires recognizing that learning, like consciousness itself, emerges from participation in meaningful communities where individual minds engage collectively with questions that matter.
Teachers who create such communities will find that the "AI problem" is at least partly diminished—not because they've controlled it away, but because they've made authentic engagement more compelling than find the path of least resistance.
When classroom environments support natural consciousness functioning—active engagement, purposeful inquiry, collaborative meaning-making—students are offered the chance to choose authentic participation. Under traditional conditions, students like Joseph see no other option but to choose resistance as they always have even before AI.
The solution to AI misuse isn't better surveillance or stricter rubrics or scripted assignments. It’s not about grading the process instead of the product. It's about creating educational environments where the human mind can do what it does best: wonder, explore, and make meaning in community with others.
Readers can easily find as much or as little information about migraines as they like through a google search. Perplexity, I find, works hand in glove with old fashioned googling. It also works as preparation for more effective talks with expert others.