JMoore

I’ve spent years watching students wrestle with the chaos of university life—late-night study sessions in dimly lit dorms, the panic of looming deadlines, and the existential dread of tackling complex topics that seem to laugh in the face of easy answers. As someone who’s been in the trenches of academia, both as a student and a mentor, I’ve seen the rise of tools like EssayBot, Grammarly’s AI writing assistant, and other so-called “essay generators” that promise to make writing papers a breeze. But let me tell you something straight up: when it comes to advanced university-level topics, EssayBot is like a high school freshman trying to bluff their way through a PhD seminar. It just doesn’t cut it.
The Allure of the Quick Fix

Let’s be real. College is brutal. You’re juggling five courses, a part-time job at the campus coffee shop, and a social life that’s hanging on by a thread. The idea of an AI tool that can churn out a paper on, say, Judith Butler’s theories of performativity or the socioeconomic impacts of gentrification in Brooklyn sounds like a gift from the gods. I get it. I’ve been there, staring at a blank Word document at 2 a.m., praying for a miracle. EssayBot markets itself as that miracle—a slick, automated solution that promises coherent essays in minutes. But here’s the rub: it’s a mirage.
Back in 2023, I was mentoring a group of juniors at NYU, and one of them, let’s call her Sarah, decided to test EssayBot for a paper on postcolonial theory in Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart. She was skeptical but desperate. The result? A 1,200-word ai essay maker that read like a Wikipedia page had a baby with a thesaurus. It was grammatically correct, sure, but it missed the nuance of Achebe’s critique of colonial power structures. It didn’t engage with Frantz Fanon’s work or even mention the concept of hybridity. Sarah ended up rewriting the whole thing herself, cursing EssayBot’s name at every turn.
Where EssayBot Falls Flat

So, what’s the deal? Why does EssayBot struggle so hard with the kind of topics you’d encounter in a 300-level seminar? Let me break it down. I’ve spent enough time dissecting AI tools and talking to students to know the weak spots.
Here’s what EssayBot can’t do when the going gets tough:

• Grasp Contextual Nuance: Advanced topics require you to understand the historical, cultural, or theoretical context. EssayBot can string together sentences about, say, quantum mechanics, but it doesn’t get the philosophical debates around Schrödinger’s cat or the implications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in a way that a physics major at MIT would need for a term paper.
  
• Synthesize Primary Sources: If you’re writing about Hannah Arendt’s concept of the “banality of evil” for a political theory course, you need to dig into her original texts, not just regurgitate secondary sources. EssayBot leans heavily on surface-level summaries, often pulling from generic websites rather than peer-reviewed journals or books.
  
• Engage in Critical Analysis: University-level work isn’t about summarizing; it’s about arguing. EssayBot can’t craft a thesis that challenges existing scholarship or weaves together disparate ideas. It’s like asking a calculator to write poetry—it’s not built for that kind of heavy lifting.
  
• Adapt to Specific Guidelines: Every professor has their quirks. Dr. Thompson at UCLA might want Chicago-style citations with a focus on primary texts, while Professor Rivera at Columbia might demand a comparative analysis with a 10-source minimum. EssayBot’s one-size-fits-all approach can’t handle that level of customization.

I saw this firsthand when a student at UC Berkeley tried using EssayBot for a paper on machine learning ethics in 2024. The topic required discussing real-world case studies, like the ethical dilemmas in Google’s Project Maven. EssayBot produced a generic essay about AI ethics that didn’t even mention Maven or cite any of the IEEE’s ethical guidelines. The student got a C- and a stern note about “shallow analysis.”
The Numbers Don’t Lie

Let’s talk data for a second. A 2024 survey I came across from the Chronicle of Higher Education found that 68% of college students who used AI writing tools like EssayBot reported dissatisfaction with the output for upper-level courses. That’s not a small number. Another study from Stanford’s Education Department showed that AI-generated essays scored, on average, 15% lower than human-written ones when graded by professors in humanities and social sciences. The gap wasn’t just about grammar—it was about depth, originality, and critical engagement.
When I was helping a group of students at the University of Chicago prep for their capstone projects, one of them ran an experiment: they fed the same prompt about Foucault’s concept of biopower into EssayBot, ChatGPT, and their own brain. The human-written essay got an A; the AI ones barely scraped by with Cs. The professor’s feedback was brutal: “The AI essays lack intellectual curiosity and fail to engage with the material on a meaningful level.”
The Emotional Toll of Relying on AI

Here’s where I get a bit introspective. There’s something deeply disheartening about pouring your faith into a tool like EssayBot, only to realize it’s let you down. I remember talking to a student, Mike, at a coffee shop in Ann Arbor last year. He was a senior, stressed out of his mind, trying to write a paper on the intersection of climate change and indigenous land rights. He turned to EssayBot because he was drowning in deadlines. The output was so generic it didn’t even mention the Standing Rock protests or the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. Mike felt betrayed—not just by the tool, but by his own decision to rely on it. He told me, “I felt like I cheated myself out of learning something real.”
That’s the kicker. University isn’t just about getting the grade; it’s about wrestling with ideas, getting frustrated, and coming out the other side with a deeper understanding. EssayBot robs you of that struggle. It’s like hiring someone to lift weights for you—you might get the result, but you’re not building any muscle.
What’s the Alternative?

So, if EssayBot isn’t the answer for advanced topics, what is? I’m not going to pretend there’s a magic bullet, but here’s what I’ve seen work for students over the years:

• Start Early and Break It Down: Tackle complex topics by breaking them into smaller questions. For example, if you’re writing about Judith Butler, start with: What is performativity? How does it apply to gender? What are the critiques? This helps you avoid getting overwhelmed.
  
• Use Primary Sources: Go straight to the source material. If you’re at Yale, use the library’s access to JSTOR or Project MUSE. Read the original texts, not just SparkNotes or AI summaries.
  
• Talk It Out: Find a study group or a TA and hash out your ideas. I used to host late-night discussion sessions at the University of Michigan, and students always left with clearer arguments than when they started.
  
• Leverage AI for Structure, Not Content: If you must use AI, use it for outlining or brainstorming, not for writing the whole paper. Tools like Grammarly can help with grammar, but don’t let them think for you.

The Bigger Picture

Here’s the thing: EssayBot’s struggles aren’t just about its limitations as a tool. They’re a symptom of a bigger issue in how we approach education. We’re so obsessed with efficiency—hacking the system, getting the A with minimal effort—that we forget why we’re in college in the first place. It’s not about churning out papers; it’s about learning to think critically, to question, to argue. Tools like EssayBot promise a shortcut, but they deliver a dead end.
I think back to a conversation I had with a professor at Harvard in 2022. She was frustrated, not because students were using AI, but because they were using it to avoid the hard work of thinking. “If you outsource your brain,” she said, “you’re not just cheating the system—you’re cheating yourself.” That stuck with me. EssayBot might get you through a 100-level English class, but when you’re grappling with advanced topics—whether it’s quantum entanglement, postcolonial literature, or ethical AI—it’s not going to hold your hand. And honestly? That’s a good thing. Because the struggle is where the real learning happens.