September isn’t just a month on the calendar; it also holds three personal memories.

No matter how happy my childhood summer vacations were, I dreaded the day after Labor Day, when all Ohio public schools reopened for a new term. Always, about a week before school started, nervousness and sleeplessness tormented me. Freedom was gone. Expectations to maintain the honor roll, and peer pressure tossed me about. My school load was full with Advanced Placement (AP) classes in science, math, English literature, history, plus art, a required foreign language, and music participation in the school orchestra. I had homework coming out of my ears, because academic report cards were issued every six weeks. Help with projects were the public and school libraries, a set of home encyclopedias, and issued school books. There was no AI, computer, or clever thoughts of cheating. Student prospect aimed high, and the Board of Education guidelines even higher for teachers. Thought process was the old-fashioned way—your mind.  No calculators. Mathematic formulas explained your solutions, concise-well-thought-out essays were written, and logic tested came without the help of ChatGPT. I knew how to write (in cursive) my name, compose a comprehensive sentence, and read many of the classics for literature homework, or for my own pleasure.

I think many students today find it easier to turn on their computer and asked AI a question and accept that answer, rather than do the work needed to derive at a solution.  I’ve read many articles suggesting the schools are graduating students with low academic scores.

A New York Times reporter once wrote:

“As a parent, one of the scariest things about AI is how pervasive it has already become in my children’s lives. Kids are not only using AI to answer questions. They’re using it to identify which questions to ask.” Katrin Bennhold

Another day in September is 9/11, which happens to be the day before my birth date. It’s been twenty-five years since that fatal terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, Pentagon, and the brave passenger suicide-induced plane crash in Pennsylvania (stopping the terrorists from crashing into the Capitol). Like with the assassination of Kennedy and King, I remember actually what I was doing. I watched the televised New York City 25th Anniversary 9/11 Commemoration, and felt, even though connected for the past seven years to Europe, a tremendous sadness overcome me.  I remember years ago when I was in New York, a dear friend, Lance Phllips, took us to The World Trade Center. It was an impressive, architectural feat of two buildings. I still have the pictures I took with my camera. Sad, years later: lung cancer and COPD diseases are prevalent because of that day’s air quality. Also, tremendous depression from the lives buried beneath the concrete and steel has never subsided.

The last September date is September 30th, my parents’ wedding anniversary. Both my parents are dead, but that date gives me pause to thank them for instilling many of the values, who I am today.

We all have moments. Things and life changes, but I believe what we lived through is still worth the reflection.