There’s a quiet shift happening on campuses right now and it’s not just new buildings, risingtuition, or ever-changing majors. It’s something less visible, but arguably more impactful: the way students are experiencing university itself.

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AI (Artificial intelligence) tools are becoming part of everyday academic life. For many students, they’re as normal as Google Docs or lecture slides. And while AI can absolutely support learning, it’s also beginning to reshape the process of struggling, connecting, and growing that defines the university experience.

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It’s easier than ever to submit a polished and detailed assignment and get a reasonable grade without actively learning any information yourself. AI written assignments play into a false belief that students know the material, as long as you aren’t caught using AI, but this gap shows later. Whether it’s an exam or a real-life application of something you learned after completing your degree, information that you thought you learned and got a good grade for was never actually understood. This lack of knowledge is now being brought up in discussions surrounding AI and future doctors, would you feel comfortable with a doctor that used AI to complete their assignments?

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University is so classically known for late night study sessions, making friends in a study group, or asking the person beside you if they understood anything last lecture, these interactions are human and build relationships that could last a lifetime. So, what happens when you can ask AI questions and no longer need to ask a real person for help with homework or to fill in a blank in your knowledge? Over time, isolation builds. At first you just don’t participate in study groups, but soon you realize you don’t have any friends in any of your classes and you haven’t talked to anyone other than your parents on the phone for days. Without people to check in and hangout with, it can start to feel like you’re the only person struggling.

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What about those of us who choose not to use AI, though? The whole point of university is to struggle through the late-night essay writing and midterms but feel accomplished when you’re done and get to share everything you learned. From the outside, it can look like everyone is keeping up and going out every weekend, pulling off amazing grades and all their doing is paying for an AI subscription that teaches them all of the content and writes their papers for them. It can feel like you’re falling behind, even though you’re the one putting in real effort to learn, but in some ways the modern course set up gives AI users the upper hand. Professors are packing in more information, fewer papers, and more scantron sheets to accommodate what looks like students who are overachieving in less and less time.

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University is supposed build confidence, critical thinking, and a network of professors and peers who admire your accomplishments and endured it with you. If you’re feeling unsure of what you know, disconnected from your peers, or constantly behind, you’re not the only one. Talking it through with a counsellor helped me make sense of the same things over the past two years of my degree and helped me find a way to manage it all.