What my AI camp acceptance really represents
When I first saw the email, I reread it.
Then I read it again.
From nearly 1,300 applicants, I had been selected, one of just 100 students, to attend the CCC AI Summer Camp at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
The surprise wore off quickly. What’s settled in is something deeper: gratitude—and a sense of responsibility.
This isn’t just about going to camp.
It’s something larger...a quiet confirmation that there’s room at the AI table for people like me.
People who don’t code, but still build. People who’ve spent years inside public systems...drawn more to logic than abstraction, yet still curious enough to imagine something more.
I used to think that if I didn’t speak in metaphors or live in the abstract, I wasn’t creative. That maybe I wasn’t wired for wonder, but just for getting things done.
I’ve always been the one who builds order, refines systems, and keeps operations from unraveling. That instinct is still my strength.
But recently, something’s been shifting.
It started with curiosity. A SkillBuilder course. A stray comment about whether AI could replace religion.
And suddenly, I found myself reaching beyond the known, not to become someone else, but to loosen my grip just enough to ask: what else might be possible?
This shift wasn’t a sharp turn.
It was more like a slow curve I only noticed halfway through.
It reminded me of a novel that once asked whether machines might shape belief itself. That no longer feels like fiction.
AI Camp isn’t just a training. It’s a signal.
A signal that public sector minds and nontraditional learners belong in these rooms.
I bring lived experience. I’ve used floppy disks. Managed fax machines. Worked through budget cuts, software upgrades, and staffing shortages. I know how exhausting change can be. I also know how necessary it is.
This isn’t about abandoning the systems we rely on.
It’s about expanding what those systems can hold.
We’ve done this before.
Paper files held up, until they couldn’t. Typewriters worked, until the work outgrew them. Progress isn’t about failure—it’s about capacity.
We’re at that same inflection point now.
And I want to be part of shaping what comes next.
Over the next few weeks, I’ll be documenting what I learn as I prep for camp. My next post is a crash-course bootcamp I built for myself, equal parts notebook, curiosity, and mild panic. I’m calling it A Treatise in One Night.
For now, I’m just sitting with the weight of this moment , and the scale of what it means to be one of the 100 invited.
From floppy disks to foundation models, the journey hasn’t been linear. It’s mine to carry forward. Still unfolding, still becoming.
AI-assisted, but human-approved, just like any good front office move. Chat GPT the sixth person off the bench editor for this post. Every take is mine.