First day back in a classroom

In January I started the Breakthrough Social Enterprise course. First day back in a classroom in years, and I walked in knowing precisely nothing about AI — a bus driver among people who at least seemed to know what they were doing.

What scared me was simple: being too far behind to catch up. Tech felt like a country everyone else had grown up in. I'd spent my working life somewhere with a steering wheel, and I was fairly sure the first exercise would expose me.

What surprised me was how quickly that fear went quiet. The tools have changed — you describe what you want, in English, and iterate. The skill isn't memorising syntax; it's being clear about what you're trying to do. And if driving buses teaches you anything, it's staying methodical while everything around you is chaos.

By the end of the month I'd stopped feeling like an impostor in the classroom and started feeling like a beginner — which sounds the same, but is the opposite. An impostor doesn't belong; a beginner just hasn't finished yet.