When Friday afternoon ended, I sat down and took a deep breath. Week 1 was in the books. Over five days, we covered AI terminology, basic Python, APIs, and prompt engineering. Technically speaking, I didn't learn many brand-new coding concepts because I had already spent months self-learning and building these things on my own. But being inside an actual company for a full week taught me something much bigger.
The Corporate Loop is Exhausting
Experiencing the daily 9-to-5 routine firsthand was eye-opening. Waking up early to an alarm, dealing with the commute, sitting under fluorescent office lights, commuting back home in the evening completely wiped out, crashing on your bed from exhaustion, and waking up to repeat it. It made me realize why so many smart people stop building cool projects after getting a job: the routine drains all your creative energy.
True innovation doesn't happen when you are just checking boxes to fill eight hours. It happens when you are in flow state, building something you care about because you are genuinely excited.
The 'Majority Wins' Rule
Watching the classroom dynamics made me think about peer pressure and environments. I started calling it the 'Majority Wins' rule: if you take one highly driven person and put them in a room with 99 people who just want to do the bare minimum, the room will treat the driven person like they are the crazy one. Over time, that driven person's ambition gets dragged down to match the crowd.
That is why who you spend your time with matters so much. If everyone around you thinks writing a 50-line script is an impossible mountain, your own standards start dropping. You have to aggressively find people who move fast, build real products, and make your best effort feel like their normal Tuesday.