Advice to the New College Student in the AI Era
I’m writing late in the summer of 2026. At this point I’ve been using contemporary “agentic” AI systems — primarily Claude Code — intensively for about eight months. I’ve been programming for 40 years, yet this is easily one of the five or so most exciting programming technologies I’ve encountered. That’s the good news. But I am also an educator who cares deeply about my students and their future. I understand the stresses that they’re under, trying to prepare for a workplace that seems to be shrinking under massive threat from the very tools that have sparked so much joy for me. I also know that higher education is — not always unfairly — under threat, and we owe it to our consumers, and to society at large, to justify what we do. This is my attempt to reconcile these two forces. Even though I’m writing to everyone, I’m going to directly address you, the new college student. I’m going to start with an observation that many of us have had over the past few months: AI has been a tremend