I did the course I'd have told you to skip
I learn by building. I've said it in both entries so far, a little smugly. So there's something funny about #003 being a certificate, the most school-shaped thing there is.
It's Anthropic's AI Fluency course, framework and foundations. Exactly the kind of thing my instinct says to skip in favour of just making something.
I did it anyway, for one reason. Building teaches you how, but it doesn't always teach you why. I can wire up an API call and get a result back without always being able to say why that's the right shape, or what I'm not seeing. A course won't make me an engineer, but it might stop me building confidently on top of something I've quietly misunderstood.
It was more useful than I expected. Not because it taught me to build, it didn't, but because it gave names to things I'd been doing by feel, and pointed at gaps I didn't know were there. It's hard to be wary of a blind spot you can't see.
So that's one certificate down. It isn't proof I can do the work, that comes next with something built. It's more that I'm willing to do the unglamorous half too.