AI Academy Diaries #1 Confessions of a Content Marketer Learning AI

Pleased to meet you, I’m Emily. 👋 

Like many professionals over the last few years, I’ve watched the landscape change dramatically with the introduction of AI. It arrived like a colossus, seemingly changing everything overnight and leaving a trail of panic, confusion, and terrible AI-generated posters in its wake.

I run a content marketing business, and over the last few years, my role has probably felt the impact of AI more than most. Suddenly, everyone can write a decent caption, blogs can appear at the push of a button, and social media graphics can be created from a single prompt. For a while, it felt like the profession I’d spent years developing had been handed out as a free software update.

It would have been easy to rebel against it.

Instead, I’ve realised that when I combine my experience with AI, I can create something that’s better than either of us could produce on our own. AI is brilliant at organising my thoughts, helping me plan, summarising research, and nudging those awkward sentences over the finish line. What it can’t do is read the room, pick up on those subtle, wonderfully human nuances that make someone stop scrolling and actually feel something.

And, perhaps most importantly, it’s never going to be funnier than me. Trust me, I’ve tested it. 

So, AI and I have come to an understanding.

It’s my organiser, my researcher, my foil, and my straight man. I’m the unreasonable talent. 😅

Solvaa AI Academy

I use AI all the time, but if I’m being honest, I’ve never really learned it from the ground up. The little toe I’ve dipped into the AI pool has already improved my work exponentially, so when Solvaa launched their AI Academy, I thought, “Why not see what happens if I stop paddling and actually jump in?”

Better still, I’m taking you with me.

This is the first entry in my AI Academy Diaries, where I’ll be sharing what I’m learning, the misconceptions I’m leaving behind, the moments that make everything click, and the inevitable occasions where I realise I’ve been doing something the hard way all along.

Solvaa’s AI Readiness Assessment

The first stop was completing my AI Readiness Assessment to find out where I currently sit on my AI journey, identify my capability gaps, and discover which learning pathways would be the most relevant to my role.

One of the things I really like about Solvaa AI Academy is that it isn’t a one-size-fits-all library of hundreds of videos, leaving you thinking “where do I start”. Each person’s learning plan is  personalised, meaning every individual receives the most relevant training that actually fits their current level of experience and what they do in their role and department.

In other words, there’s absolutely no chance of your marketing team sitting through a lesson on AI for accounting… which, speaking as a content marketer, I’m incredibly grateful for. 

My First AI Academy Learning Journey

My assessment identified the AI Foundations Learning Journey as the most relevant for me to start with. Let’s delve into what this entails and what I took from it. 

AI Foundations

I started where every good Learning Journey should start: with solid foundations.

One of the best aspects of the AI Foundations Learning Journey is that, instead of requiring you to sit through marathon training sessions, it’s structured into groups of weekly lessons that take no more than an hour to complete. Within each lesson, the learning is broken down into bite-sized content, with each presentation,  video, audio or interactive activity lasting just 5–15 minutes. This makes it easy to fit training around your schedule while building your knowledge at a manageable pace.

As someone whose to-do list is more of a prayer to the time gods, I found it surprisingly easy to fit into my week without feeling like another task on an already overflowing to-do list.

The AI Foundations Learning Journey is exactly what it says on the tin. It starts by answering the question I think a lot of us are asking: How do I start learning AI when I already feel behind? Which, let’s be honest, is hardly surprising when AI seems to update itself almost as often as the UK has a new Prime Minister.

My Biggest “Aha!” Moment

One of the biggest things I took away from this lesson was a brand-new mantra. Whenever I catch myself feeling intimidated by AI, I’m going to rebrand my FEAR:

F – Face
E – Everything
A – And
R – Rise

It’s a mindset I know I’ll keep coming back to whenever the AI world starts moving faster than I can keep up with.

More importantly, the AI Foundations Learning Journey reminded me that AI is new to all of us. Nobody woke up one morning with an encyclopaedic knowledge of large language models, prompt engineering, and automation. We’re all learning, and we don’t need to master every tool overnight.

In fact, one of the most empowering messages was to stop chasing every shiny new AI tool and start getting really good at one. Which leads me to another new mantra: JOMO – the Joy of Missing Out.

While LinkedIn is busy telling us we’re already behind, that we must try the latest AI tool, and that the world will end if we don’t automate absolutely everything by next Tuesday, this Learning Journey took a much calmer approach.

Have an open mind. Pick one tool. Learn it well. Build confidence. Then move on.

It sounds simple, but in a world full of AI panic and endless hype, it was genuinely refreshing to be reminded that learning isn’t a race. A balanced approach was exactly the breath of fresh air I didn’t realise I needed.

This Learning Journey also introduced me to the history of AI, and one of my favourite takeaways was realising that AI really is standing on the shoulders of giants. Long before ChatGPT burst onto the scene, there were decades of research, breakthroughs, setbacks, and brilliant minds laying the foundations for where we are today.