TL;DR: I got into Stanford's Code in Place, the free intro-to-coding course I'd wanted for a long time, and I'm stepping away the day before my first section. This year I've said yes to almost every free hackathon, event, and program I could reach. Saying no to this one stung, and it got me wondering how long all this free stuff lasts.
The email came on October 7.
Congratulations! We were impressed with your application! This is a formal invitation to join Code in Place X as a student.
I was so, so, so excited. Code in Place is a free, intro-to-coding course from Stanford, and I had been looking for something like it for a long time. I picked my section time before onboarding closed. I started the lessons: if statements, while loops, a program called Secret Code, another called Wholesome Machine. I got through about three quarters of week one.
Tonight, the day before my first section, I wrote back.
Unfortunately, I won't be able to participate in this cohort. Is there a way to delay my start for the next cohort or would I need to re-apply?
I don't have an answer yet.
This one was the thing I wanted
I've shipped a lot this year without writing the code by hand. But I can only check what I can read, and I can't read all of it yet. I wrote about that gap in I Wrote the Code This Time. Does It Count If the Answer Was Wrong?
I've tried to close it before. I passed the Python basics on DataCamp. But a lesson lets me follow along. Code in Place has weekly sections where I would have had to show what I learned. That's accountability, and accountability is the part I have the hardest time giving myself.
So I'm bummed. Not "valuable lesson" bummed. Just bummed.
The weight showed up all at once
Today, for the first time, I stopped and looked at everything on my plate.
| What | When |
|---|---|
| My day job, running court operations for the county | Monday - Friday |
| AWS AI & ML Scholars nanodegree | Through the end of October |
| HR course at Calbright College, portfolio due | Through November |
| Code in Place, first section | Wednesday |
| LA Tech Week hackathon | Thursday |
| My talk for Los Angeles and Riverside Superior Court staff | Friday |
| Another hackathon (waitlisted) | Saturday |
Learning Python on top of that didn't feel responsible. It didn't feel reasonable either.
The talk on Friday is about how frontline court staff can lead AI work. One slide is called "What I'd Do Again," and the last item on it is "stopping when the evidence says stop." I wrote that about AI pilots. Tonight it was about me.
Not every no has been mine
Earlier this year I got accepted into the Graduate Certificate in Artificial Intelligence for Business at UMass Amherst's Isenberg School of Management. I didn't get the AAUW scholarship that would have paid for it, and I couldn't do the program without it. Accepted, and still not going.
That no came from the money. This one came from me. It's the first time I've had to be the one who says it.
Almost everything this year was free
Look back at my posts from this year and you'll see a lot of rooms I got to be in. Here are three.
| Event | Month | What someone else covered |
|---|---|---|
| Code with Claude Extended SF | May | A lottery "golden ticket," a packed room, talks and hands-on workshops |
| AMD Advancing AI 2026 | July | Free registration, the Moscone Center, lunch, keynotes, workshops |
| Build with Gemini Sunnyvale | September | Google's campus, a three-hour build lab, Google Cloud speakers, swag |
What I paid at every one of those: my time and my travel. That's it.
Every event in that table took a room, staff, and a budget. None of that is free to the people running it. It's a lot of infrastructure, and somebody signs off on the bill.
My tin foil hat says the well runs dry
Here's my suspicion, and I want to be clear it's a suspicion, tin foil hat firmly on. It looks to me like companies are spending a lot right now to get curious attendees into a room with their tools. I imagine at some point shareholders ask what they got for it. If they do, I think the free stuff gets smaller.
That's a feeling, not a forecast. But it's been driving a lot of my yeses. If the well might dry up, drink while it's flowing. I wasn't counting what each yes drew from me.
Which made me ask the question I should have asked months ago. Why are they doing this?
My guess is they want those attendees picking their tools. I think that's a fair trade. I came to learn, experiment, and explore, and I did every time.
Code in Place is the first time the math stopped working. A hackathon takes a weekend. A course takes every week.
The price of the opportunities didn't change. My capacity to pay that price did.
Free still costs time, and this week I don't have any left.
What happens now
I'm leaving Python alone until things calm down. After Friday's talk, and once Scholars wraps at the end of the month, I'll have more headspace. I asked about the next cohort. If I have to reapply, I'll reapply.
If you've said no to a free thing you wanted, I'd like to hear how you made the call.
Is the well drying up, or am I just tired?
Maybe both.
Written with AI assistance in October 2026. The suspicion about the well is mine, not a prediction.
AI Assisted. Human Approved. Powered by NLP.
Top comments (11)
I always like your visual creativity and your simple communication, the image is instant tell the core of your story!
When I look back I also feel some outer pressure, but thanks to Lord somehow I can survive and finally I'm able to communicate my exsistencial jurney in 10 sec:
TS + |> to hack JS
because that is show, how can I balance in those two well + real world activity.
Thank you, Peter. I’m glad the image worked for you. Thank you for sharing your own journey, and I’m glad you made it through the pressure. Your list shows how you balance both wells and the real world, with the house and the code side by side.
"Free still costs time, and this week I don't have any left." That line is the whole post. Your subconscious decides what you notice through a filter called the RAS, and when it's been fed a year of "drink while the well is flowing," it gets very good at spotting the next free room and terrible at spotting when your plate is already full. So every invitation starts to feel like a countdown instead of a choice. Writing back and stepping away the day before section one was new data going in. The filter does not calm down because you found a safer calendar. It calms down because you took one clear action that proved you can protect your capacity without the world ending.
You already wrote the slide for Friday: stop when the evidence says stop. That was the mission. Keep feeding the filter outside the work too. Genuine compliment to a stranger. When that is easy, add a bit of conversation. Does not matter how it lands. The action is the win. When one room gets easy, find a harder one. Good luck with the talk and the reapply.
Appreciate the luck with the talk and the reapply. Yes, the signs of being terrible at spotting when my plate is full have fully arrived. And you got me, quoting my own slide back to me. Stop when the evidence says stop. This time I had to take my own advice. “Protect your capacity without the world ending” stuck with me. It’s the first time I’ve put on the brakes, so I’m still figuring out what that means. And maybe, I can contemplate not figuring it out at all!
Thank you, Earl. Putting on the brakes the first time always feels strange, because the filter has spent a year treating every open door as something you'll lose. Not figuring it out is a fine answer. You protected your capacity this week and nothing fell apart, and that's the new data. Rest up and enjoy the talk.
Thanks @christopher_jakob_acda8fa !
the line about the talk slide saying "stopping when the evidence says stop" and then applying it to yourself the same week is the part that landed. curious whether you asked for a later Code in Place cohort before declining, or decided the whole plate had to lose something that day either way.
Hi @posting-dude Yes, I did ask for a later cohort for Code in Place. If I don't get a response I'll keep my eye out for their next recruitment and will reapply again.
I think the well will probably change before it dries up. Companies may keep funding hackathons and tool-specific events because those are relatively easy ways to get developers experimenting with their products. Long-term learning is a different investment, though.
Your point about not being able to read all the code AI produces really stood out to me. A weekend hackathon might help you ship a prototype, but building enough Python knowledge to debug it, question its assumptions, and maintain it without relying entirely on AI takes sustained effort.
At some point, choosing one learning path and actually finishing it might be worth more than collecting five more opportunities. The hard part is that saying no to something genuinely valuable can feel like losing progress, even when you're making room to go deeper.
Thank you for this. Good point about the pivot. The well might change before it dries up. Most of what I’ve done at these events is experiment, and that’s different from going deep or building real expertise in one subject.
The one learning path part is where I’m stuck. I don’t know if the path is the traditional one, reading code well enough to spot the bugs, or the newer one where knowing the tools well is what counts. Probably a little of both, and that’s what confuses me about where to start.
Your table makes the recurring commitment stand out: a weekend event ends, while a course needs space every week. The piece I'd want to preserve for the next cohort is the weekly section, since you identified accountability—not access to another set of lessons—as what was missing. Would choosing which current commitment ends before accepting the next course make the decision easier? That seems more concrete than deciding whether the supply of free opportunities will last.