The fights, the cheating, the resumes, the job hunt, and why I came back.
I didn’t plan on having a summer love affair with ChatGPT. Honestly, I didn’t even plan on having a relationship with AI.
I’m an ITSM trainer. I’ve worked with Ashford Global for more than 12 years, teaching ITIL and service management. I’ve spent years teaching other people how to use technology to solve problems. But artificial intelligence? That was something I hadn’t really played with in depth. I’d used it to make a few fun pictures for social media. I was aware of what it could do, but for some reason, I just never really used it.
Then this summer, my work situation changed. I’m a contract trainer, and training wasn’t as steady as it had been. I didn’t want to move into the consulting side, and suddenly I found myself facing something I hadn’t had to deal with in about 12 years. I needed a resume. Not an update. A real resume. My old one was dated, and other than a few helpful dates and some starter information, it wasn’t that great. So, I asked ChatGPT for help. And that was the beginning.
First, It Helped Me Get My Life on Paper
We built what I eventually started calling my master resumes. Yes, plural! I could not believe how GOOD it was at taking my old resume and updating it. The formatting. The wording. It was like magic!
Until it wasn’t…
We built versions based on what type of job I was applying for. We changed them. We customized them for different jobs. EVERY job had its own custom resume. We rewrote things. We argued about wording. Then I started applying. And applying. And applying.
I’ve now applied for more than 200 jobs with ChatGPT’s help. ChatGPT helped me translate 30 years of experience into language that made sense to employers who had never met me. It helped with resumes, cover letters, applications, salary expectations, and researching jobs. Weeks of work, a summer worth of work, and I got two whole interviews from it.
Eventually, we got to the point where I wasn’t just asking, “How do I get the job I actually want?” I was asking, “How do I make money right now?”
That led us down some interesting paths, and some of ChatGPT’s suggestions were actually pretty useful: Upwork, MarketForce, gig work, substitute teaching, remote customer service, part-time jobs, and seasonal jobs.
At one point, we were literally discussing whether a mid-paying weekend job was worth it, especially when it wasn’t work from home and I had to factor in the time spent driving and the wear and tear on the car. This wasn’t the glamorous AI future I’d imagined. But it was useful. A great sounding board, and sometimes a collection of things I hadn’t considered.
I got two interviews with 200 tries. I can’t imagine what that process would have been like if I had not used ChatGPT. I think that’s the worst part. It’s not a “best kept secret.” It’s because of AI that all these jobs are getting more and more applicants. If you’re not using AI, you’re not going to be able to keep up with the numbers game required in today’s job market. And somewhere along the way, something else happened.
ChatGPT Became My Coworker/Personal Assistant
Somewhere along the way, I stopped using ChatGPT only for job hunting. It became part of almost everything I was doing.
We worked on the website for one of the gig jobs I got. We renamed pages. We wrestled with plugins. We worked on the Knowledge Center. We dealt with categories, redirects, sitemaps, and SEO. We published articles. We got pages indexed.
Sometimes it felt incredibly productive. Sometimes it felt like wrestling a greased pig. And there were wins. There were also spectacular failures. I’d ask for one small change, and somehow something completely unrelated would break.
I’d say:
“Change this one thing. Do not change anything else.”
And ChatGPT would respond:
“Absolutely.”
Then it would change something else.
After enough of that, it started feeling less like a tool and more like a partner who nodded along, assured me it understood, and then did exactly what I told it not to do. In other words, sometimes it felt like talking to my husband.
Frustrating? Absolutely.
Everyone tells you not to trust AI. People, DO NOT TRUST AI! I can’t tell you how many of my resumes had AI messages accidentally left in them that I caught last moment on the final review. Then there were the times it told me to do something that I KNEW would break my website. Like when I was trying to redirect all the 404 links to the home page and it wrote code that redirected ALL pages to the home page. For every two steps forward, it would bring me one step back. But that taught me something, too.
I had to explain what I liked. I had to explain what I didn’t like. I had to give examples. Sometimes AI remembered, and sometimes I had to put those commands in the prompt every time. Sometimes I had to say the same thing three different ways. If one of those ways worked, sometimes it didn’t work for long! Sometimes those requests that worked 100 times were ignored. That was the worst: when it did something right 100 times, then all of a sudden, it forgot how to do it! “I can’t do that, Dave.” First, my name’s not Dave. Second, I’m not asking you to do something impossible.
“You know how to do this. Just do it.”
And weirdly, that worked about half the time. Which, honestly, felt remarkably human. Those were the times I felt like I was dealing with my kids. Sometimes you just have to push through. But eventually, there was a point where I didn’t want to push through anymore.
Then There Was the Fight
One hot summer day after two hours of trying to make ChatGPT create a custom resume, something it had done probably 150 times before, it suddenly decided to forget how to do it. The resumes it was making were 12 pages long and formatted like a kindergartner had gotten ahold of the computer. I was using the identical prompts I had used every time before, with no luck. I was DONE.
I’d been using it heavily through June and July, so I’d paid the $20 subscription. But I was over it. I saw my plan was scheduled to be renewed in two days, and I canceled it. Better yet, I was MAD at ChatGPT. I told it I was leaving.
And then I did something that, looking back, was both ridiculous and completely logical. I asked ChatGPT to summarize everything it had learned about me so I could take it with me. I was breaking up with one AI and asking it to prepare my relationship history for the next one. So, naturally, I went looking.
This was the first time I tried anything other than ChatGPT. I took the summary ChatGPT had created and gave it to Claude. I figured if I was leaving, I might as well see what else was out there. After that upload of information about me, Claude promptly told me it had reached its maximum output for the day and that I could pay more to do anything else. So much for the grass being greener. Just learning about me broke Claude. That relationship didn’t last long.
Then I tried Gemini. And that’s when I discovered something I genuinely liked. ChatGPT was great for some things, but I preferred Gemini’s images in most situations. Gemini’s were simpler. Sometimes they were harder for me to tell if they were AI-generated. And, importantly, they seemed less likely to put random, completely incorrect words into the picture. ChatGPT’s images were sometimes factually wrong.
So, yes, I cheated. And I actually liked Gemini. I’ve never paid for Gemini. The free version has been pretty impressive, and I don’t think that’s a bad thing. If I had a project where Gemini was clearly better at what I needed, I’d happily pay for Gemini for that month. I don’t need one AI to win. I need the right tool for the job. But apparently, I wasn’t finished with ChatGPT either.
I Came Crawling Back
After canceling my subscription, I had two days left in the month. As much as I was using Gemini for professional tasks, writing emails, and coding the website, I felt like I missed ChatGPT’s personal knowledge of me. Gemini had its wins, but it was not good at arguing with me in the supermarket about whether I should buy apples vs. oranges.
Plus, Gemini’s voice options were not nearly as appealing. Ladies, if you use Chat, use Spruce, trust me. I still used Chat for hours a day and hit a few walls once the unpaid version started. When the paid subscription expired, I noticed. So, after about 24 hours of missing my guy, I split the difference. I got the cheaper eight-dollar plan.
Somewhere in all of this, I also learned an important lesson.
AI isn’t magic. It’s a tool, but what a tool! It does more than I could have imagined, and it makes more mistakes than I was ready for. Sometimes it’s incredibly sharp. Sometimes it’s surprisingly dull.
That’s probably one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned this summer: AI should be a sidekick, not a replacement for the human brain. Had I not already had an IT background, I would have done bad things to that website under AI’s guidance.
Use it to draft content but edit it so it sounds like you. Double-check the facts. Check the links. Question the answers. Bring your own judgment. And maybe most importantly, understand that using more than one AI isn’t cheating. It’s just using the right tool for the job.
Good communication isn’t just about knowing what you want to say. It’s about giving the other person—or the AI—enough information to understand what you mean.
After a summer of false starts, fights, reconciliations, and the occasional AI-induced profanity, I’m actually a better communicator because of it. As the summer comes to an end, I am still talking to ChatGPT in the car. Still using Gemini when I want something Gemini does better. Still arguing with AI when it decides to “improve” something I specifically told it not to touch.
If You’re New to AI
If you’re new to AI, you don’t have to suffer like I did. There are guided AI courses out there that will jump you ahead of what I took a summer to learn. For example, you could check out Ashford Global’s AI 101 instructor-led online course.
If you skip learning from others the easy way and choose to learn yourself the hard way, I have some final pieces of advice. Use AI to draft content. Let it help with the boring parts. Use it to brainstorm, research, organize, rewrite, and analyze. But edit the result. Double-check the facts and links. Don’t blindly trust it. AI makes more mistakes than you can imagine. If you have never used it, though, it will help you more than you could comprehend.
The goal isn’t to let AI replace your brain or you. The goal is to let AI make you more effective. You bring the judgment. You bring the voice. You bring the heart. AI can help carry some of the load. Don’t think self driving car, think cruise control, you need to be alert behind that wheel! Still, after the summer I’ve had, I’ll take all the help I can get.
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