It is 2025—if you’re not using AI to filter out the mess of your life, girl, what are you doing? Let’s work smarter, not harder, to balance the chaos we call life.
Now, full disclaimer: AI isn’t your fix-all. It requires effort to use effectively, but effort tends to get ignored. That’s why, come exam day, the test feels like it’s squaring up with you.
AI can be an invaluable tool; to mirror, correct, and help organize your chaos. It’s not just something to pass your calculus test. This guide will show you how to talk to our new overlord in a way that it will understand, help organize your buzzing thoughts into actual steps, and how to check if you’re overusing AI.
Phase 1: The Madness
Firstly, we need to get the chaos out of your mind and into the cloud (and honestly, I still have no clue what the cloud actually is, but I like to imagine that’s where the AI gods live). In other words, spill the tea, sis. Tell the chat bot your goals for the day, the week, the month, even the whole year. Whatever you want. Just get it out of your head and onto virtual paper. But first, let me teach you how to prompt AI properly so you can turn your brain stew into a gourmet dish.
Whatever system you use, whether it is Claude, ChatGPT, or Gemini, it needs to know who you are so it can understand what angle you are coming from. For example, if you prompt the AI by saying, “What should I eat?” with no context, it is going to give you an incredibly generic answer. If you give it context about who you are and why you are asking, the response becomes sharper and more useful. Here is an example of what I mean:
Lame, sad, uninspired prompt:
“Make me a schedule where I have time to work out, cook, study, and go to practice.”
Amazing, magical, freaky good prompt:
“I’m a full-time college student who works weekends and plays on the volleyball team (practice Tuesdays and Thursdays). I need a weekly schedule that balances schoolwork, workouts, cooking, and dorm chores. My energy dips after work, but spikes after volleyball practice. I also visit my mom every other week on my day off. Build me a realistic schedule that protects study time, leaves room for rest, and adapts to these energy patterns.”
See the difference? The first prompt will give you a generic schedule that could fit anyone’s week. The second one digs into your actual life and gives the AI parameters to work around. A little hack I like is to add details about my energy levels or the stress of certain tasks so the AI can take those into consideration. Save it in your AI’s memory or add it to the start of every chat so it knows who you are and what your back story is and it’s not starting from zero.
Phase 2: The Methods
That is step one: moving from noob to novice at communicating with AI. Now let us figure out where we can apply this in your life.
Let’s get into the meat and potatoes of what AI can do for you by categorizing your chaos. I like to break my life down into three parts: school, work, and lifestyle. You can break your life into whatever little pieces work for you. Once you establish your pie chart of a life, start breaking it down into the “admin work” and problem areas in each part of your life. For now, I’m going to focus on school, since it feels like all problems and papers. Here are some useful ways to use AI in a hot girl way and not in a “I cheat the system and got my degree but I have no clue what I’m doing” kind of way.
• Your own personal tutor: The type of tutor that doesn’t make you feel like the dumbest person alive for asking how to solve the same problem an embarrassing number of times. This is my favorite way to use AI, especially with ADHD. Too many filler words or over-explanations cloud my brain. AI gets straight to the point. Instead of trying to reteach the entire problem, I show it my work, explain my steps, and then ask where I went wrong.
Example: “I’m working on this math problem and I keep getting stuck. Here are my steps so far: [insert your work]. Please point out exactly where I went wrong, explain the mistake clearly, and then show me the correct way to solve it without reteaching the entire chapter.”
• “Body” Double: I like to use the voice chat option for this. Explain a concept to the AI (accompanied with notes from lecture), and “teach” the topic to it. The AI will listen and give me feedback on what I missed, what I got right, and what needs work. This kind of goes hand in hand with the tutor function, but I’ll give it its own bullet point because I believe this chat feature on ChatGPT is severely underutilized. Now I don’t have to bother my sweet, sweet puppy dog with Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism, and honestly, I don’t think he was grasping it.
Example Prompt: “I’m going to explain a concept from my philosophy class—Bentham’s theory of utilitarianism— using my lecture notes. Act like a professor who is listening to my explanation. After I finish, tell me what I got right, what I misunderstood, and what I left out. Then, give me one follow-up question I should be able to answer if I really understand the topic.”
• Plan your assignments: Input your assignments manually or upload syllabus and have the AI schedule them in order of importance, energy levels, due dates, anything you want. You can ask it to create a spreadsheet of your now organized assignments list and add it to your calendar app without manually having to put in every assignment.
Example Prompt: “I’m uploading my class syllabus. Please create a weekly assignment schedule that organizes tasks by due date and importance, while also taking into account that I have the most energy in the mornings and less in the evenings. Format the schedule as a CSV file I can import into Google Calendar so I don’t have to manually enter each assignment.”
• Proofread and critique: Ask AI to proofread your work and judge your writing in an objective way. Input the rubric for an essay and ask the AI if you’re on the mark. If you’re writing a fantasy story, ask if the magic systems make sense. For anything you’ve been looking at for too long and now feels like mush, throw it to the AI and let it refocus, clear up, and help move you forward.
Example Prompt: “I’m pasting my essay draft below along with the grading rubric from my professor. Please proofread my work, point out grammar and clarity issues, and then tell me how well I meet each category of the rubric. Be objective, not nice. If I’m missing something, tell me exactly what it is and how to fix it.”
Phase 3: The Check-in
We’ve got you on speaking terms with the AI, and you’ve even made your first move. Now it’s time to check in with yourself and see if you’re actually ready for the relationship.
AI should be your assistant, your compadre, your homegirl—not your cheat code. Some of y’all move like a codependent lover with no job, and that girl, we just can’t do. Here’s how to keep yourself in check and make sure AI stays your homegirl, not your crutch.
Red Flags:
- You don’t know what any of your notes mean.
- You don’t read the original assignment.
- You let AI write for you.
- You only use AI to study, with no sourced information.
Green Flags:
When using AI, keep the mindset that it’s a tool, not a fix all. The AI isn’t going to stop you from being lazy—you have to know the difference between asking for clarity and just asking for shortcuts. Integrity is required if you want to be a baddie, and that’s just fact; I don’t make the rules.
- You quiz yourself.
- You edit the edits AI gives you.
- You ask AI not to hand over answers.
- You actually read your material.
So go forth in your AI chats a bit wiser, with more in control, and just as equipped as you were before you ever touched it. Because at the end of the day, you always had the ability; now you’ve got the tools to sharpen it.
