From Snapchat to AI Superuser

How One Student Found Her Voice with AI

Key Takeaways (from the TLDR bot)

• Payton’s AI Journey Started Casually
  Like many students, Payton first used AI in a casual way on social media, but she grew into an advanced user through her English class.

• Curiosity and Openness Were Key
  Payton didn’t have prior experience with AI in academics, but her willingness to learn helped her become a confident and creative user.

• AI Boosted Her Confidence and Skills
  Engaging with AI tools helped her clarify her thoughts and take more ownership of her writing process, making her a stronger, more confident writer.

• She Became a Resource for Others
  Payton didn’t just use AI—she taught classmates and even professors how to use it well, showing how students can lead in AI literacy.

• Educators Should Embrace AI as a Tool
  Her story shows the value of treating AI as a partner in learning, and highlights the need for consistent, transparent instruction about AI in education.

When Payton Grond, a marketing and communications major at the College of Western Idaho, showed up to my English 102 class in Fall 2024, she had the same relationship to AI that a lot of first-year college students have: casual, mostly social, and vaguely amusing. “Very, very little,” she told me when I asked how much experience she had before taking my class. “Maybe just to talk with it, but nothing academic-wise.”

Her AI journey started like many others—with Snapchat’s built-in chatbot. It wasn’t something she thought of as a learning tool. It was just a fun distraction. But what happened next is the reason I wanted to interview her about her experiences: by the end of the semester, Payton wasn’t just using AI in her writing. She was teaching other students (and even some of her professors) how to prompt more effectively.

Payton became what I think of as a “superuser,” not because she had the most technical experience, but because she approached AI with curiosity, humility, and intention.

The Challenge: A Fully Integrated AI Course

My Fall 2024 courses were fully integrated with generative AI tools, using an OER textbook I am writing and revising. Before our class even started, I’d emailed students with a heads-up: this course includes generative AI. If that made them uncomfortable, they should probably choose a different section.

Payton remembered the email. “I was very excited,” she told me.

That enthusiasm carried her through learning the basics of Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, and later, exploring Gemini and NotebookLM in our English 199 course. She quickly noticed the differences among platforms—not just in what they could do, but in how she used them: ChatGPT for creativity, Copilot for structure, Gemini for deep dives. Though I personally don’t use Copilot much (if you’ve followed this blog for even half a minute, you know the love of my life is Claude.ai), I teach with it because my students all have access to this tool through their school email accounts, and it’s nice to have a common conversation and a level playing field when introducing AI.

But what struck me most about Payton’s AI use wasn’t her platform awareness—it was how she framed her use of AI tools in her writing. She didn’t think of it as a shortcut or a cheat code.

“You're still working if you're prompting,” she said. “You're the one who is ultimately deciding what gets put on the page.”

That’s the line I keep coming back to. For Payton, prompting is a kind of authorship. And if you’ve read student writing long enough, you know: Ownership of their process is everything.

AI and Confidence: A New Way to Write

One of the most important impacts of AI on Payton’s writing? Confidence.

Not because the models always gave her great responses (they didn’t), but because the back-and-forth process of interacting with them helped her to clarify her own ideas. When she used My Essay Feedback, our LMS-integrated tool that let students review and evaluate AI outputs (and auto-grades formative writing assessments, yay!), she found herself thinking more critically, not just about what she was writing, but about how she was writing.

And yes, Payton became an AI evangelist, sharing what she learned beyond our classroom. In a business applications class, where students were allowed to use AI to create content because they were being assessed on formatting requirements, not content creation, many of her classmates balked. “Isn’t that cheating?” they asked.

Payton and another student stepped in, not just to explain why it wasn’t cheating, but to show their professor how prompting worked. She ended up helping the class and the teacher—proof that students, given the tools and support, can be some of the best AI educators we’ve got.

I asked her if she thought we needed more formal AI instruction. “It should be taught,” she said. “Especially in high school.” She mentioned how disorienting it is for students who go from “absolutely no AI” rules to college classrooms where expectations vary wildly from course to course. Consistency, transparency, and a little room to play—that’s what makes the difference.

Now, in my experimental English 199 Writing with Artificial Intelligence course, Payton is building a custom writing bot and using NotebookLM to create a portfolio. She’s applying everything she learned in 102—and then some. And yes, she still likes the conversational prompts. Sometimes she just asks the bot, “Do you want to do this with me?” She says it makes the outputs better. (Honestly? Same. This is what Ethan Mollick means when he talks about treating AI like it’s human).

What Educators Can/Must Learn from our Paytons

Payton’s story is exactly the kind of case I wish more educators knew about. She didn’t come into college as an AI native. She didn’t have special training. What she did have was a willingness to learn, an open mind, and an instinct to treat AI like a partner, not a magic box. She didn’t see it as a threat to her creativity. She saw it as a tool to expand her voice and abilities.

This is exactly what I mean by “artisanal intelligence.” It’s not about the fanciest tools or the flashiest prompts. It’s about care, craft, and curiosity. And maybe, in Payton’s case, a little marketing savvy, too.

What about your students? Are they ready to use AI as a writing partner—or are they still stuck thinking it’s cheating? Have you found your own Paytons? Have you told your students that ChatGPT Plus is free for them through May, or that Claude is just $1? I’d love to hear what you’re seeing in your classroom. Let me know on Threads or Bluesky—and happy prompting.

Bonus Resource: Here’s a link to a CC BY NC slide deck for a presentation on AI that I gave to the NWCA Conference this Monday, April 14. Thanks again for the invitation! Feel free to use this template as a basis for your own presentation to students or faculty.

Postscript: A Disclosure Note about Process

MANY thanks to Payton Grond for taking the time to meet with me and share her experiences as a student using generative AI tools! Here’s an outline of my process in creating this blog:

1. Payton and I met on Zoom at 3:00 pm on April 16, 2025. We talked for about 15 minutes about her use of AI. I recorded the conversation with her permission.

2. Because my college has not enabled Zoom AI tools yet, I uploaded the audio file to my Otter.ai pro account at 3:30 pm. By 3:32 I had the complete transcript of our conversation, which I quickly reviewed for accuracy.

3. I fed the transcript into the Liza Long Persona Bot to write this blog post. I didn’t like the first two iterations, so I provided it with an example of one of my recent posts. The third iteration, which I used as a draft, is what I was looking for.

4. I read through the post and changed/edited things that felt too bland or inauthentic to my voice. Even the best trained bots can’t get it right 100% of the time! Reviewing the post for clarity, accuracy, and tone took me about 15 minutes. Writing the post from scratch would have taken me about 45 minutes with the AI-generated transcript.

5. While editing, I asked ChatGPT 4o to create an image to accompany the post. At first, it just gave me a description. I reminded it that it can create images (sigh). It created the image. I didn’t like it. It created another image (used above). Aside: I have *feelings* about this particular and ubiquitous illustration style. But I’ll save that for another post.

6. I used my TLDR bot to do the key takeaways.

7. I sent the draft to Payton to review at 3:55 pm. Payton sent me her approval at 4:45 pm.

9. I added links to resources and uploaded and published this Substack by my self-imposed 5:00 pm deadline.