How to Climb

Start to finish, in order. Four or five hours, spread over as long as you like.

The Ladder

Fifteen exercises on this site. Where the work happens.

The worksheet

A PDF you print or type into. Where you write down what happened. Nobody reads it.

The application

One online form, at the end. What you turn in. A person reads it.

Before you start

Five minutes.

  1. Download the worksheet. Get it here — print it, or keep it open on your computer.
  2. Open whatever AI you use. ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, any of them. The free versions are fine.

As you climb

Fifteen times, at your own pace. There is no schedule.

  1. Do the exercise on the Ladder page. Copy the grey starter box into your AI, and replace anything in [square brackets] with your own.
  2. Fill in three lines on the worksheet, right then. Where you saved it, what you kept in a sentence, and your judgment. A minute.
  3. The judgment line is the one that counts. It is the only part the AI cannot write for you, and it is what you will be quoting later.

At the end of each rung

Five times — once after every third exercise.

  1. Pick the one exercise that taught you most, and write down why. The application asks for exactly this, and it is much harder to answer three weeks later.

When all fifteen are done

Only if you are applying to be an Ambassador.

  1. Write your calibration memo. One to two pages. One argument about the whole climb, not a recap of each rung. The four questions are on the last page of the worksheet.
  2. Walk one person through Exercise 01. Sit with them while they do it themselves — never touch their keyboard. Note what they said while they were doing it — their words, not your summary. Anything that surprised you: a hesitation, a question you did not expect, a moment it clicked.

Then apply

Thirty to forty minutes, one sitting.

  1. Open the application with your worksheet in front of you. Every question on it is already answered somewhere on the sheet.
  2. Paste in your five chosen exercises, the memo and the walk-through. Do it in one go — the form does not save a half-finished answer.
  3. Submit. A person reads it. It is not auto-graded or fed to an AI.
Go to the application →

Not applying? Steps 1 to 6 are the whole thing. The Ladder is open to anyone at CSUN and finishing it is worth having on its own. Only the last four steps belong to the Ambassador application.