I am not one thing. I am a soldier who reads philosophy, an engineer who writes poetry, a technologist who prays. What looks like contradiction is actually convergence.
My name is Kendren Cornish — KJ to most. I grew up shaped by discipline, curiosity, and a refusal to accept that any field of human knowledge exists in isolation. That refusal became my methodology.
Before I ever touched a line of code, I was underwater. As a U.S. Army Combat Diver and 12 Delta (Combat Engineer), I learned something that no classroom has been able to teach me since: that clarity comes from pressure, that precision matters when failure is permanent, and that the human mind under constraint is the most remarkable machine ever designed.
I carried that lesson into nonprofit work — two years of direct service, community organization, and understanding what technology can and cannot do for people who have been left behind by it. That gap between human need and technological reach became the engine of my academic interest.
I am currently pursuing a Bachelor of Design in Applied Artificial Intelligence at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD) started in 2026, with a Minor in Creative Writing. I hold a certificate in Financial Technology from Southern Methodist University (SMU).
Why SCAD for AI? Because the most dangerous assumption in modern technology is that intelligence is a purely technical problem. SCAD trains AI practitioners to think about the aesthetics, ethics, and human meaning of the systems I build. Every line of code I write is haunted by the question: what does this mean for a human being?
I am building a body of work at a unique intersection: Applied AI as a lens for comparative theology. Specifically, I am exploring what Western Judeo-Christian frameworks and Eastern philosophies — Daoism, Confucianism, Chinese Buddhism — can teach each other about consciousness, moral agency, and the nature of mind, using Mandarin as both a linguistic and philosophical tool.
The U.S. State Department classifies Mandarin as a Category IV language — the hardest tier for native English speakers, requiring thousands of hours of study. I chose it deliberately. Not as a credential, but because you cannot truly study Daoist or Confucian thought through translation alone. The original text carries meaning that English simply cannot hold.
Savannah College of Art and Design, Savannah, GA. Focused on AI ethics, natural language processing, and the intersection of machine learning with humanistic inquiry.
Completed SMU's FinTech certification covering blockchain, decentralized finance, digital asset policy, and Layer 2 Bitcoin protocols.
Two years of direct service at a nonprofit organization, managing community outreach, mental health advocacy programming, and technology access initiatives.
Served as a Combat Diver and 12 Delta Combat Engineer, including specialized underwater engineering operations. Honorably separated.
I do not view my undergraduate years as a period of learning. I view them as a period of becoming. By the time I am done, I will have produced a portfolio of work, essays, and projects that make the case — without argument — that I belong in the most intellectually demanding graduate programs in the world.
The three pillars of my strategy are simple: Academic Signal (maintain a 3.5+ GPA in rigorous humanities coursework), Portfolio as Weapon (3–5 publishable essays, at least 1 functional AI project with theological research applications, and 1 "big idea" thesis), and Narrative (every piece I produce answers the same question: "Why AI → Why theology?").