I recently finished up my 3rd year of college, and all I can say is, what an interesting year this has been (and it’s still going!).

As a student, you learn a lot of things at school, but in my opinion, the most valuable lessons you learn are the ones about life. This year in particular taught me a lot about myself, people, and our collective society. To sum it up, here are the 3 lessons I learned in these past 3 quarters (we go by quarter system and I hate it).

1. Setting (Mental) Boundaries

🍁 In my fall quarter, I moved into…

In my sophomore year, I interned at a startup called Shoelace Wireless that develops cooperative networking technologies that enable a mobile user to aggregate all wireless networks available to a single mobile device and/or on multiple nearby devices. This is the project that I worked on for my internship.

Problem

Mobile data usage transparency lacks actionable insights on how to optimize your data plan based on your daily, weekly, and monthly usage habits.

Example: John Doe

John is a college student who is always on his phone, whether it’s watching Youtube videos during lunch, scrolling through Reddit during class, or listening…

I’ve updated my Notion templates since the publication of this article. I am planning to publish a How I Use Notion Pt. 2 blog post and Youtube video tutorial soon. Stay tuned!

I recently discovered an AMAZING productivity app called Notion. I had been on the hunt for the perfect app, downloading and deleting new apps every few weeks…until I stumbled upon Notion. After scraping through iPhone notes, Google Docs, and various to-do apps, I successfully migrated my entire life onto Notion.

In this post, I’ll show you how I personally use Notion to organize different aspects of my life…

Recently, I’ve taken a step back to analyze how much plastic I use in a day. I noticed that there were a lot of things that I use one time and throw away: coffee pods, face pads, q-tips, to-go containers, etc. I was disturbed by how much plastic I wasted in a day, and even worse, how normalized it is in our culture. Practically everything is covered in plastic in stores, and then that plastic is immediately thrown out once the product is unwrapped. What is the point of that?

In an attempt to change my habits, here are some…

Yesterday my boyfriend showed me a Ted Talk about applying the concept of marginal improvements to fulfill your most ambitious goals. The speaker was a C student in college, with no discipline or motivation to get his work done. He decided to change his habits so that they would work in his favor, rather than against them. His goal was to get better grades. …

I’m taking a French history/culture class this quarter. One of our assigned readings is “A Moveable Feast” by Ernest Hemingway. I had read this book in high school, but it was for fun. I honestly did not remember anything about this book, except the details about Hemingway’s idyllic life in Paris. But that was what made the book so special. It wasn’t about anything in particular, but it was good writing.

This quarter, I’ve been loaded with classes and homework. I’ve barely had any time to do anything except go to class, study, and finish my homework. Hell, that’s how…

Hello world! This is my first post on Medium. I thought it would be fitting to publish my first post entering a new year. Before I begin pouring out my thoughts on this platform, allow me to introduce myself.

A brief profile

My name is Emily Vu, and I am a 19 year old female Asian-American. I am currently a second year physics major, with interests in entrepreneurship, data science, and art.

A bit of a backstory

I grew up in a small town. I was homeschooled in high school. Throughout those four years, I felt a void in not…