Last Week Today: We're SO back 🤘🏻

March 13, 2024

Welcome to my Substack where I share the best of my week. Think of this as a catch-up between friends with life hacks & advice sprinkled in. Grab your beverage of choice and let's get started ☕️

Highlight of the week year🔥

Helloooo friends! It’s been a while since I’ve *blogged* here, but we are SO back. How ya been? For me, it’s been a busy two quarters at Stanford. I’m wrapping up the winter quarter this week with some final papers…can you believe that graduation is coming up in June — WHAT?! It’s coming up so fast. Deep breaths.

Our 2-year journey is coming to an end. Who remembers the crying reaction videos in 2022 of when I first got into school LOL.

Updates coming soon on what I’m working on after school ends…and for those who are curious, no, I am not recruiting for a traditional 9-5 job 👀 (don’t tell my mom)

Latest news… I’m giving a TED Talk at Stanford! Next month I’ll be speaking on how social media enables mentorship on a global scale. I’ve poured my heart and soul into this TED Talk and I am so proud of how it’s turning out. I feel that I’m speaking on something that matters, that TRULY AND DEEPLY matters to me for the first time. I hope people like it, but even if they don’t, that’s okay because I feel like I’m doing myself and the talk justice. It’s a 16-minute presentation that I’ll have to memorize in the next few weeks. Keep your fingers crossed for me 😮‍💨🤞🏻

What’s cooking 🥘👩🏻‍🍳

I posted my latest podcast episode with Mike Peng, which breaks down his experience at McKinsey. There are a lot of questions about the day-to-day of consultants and the “lifestyle” that surrounds their work. Mike has a balanced perspective on what he got out of consulting right after college and how it has prepared him for business school.

True story: I actually interviewed for consulting internships during my junior year of college. I remember practicing cases in preparation for the interview and after a session, I started crying (seriously). The cases are meant to make you think through these tough questions in a high-stress environment. I learned from that experience how to be more comfortable with being uncomfortable, which is a lesson that has helped me at so many other points in my career. 

Mike also shared that he hardest he had ever worked at something was his McKinsey offer. He had some incredible insights into what got him in the door, how he succeeded in this high-pressure environment, and ultimately what he got out of it as he thinks about his next steps.

I hope you’ll check out the full episode on both Spotify and YouTube.

Advice from Jensen Huang, $60B net worth, CEO of NVIDIA

Jensen Huang spoke with us at Stanford. I was pretty stunned with, well, how normal he is for a billionaire. That’s an insane sentence, and I recognize that. He’s not some superstar with insane public speaking skills. To me, he seems like he could be my family friend’s dad.

Despite that, he is on the Forbes list of richest people in the world for founding and scaling NVIDIA. Oh yeah, he started his career cleaning toilets and dishes at Denny’s. Humbling AF.

Here are some quotes that stuck out with me.

On consistency: “Everyday is the same. Whether you have good or bad day. If gravity is working the same, wake up the same time and go to work.”

On visibility: “Leaders have to be seen.” (when things go wrong, you can’t just hide away even though you want to. Leaders have to be in the mix, doing the work).

On delivering hard news: “The hardest part is facing the people you care about the most.”

On grit and perseverance: “I’ve cleaned a lot of toilets than all of you combined. Some things you can’t unsee. No work is beneath me.”

💅🏻 In Case You Missed It: What I posted on IG

💫 Failure is NOT fatal

🌸 Surprising my mama for her birthday

🔥 The scariest conversations to have at work

🎓 Telling my life story in 20 minutes

📚 How to increase your efficiency

🕺 12 hours in Vegas with 500 classmates

💥 Addressing interruptions at work

⛳ Are business deals still done on the golf course?

What I’m perplexed by: Bye Bye TikTok 👋🏻

“TikTok’s time in the United States is over unless it ends its relationship with CCP-controlled ByteDance.” Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI). YEESH.

This is a big week for TikTok. Congress is debating whether the app will be banned in the US – given that Speaker Johnson and the White House endorsed the bill AND that it passed in the house this morning, it’s not looking good. 

The ongoing saga of the TikTok ban reflects the complexities of navigating the intersection between technology, geopolitics, and personal data protection. At the heart of the issue is the ownership of TikTok by ByteDance, a Chinese tech company. Concerns have been raised by policymakers about the potential for user data collected by TikTok to be accessed or manipulated by the Chinese government.

A recent executive order signed by President Biden requires a comprehensive review of apps controlled by foreign adversaries, with a specific focus on data security and privacy. 

New York Times article on the coverage: link here

If you only follow me on TikTok, time to convert to other platforms like YouTube and Instagram (joking, but not really) 🥸

Meme Reminder

MOOD. My latest obsession is this orange cat and you will be seeing it more from me.

If you liked reading this, I’d so appreciate it if you could share this newsletter with a friend ❤️