March 2025
Made 360 turn at 3000ft, took spontaneous excursion to Philly, built women's health projects & paper, made my personal website, survived IDC challenge
đ Sorry for the delay!
I promise itâs not because I havenât been productive⌠too much has happened between March and now and phew! Incredibly productive so let me catch you to pace.
âLetters from Amyâ: With so many changes happening in my life lately, I wanted to create a way to stay connected and share snippets of my journey with the people who matter most to meâmy high school teachers, mentors, and friends who are far away.
If you ever feel like stepping back, no worries at allâyou can unsubscribe anytime, no hard feelings (pinky promise)! And if youâre up for it, Iâd love to hear from youâdrop me a message and let me know how youâve been đ.
âď¸ Took my discovery flight
Did a little 360 in the air (horizontally!). I love planes, I did my discovery on a little Piper Cherokee. A little bit scary at first to be honest, but mostly thrillâWTF Iâm in the air!
A few things on my mind while I was in the air:
Sometimes letting go actually gives you control: Oh man, I was so nervous when I was allowed to take over the controls. But letting go of my fears actually helped me gain better control.
Perspective changes everything: From 3000ft up, traffic jams, deadlines, and stress blur into the landscape. All these things that once seemed to swallow me all became insignificant. Remember to zoom out from time to time :)
Curiosity can take you to places fear never will: Was I scared when I hopped into that plane? Oh yeah (regretted signing up but donât tell Anna). But would I have been able to learn to sit with that fear and go for it anyways? Donât think so.
đ Philly happened!
You going anywhere during Spring break, Amy?
Nope. How about you?
Iâm driving back to Pennsylvania, wanna come?
Sure!
And dear friends, thatâs how I found myself in the passenger seat of an 8 hour drive to Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. This choice would have seemed outrageous to the Amy a year ago. But college is all about taking risks (safely!) and learning to embrace that uncertainty.
Philly was amazing! Met up with my friend, Tony, who kindly took me around Penn and for boba & dinner in Chinatown. I will say one thing: all you Penn kids are spoiled! This many legit Asian snack stores?
Check out my trip notebook here â edited pics & reflections :)
Oooh okay I also got into a bit of trouble in Pennsylvania.
I was supposed to take the bus from Harrisburg to Lewisburg after getting off my train (from Philly). Accidentally missed that bus⌠and that bus runs once per dayâŚ
My reflections in a nutshell!
Always have money in your pockets.
You have the right to travel your way, not how others tell you to.
Home is where you decide it is.
Each city has its own character (I really like this one, go read my notebook)
đť My Projects!!
Project 1: My personal website :) â All the below projects can be found here too!
Project 2: Maternal Risk Predictor â takes in 6 biometric inputs to predict risk of maternal health risks).
Project 3: Menstruation Cycle Dashboard (trained on synthetic data) â predicts oneâs next cycle, breaks it down into the four stages, uses OpenAI API to incorporate GPT feature.
âď¸ Paper for Writing 101 Class
Okay, this is what I discovered about college: assignments become very open-ended. Professors will never say no to an idea (unless itâs outrageous). So I figured, if weâre assigned to write a research paper anyways⌠might as well make it a topic Iâm interested in :)
And I present to you: Medical Dismissal and Its Consequences for Black Womenâs Healthcare Choices
đĄ 2025 Integrated Design Challenge @Duke
In ECE110 at Duke, we have a per semester challenge where a class of 10 students work together to build 5 bots that use specific sensors to make detections and âperformâ accordingly. Every class competes against each other to form one winner (we were 3rd place out of 20 teams - I think).
We were assigned the Ping))) sensor (gives you distance based on time of infrared light reflection). Check out this video!
đ Other random things I did
Went to teach elementary students physics
Went stargazing on the side of a highway (organized by Duke Stargazing)
Life is so beautiful⌠remember to slow down :D
â Especially when thereâs no romance or friendship drama involved
As many of you know, Duke is kind of in the middle of nowhere. At times, Iâve felt a little lost, constantly surrounded by students pouring hours into math and finance.
But thatâs not really me. I love living fully. I love helping people.
So I went stargazing. I taught kids physics. I felt so much better afterward. It reminded me that the world is so much bigger than my bubbleâso many people I havenât met, so many places I havenât seen.
Just that thought makes me so excited and motivated to work on things that matter to me. Because becoming one of these people is the only way I get to surround myself with them.
Up nextâŚ
Accidentally published a poetry book :P
Boston trip (yes, another one)
Content creation
Water vs Water experiment â youâll find out next time
More projects that I wonât reveal just yet :)
Building Merge Club node at Duke
Smt about HackDukeâŚ