#3 Newsletter - December

unwrapping gifts & wrapping up 2025

Dec 29, 2025

Hello beautiful soul,

thank you for being here :)
Let’s reflect, celebrate, and share the small and big moments of the past month together.

My TKS progress

Switching gears again

As mentioned in my last newsletter, my plan was to work on a research review on project-based learning (PBL) in education - its benefits, implementation challenges, strategies to overcome them, and an overview of what is already being done. The idea was to create some sort of PBL implementation plan for German secondary schools. At the beginning of December, I started prioritizing my focus process more intentionally and created a timeline for completing the review. I did a ton of research and struggled to finalize it, because there always seemed to be one more aspect, one more paper, or one more idea worth exploring. Eventually, I decided it was time to move forward and started reading all the papers. It was a lot but surprisingly interesting, especially when diving into pedagogical concepts. The plan was to finish the first part of the review by the end of December. However, things turned out differently.

After talking to Navid, the founder of TKS, he made me realize that research won’t take me very far. Yes, the review was meant to evolve into an actionable implementation guide, and yes, I genuinely wanted to understand the status quo of education better. But a research review, on its own, isn’t very tangible or impressive in that sense. I also realized how important it is for me to actually build something - and that’s something I want to pursue more actively. So, I wanted to come up with a new plan.

I didn’t completely abandon the research review since I still find it interesting, and since I had already put work into that. Instead, I’m using it as a foundation for content creation by publishing an article series on PBL. The intro article is already done - stay tuned!

For my second replicate, I did some brainstorming, and I might have a cool idea. Although it feels kinda easy to do, I still find the idea pretty cool. You’ll find out how it went in my January newsletter ;)

Microsoft Mock Challenge

In TKS, we get the opportunity to partner with big companies and organizations like IKEA, Microsoft, the United Nations, or Walmart. These partners present real problems they are facing, and we work on solutions and present them in professional consulting decks - a clear win-win situation.

For the practice challenge, we worked on a prompt Microsoft had given to last year’s TKS students, namely:

As AI continues to grow and requires additional data centers and energy usage, how can we sustainably continue the accelerated AI growth while saving our planet and optimizing costs?

Part of why I wanted to choose this prompt was because it’s a topic that I do have a tiny bit of background knowledge in, that is interesting to me, but still challenging because I had to get a technical understanding of data centers and possible sustainability practices

After teaming up with Isabel, Veronica, and Alya Naz Şeker, our first step was to get an understanding of the topic. How do data centers work? Why exactly are they unsustainable? What sustainable practices is Microsoft already implementing while optimizing costs?

We individually research potential solutions, and after agreeing on what solution to go with, we started digging deeper into the exact process, the impact, and the implementation plan. Step by step, we put together a consulting deck. While not 100% satisfied with the final result, I’m still proud of my team and me that we delivered a decent proposal.

Besides deepening my understanding of how data centers work and Microsoft’s operations, I also practiced working in a team. What challenged me most was letting go of control and trusting others with certain tasks. I often felt that if I didn’t do something myself, it wouldn’t turn out the way I envisioned or wouldn’t be coherent with the rest. Trusting my teammates more, giving up more control, and increasing transparency are things I want to improve for the actual challenge in January.

Since we only had one week, I did feel pressured. Although I knew that was just the practice round, I still wanted to put in the effort. It wasn’t stressful per se, but it was a lot. Still, it was a great experience, and the learning curve was steep.

What I failed at this month

Since October, I had been stressing about December. Why? Because I assumed that all my exams, preparing and enjoying Christmas, TKS Demo Day, and the challenge, would all pile up and become overwhelming. I subconsciously prepared myself for a stressful time - but, as always, my expectations were worse than reality.

Yes, the first half of December was busy, but it was manageable.

I often remind myself that chances are I won’t get less busy and have fewer responsibilities in the future - if anything, the opposite is true. But I also need to remind myself that I’m the one in control. I can figure things out, I can manage time, I can prioritize my own well-being, and I can handle stressful situations.

I failed at trusting my own abilities.
Speaking about trust, I also struggled with trusting others and giving up control - something that became especially apparent during the challenge. My goal is to become more aware of when this happens, be more open about it, and really trust both myself and others.

What I’m proud of

There are a couple of things that I’m proud of this month. One is that I’ve become more intentional with my time. I attribute much of this to the TKS velocity program and my TKSquad. By doing the daily updates, I’ve been able to visualize my tasks and goals better, break things down, and achieve more and be more intentional.

The other thing I’m proud of is that I started actively embarrassing myself.

After learning about Sara Blakely, the founder of Spanx, and her habit of embarrassing herself, I decided to try it out too. As silly as it sounds, I highly recommend it.

Every day, I try to do something embarrassing. And it can be anything. One day, I started rope-skipping in the classroom; another day, I started singing while a stranger walked past. It is embarrassing, but it’s a lot of fun too! More importantly, it helped me become less egocentric and internalize that most people really don’t care - and that I definitely shouldn’t either.

What has been on my mind

To live a successful and fulfilled life, we need to continuously alternate between experiencing and reflecting.

We can expose ourselves to as many experiences as we want, but if we just jump from one event to another without reflection, we don’t fully benefit from them. We don’t grow as much as we could. Only by reflecting on our experiences can we notice details, become aware of our emotions and actions, and extract meaningful insights.

On the other hand, over-reflecting can trap us in our own thoughts and disconnect us from reality. One of the best ways to learn about oneself and the world is to get out there and experience it - places, people, cultures, food, nature, and more. And then reflect on those experiences and seek new memories again, and so on and so forth.

Whether you need to experience or reflect more depends on you. As explained in my second Newsletter: harmony matters.

Laura's Substack

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