Emily Hu
Emily is part of Cohort 2020. Cohort 2020 project spotlights a group of diverse students, following their journey at Stanford to see happenstance, connections, and growth while pursuing meaningful work.
Image Credits:
BEAM - Miso Kim
Emily Hu
Computer Science
Louisville, KY
About me
Q. What animal describes you the best?
A. The platypus. When people first discovered it, they thought it was a hoax. The platypus simply didn't fit into existing taxonomies. Likewise, I like to think that I break stereotypes and defy definition. And like the platypus, which has a venomous hind foot, I like to think that I have hidden strengths—that I can be fierce when I need to, but an adorable duck-billed fuzzy mammal otherwise.
Q. What do you like to do in your free time?
A. I like to write—to just reflect about the world, my thoughts at the moment, or my opinions on current events. I also enjoy listening to music, hanging out with my friends, and trying out new foods.
Q. What's you favorite thing to eat/drink on campus?
A. Breakfast burrito, bourbon chicken, and TAP's waffle fries
Winter Quarter, 1st Year
Q. How would you define "meaningful work"?
A. Meaningful work is work that gives you a sense of purpose, that appeals to your identity. It is work that you enjoy so thoroughly that you almost view it as leisure. It is work that leaves the world better than when you first began, work that extends both within and beyond yourself.
Q. Are there any actions you have taken recently in terms of finding meaningful work? What have you learned from them?
A. I've really just been applying to summer jobs and internships. It's been a process that is more tedious than meaningful—it's my hope that, after I do finalize my summer plans, I'll have the opportunity to try something new that I will find legitimately meaningful. Right now, I'm just in the hardest phase.
Q. What emoji would summarize your experiences this quarter?
Spring Quarter, 1st Year
Q. What’s the coolest opportunity or experience you’ve had since coming to Stanford?
A. I was able to listen to Ruth Bader Ginsburg speak at Memorial Church when she came to visit Stanford, it was definitely a very special and inspirational experience. Ginsburg was a woman in law during a time in which not many women attended law school—and as a woman who is also pursuing a field in which there are few women, I found her discussion on a meaningful life particularly powerful.
I also attended Daveed Diggs's recent talk at Stanford, which was super cool and very fun! Daveed kept us laughing all night, and I even got to take a selfie with him afterwards!
Q. When was the time you felt most stressed/overwhelmed during the year? How did you get through it?
A. Every finals week is stressful. I spent a lot of time holed up in libraries or in my room with food, but destressing with friends helps quite a lot. It's comforting to know that we're all in this together.
Q. What are you most excited about for your summer?
A. I'm really excited to start my CURIS internship (and to work with JavaScript!), but I'm also very excited to see my family (we're going on vacation at the beginning of summer) and to have more free time to hang out with friends. Many of my friends are staying on campus as well, so I'm hoping that we'll have lots of weekend adventures together, after our work is over.
Q. What are your thoughts around careers/meaningful work right now?
A. Meaningful work is work that makes you feel happy—you enjoy being productive for the sake of the activity itself, not because it's a task that you're compelled to complete. When I came to Stanford, I thought that I would major in MS&E. But when I started taking MS&E courses, I didn't find them as interesting as I thought I would; instead, I felt drawn to computer science. What I learned was that, although both MS&E and CS are objectively meaningful, only one of them was meaningful to me.
Now I'm a declared CS major, and I'm really, really happy with my decision. I'm planning on lots more CS in the future, and I'm very excited about my CS internship for the summer.
Q. What advice do you have for incoming frosh about exploring opportunities?
A. Don't hold yourself to your four-year plan. Take classes outside of the things you've already tried in high school; keep pushing at the fringes. Keep actively seeking out opportunities.
Sometimes the things you realize are meaningful may not be what you expect.
Be self-reflective; perhaps one of the biggest turning points of my Stanford career was the day that I finally thought about my own plans rather than attempting to follow them blindly. I realized that I had signed up for certain courses simply because they fulfilled the MS&E major, and I could no longer give myself a reason for why I was pursuing that major. I remember talking to my friends, calling my family, and visiting my advisor on the same day. From these conversations, I concluded two general pieces of advice: (1) don't blindly churn out work for classes in search of more units and the appearance of productivity. (2) Take time to invest in yourself. Talk to professors; go to office hours; don't feel too embarrassed to ask questions.
Finally, keep in touch with people, and make friends. The people here at Stanford will be your biggest assets: resources when you are searching for opportunity, shoulders to cry on when you are searching for empathy. Sometimes the biggest "opportunity" is not a job application, but a human.
