#7 Newsletter - April

on clarity, endurance, and putting yourself out there

Laura Schroeder

Apr 30, 2026

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 Project Progress

TKS

I’m currently in the last stage of my focus process - the Create.

A Create should be a project where you build something new, innovative, and actually useful. Something that hasn’t existed before.

I’m confident Passion Fruit checks all three boxes.

Passion Fr… what?

Quick recap: Passion Fruit is a platform that helps students start building projects - by connecting them with each other and lowering the bar to actually getting started. The platform acts as a funnel to attract students and build social proof. The real community exchange and support happens inside the Discord.

I’ve been vibe coding Passion Fruit using Cursor and Claude. Honestly, the technical side - even the backend - turned out to be simpler than expected. The hardest part so far has been the UI. I’ve been using v0 for that, but since I can’t export the code directly, implementing each page manually is genuinely painful.

I’ve also started some marketing, but nowhere near what Passion Fruit actually needs to grow.

Overall, progress is slow right now because I’m prioritizing other projects.

Which brings me to something I’ve been sitting with for a while.

I decided not to participate in Moonshots.

It wasn’t an easy call and I kept pushing the final decision until the last possible moment. As a TKS student, I want to take every opportunity the program offers. Moonshots especially, because it’s one of those rare spaces where you’re pushed to think 10x and work on genuinely big problems.

But sometimes the right move is knowing what not to take on.

Education (new section)

If you’ve been wondering what those other projects are - there you go.

TKS has definitely been the jumpstart to my mission to rewire education. And thanks to everything I’ve learned over the last few months, I’ve been able to create some incredible opportunities and slowly make my way into the world.

Besides arranging my summer internships and preparing my TED talk for June, I’ve also gotten involved in the Bavarian Student Movement.

The Bavarian Student Movement

For a while, I’d been thinking about building a student community in Germany - one that’s actually aware of how broken education is and wants to do something about it. Not just complain, but act.

Luckily, I found out about the Bavarian Student Movement and decided to join them because they are doing something very similar to what I'd imagined building. It has been an amazing experience meeting students who are just as frustrated, just as driven, and courageous enough to stand up. We already have activities planned, and this past weekend I had the opportunity to present the movement at an education convention.

Two things became clear that day.

I’m not alone. There are far more people out there advocating for a revolution in education than I realized.

And I absolutely love public speaking!

I’m officially a content creator now

I genuinely believe that for education to change, young people need to be the ones saying it out loud. And right now, that’s not happening at the scale it needs to.

So I decided to step into that gap.

For the past two weeks, I’ve been posting three times a week across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube.

The positive feedback and support I’ve gotten from my friends and other people I know has been absolutely incredible and empowering. Feeling like I can have an impact motivates me a lot.

Content creation definitely takes up a lot more time than expected, but that’s okay because I’m really enjoying it too.

Check out my profiles here:

Instagram

YouTube

TikTok

What I Failed At This Month

This month started out quite relaxed because I was on vacation, but the other weeks were all the more packed because of it. In addition, I started a few new things and new opportunities appeared. Perhaps they weren’t that huge, but to some extent it felt like the decisions I’m making now could really change my life.

Should I join? Should I quit? Should I start?

I had to ask myself these questions quite often - and it can feel overwhelming.

Inside of me, I felt an urge to have it all figured out. I wanted to be certain about what to do in the next couple of weeks, months and even years. Knowing that I only have one more year of school didn’t make it any better.

I felt the pressure to always make the right decision - the one that would promise the best future for me and for education. I wanted certainty.

But what in life is certain? Nothing. Certainty doesn’t exist.

Instead, what we need - and can get - is clarity.

Clarity and certainty are not the same.

Imagine you are in a foggy forest. There are 3 paths in front of you, but you can’t really see them because of the fog. Hence, you need clarity. Now you see that you should take the path in the middle. You start walking and you know that you’ll get to your destination. However, you don’t know exactly what the path will look like. Will you have to cross a small river, will you have to walk uphill, will you walk through a cave? You don’t know - it’s uncertain.

Seeking clarity and intention is key. No matter how uncertain things are, you’ll have some guidance.

Seeking certainty is nonsense. No matter how intentional you are, life is inherently unpredictable and subjective.

My question to you: do you seek clarity or certainty?

Hint: Seeking clarity takes time, effort and reflection - most people just take the shortcut and want certainty.

What I’m Proud Of

If you are at networking events or conferences, you feel like you’re being judged all the time - at least that’s what I often feel like.

Most of the time, I have to take the first step, go up to someone and start a conversation. Sometimes, I feel like I can’t be my authentic self.

If you are posting on social media, you feel like you’re being judged all the time - at least that’s what I often feel like.

This is probably an even more extreme form of being in public because anyone can see it and comment whatever they want. And yes, I’ve received hate comments already.

There often is this subtle pressure. And the more you attach to your ego, the stronger and more present this pressure - and sometimes even fear - gets.

However, this month, I decided to silence that voice.

I worked a lot on just standing up for myself, being authentic and putting myself out there no matter what other people might think of me.

Trust me, recording and posting my first reel was really embarrassing! But that’s okay. It really comes down to being comfortable being uncomfortable. And believing in your mission like no one else. Because my belief becomes my shield and my engine.

I stopped caring about judgment - I only care about my mission. And if that means embarrassing myself, then...LFG.

Obviously, it’s not like I completely let go of my ego and now don’t care about judgment at all.

What matters more is to keep going despite what other people say or think.

This sounds very cheesy, but if you experience it yourself it gains surprising depth.

What Has Been On My Mind

What does it mean to be driven and ambitious? Most people admire those types of people, especially when they are young, because the potential is endless.

Metaphorically speaking, being driven and ambitious means: I want to climb a high mountain and I never stop. I’m fast.

But what if you literally ran up a mountain like Mount Everest? You might be able to run for a dozen miles, but what happens then? You are gasping and absolutely depleted. That’s not how you get to the top of the mountain.

Instead, you need to have some sort of strategy and, most importantly, endurance.

And that’s what I had to realize this month.

I’m confident saying that I’ve developed the ability to sprint when I have a goal - metaphorically speaking. In real life I’m a super slow runner, lol.

However, especially when you have a long-term mission, it’s important to know that this isn’t a sprint. It’s an endurance run.

The truth is that you might be able to sprint for a few years, but if you want to build something and live your life in a sustainable way, you need to prepare for a marathon.

Now, in case this is too abstract, here’s an example.

You wake up at 5am every morning, work out for an hour, then work for 15 hours at your desk, read for an hour, and go to sleep. Repeat. Can you live that way for the next 3 years? Maybe. Do you want to live like that for the next 30 years? Probably not. That’s not something a human should have to endure.

You need rest, you need hobbies, you need relationships, you need time and space to wander.

But just chilling won’t get you very far either - at least if your goal is to escape mediocrity.

A sprint and a long run are both hard. And yet, what’s even harder is knowing when to do which.