Zachary Milot: A student using Surface to study Marine Science

Today, I’m highlighting Zachary Milot, a 19-year-old sophomore who is using Surface to study Marine Science at Boston University. I’ve been talking to a lot of students recently and what stood out and really inspired me about Zach was how he’s not afraid to change direction and go for what he knows he believes in.

Before Zach even went to college he enrolled in a vocational high school to learn how to design websites and code – it’s just a hobby now in his spare time but a really valuable skill for any student. Like most high school grads, Zach didn’t know exactly what career he wanted to pursue when he started college and began with Electrical Engineering at University of Massachusetts Lowell. He has since changed to Marine Science to follow his dreams to work in big data to find migration patterns in the ocean.

In between all Zach’s studying, he has a job at Best Buy, plays the saxophone, wants to learn guitar, makes websites, loves traveling and somehow makes time to enjoy college with his friends! Zach says his Surface Pro 3 helps free up his time because he’s able to use OneNote to keep his studies more organized. OneNote makes a huge difference to college students across the world – the ability to keep all your notes organized in one place, keep them synced with any phone and best of all write notes or draw diagrams using Surface Pen directly onto the screen like you would with a traditional pen and paper. Ultimately, making simple tasks at college easier and freeing up time to pursue the hobbies that you are passionate about.

Zach told me how his Surface Pro 3 (6th Gen Intel Core i7) easily runs intensive programs like Adobe Creative Cloud and Visual Studio Community for his creative hobbies in addition to Wolfram Mathematica and MatLab back when he was studying electrical engineering. He loves the fact that it easily switches from a laptop to tablet for note taking and is really light weight to carry around all day. Zach saved up his own money to buy a Surface and in his own words “this really is a laptop that suits all my needs as a college student, so worth the investment”.

To close off, I asked Zach what his 3 top tech tips would be for any incoming freshman:

1. Backup and save everything! You never know when you get that next idea for your project or paper, or when you will accidentally close it. Yikes.
2. A 2k monitor is perfect with a Surface for watching movies with your friends
3. Make sure you keep good digital notes! Taking notes on any computer is a skill that needs to be perfected through time.

If you’d like to learn more about getting the most out of your Surface for college or looking into what’s right for you, please visit the Surface.com.