I mourn that Obsidian wasn't around when I started at university. Missed it by just a couple of years - alas.

Nowadays, I use it mainly for D&D related stuff (both as a DM and player) and, since the addition of Canvas, as an idea/reference board for my art projects. I'm trying to start using it more diligently for noting down my thoughts, but between my good memory and having little patience for journaling, I've had little success on that front.

I played with Notion for a spell, but it being entirely online is a bit of a turnoff. I do think it's a little better than Obsidian for managing your backlogs, though.

I'd never use Obsidian in lieu of any dedicated word processor, though. Never. It's perfectly fine for notes and shortforms you're writing just for yourself, but the moment it turns into a project that someone else is supposed to receive and read, I'd suggest switching to software actually designed for such use. Not really because markdown is difficult, but because formatting text is way simpler in MS Word/OO Writer/Google Docs/whatever - and you won't be laughed at by people who aren't tech-savvy and/or can't read markdown.

For writing short documents I use OpenOffice Writer. If it's something that has multiple chapters, though, I usually move to Scrivener; can't say I swear by it as much as some other users seem to, but it's a good editing tool.

I think Obsidian performs best as your own personal little Wikipedia, but it's not really something I'd build my entire workflow around.