2022, An Year in Review
Ok, so that’s a wrap on 2022. Oh, what a year it has been. For me, it was filled with some of the highest of highs and the lowest of lows of my entire life so far. Now, here I am, extremely bored on New Year’s Eve, trying to summarise an entire year before the fireworks begin. Cool, let’s have at it.
The year started against the backdrop of two immensely dull years of COVID-riddled 2020 and 2021, with endless doses of vaccinations, never-ending lockdowns and, oh yes, online semesters. Fully expected it to be just another dull year like the 2 that came before; however, the COVID situation had shown signs of easing up. Things were slowly but steadily opening back up again. Life was, for the most part getting back to the pre-COVID normal. Something worthy of noting is that even at this stage, at the end of 3 semesters of my undergraduate degree, my CV was empty, with nothing to show in the directions of industry or research experience, PORs, notable projects, etc. The only thing of any importance was a high CG carried over from my first year, which, too, had started its untimely decline, and the fact that I had finished a few online courses on Machine Learning and Deep Learning towards the end of the previous year. I also recently started working as an intern under a professor at my institute. This was what I focused on for the better part of the first 2 months of this new year, aside from utterly ignoring my semester classes while still, unfortunately, being stuck at home. This period was a continuation of the darkest time in my life from a mental and physical health standpoint. Over the past 2 years, lockdown had me lose all touch with sports and exercise, and I gained an unhealthy amount of weight. Reduced interactions with people simultaneously brought my social anxiety to new peaks, and a sudden surge of low self-esteem had also overtaken me. All of the above led to a six-month bout of severe depression, part of which spilt into the beginning of this year.
By the beginning of March, I was utterly fed up with my ongoing project since, for the past 3 months, I had been involved in straightforward data collection and data preprocessing work. Although I had gained some essential hands-on experience, the goals of the project and the type of work involved no longer interested me and my vision for what I wanted to be doing long term. Hence, I decided to leave the project in search of better opportunities. With just 1.5 months left in the semester, I dreaded the thought of spending another summer break doing minimal productive work. I started dropping cold emails to professors in foreign universities, hoping some lab would be willing to provide remote work for the summer break. Still, to my dismay, all of the requests were rejected or ignored, which, to say the least, didn’t have a positive effect on my already shattered self-esteem. Around this time, I received a mail stating that I had been allotted a slot to join my institute in person. After 1.5 years of enrolling at IIT Kharagpur, I would finally be able to visit and stay here. Unsurprisingly, I openly welcomed this change to my previously monotonic life. My bags were packed, and within a couple weeks, I was on my way.
With only a month of the semester remaining, I tried my best to soak in as much of the campus life as possible. Late-night cycle rides, early-morning cycle rides, midnight coffee runs, getting wasted on my birthday and, of course, the much acclaimed Spring Fest. After years of monotony, soaking in the joys of this campus with my friends provided sweet moments of respite and refuge from my uncomfortable mental state. Further, I received uplifting news towards the end of March when one of the professors I had mailed from IISc Bangalore offered me an opportunity to work in his lab as an intern for the summer. It was a humungous weight off my shoulders, and I was overjoyed.
As soon as I finished my end-semester exams, I set on my way to Bangalore. For the first time in my life, it was here that I understood what it was like to work on a proper research project in a well-equipped lab. Extremely powerful workstations, flexible work hours, an extremely helpful PhD student and all in the midst of a calm and serene campus…I couldn’t have asked for more. The time spent in Bangalore and the experiences gained deserve a separate blog post; however, for a summary of the work, the first month involved a literature review and the next 2 months involved extensive experimentation with our proposed techniques, which yielded no significant breakthroughs. It was only in the final week of my stay that one particular idea developed during the ideation meet yielded decent results. It would still go on to take 2 more months before a first draft of our work was completed for submission to a journal; however, the foundation for the same had been laid. Work aspect aside, this opportunity helped me regain something that I had been lacking in my life for a long time…discipline. Getting into a daily routine worked wonders for my mental health and overall productivity. The time spent in Bangalore was unarguably my most productive phase this past year, and, more importantly, it was the happiest I had felt in a very, very long time.
The highest of highs are often followed by the lowest of lows. So let’s move on to the least productive phase for me this year. Semester 5. Still, on the Bangalore high of happiness, I returned to Kharagpur, hoping to have the best semester. These hopes were short-lived, as I had lost all discipline and any semblance of a working schedule within a week. Rapidly changing sleeping hours, irregular meal times, bunking classes…the groundwork for a disastrous semester had been completed within days. Work on my IISc project had slowed down in the absence of daily offline presence, and course studies were limited to the night of the exam. One month into the semester, I just wanted to be done with it all and go home. The only good thing about my life during this last semester was the closely-knit group of 9 friends we had slowly developed over the past year. Regular meets, movie nights, night outs, etc…this last semester, we did it all. I still had with myself a gaping hole lacking any meaning or clarity for the future; however, this time around, the hole had a cushion of happiness comprising of the small joys that we had been able to sneak out of an otherwise brutal semester.
The second half of the semester saw me procuring a letter of recommendation from my IISc guide for building a robust enough application for the Mitacs GRI 2023 Program. This was the second time in the same year that I was going to take a shot at procuring an internship at a foreign university; however, this time around, I surely had much better odds on my side. Once the end-semester exams were finished, I headed back home. 2022 had been a long year, and I was determined to use this final month to take a break. Relaxed at home, went on a vacation, went on road trips, and spent time with my brother after a year. In mid-December, I received a mail from Mitacs stating that I had received an offer to intern in a lab at the University of Alberta for the summer of 2023. This day will be the year’s highlight for me despite this happening so late. It perfectly summarises how far I have come over the entire year, and it allowed me to end this year on a happy note, something which hasn’t been the norm for the past 2 years.
2022 has had its highs, and it has had its lows. The ride has been exhilarating at the best of times and absolutely gutting at the worst of times. However, amidst it all, this year has taught me several different lessons. It taught me to keep a low codependency between my mental happiness and professional progress. It is possible to be happy even during the most hopeless stages of life. Perhaps the most important one could be summarised by the quintessential quote: “Tough times never last, tough people do.” This year also reignited my love for the mountains, and honestly, I can’t wait to go back. :)
