24th December, 2019
I'm back with writing, along the same time when most people are pouring in reflections from this year, as we approach a new year, 2020 (a number we've fancied for a long time). I remember, about 10 years ago, countries were making 'long term' goals for 2020. India, for example, wanted to be a developed nation. Obama was so cool. These vague memories were during the time when I was crunching big time with several volumes of books spanning a wide range of scientific basics for my high school examination. 2010 was THE year. It would decide what I will become in life. At that time, it was just about my profession: What would I become, what would I become? Never did I imagine that, the question holds its weight of not just my profession but the kind of person I would become later. 10 years later, by 2020.
2010 - 2014: Seminal years
Years where you have to fight within yourself to survive is when you dream the most. A dream to go far away from the struggle and to get out of it. You dream big and the best. And you end up doing anything you can to achieve it. I grew up in Chennai for 17 years. I loved living in those busy streets, hanging out with friends care-free like school students would and pretty much possessed everything that freedom would offer. Parents financed me. So I had to just eat, study, enjoy and live. Or basically exist. Now I had to give up all of this because I managed to score (only) 93% in my high-school examination. While this seems like a decently good score, since I belong to a country with 1.7billion people, anything below 97% means you do not get to choose. After several days of pondering and getting help to choose a university to go to, we chose a public-funded college in Coimbatore. It had history and a "good name" so I decided to leave home and move to Coimbatore. The next four years were an exponential learning curve of life and adjustments. It was indeed a reality curve to cut me off from everything I thought was freedom that I had experienced before. I was used to being locked inside a hostel from 6.30 pm - 6.30 am because we are girls or intimidating to others because I was from the city. While one side of these years were many negative emotions, they were certainly the primitive years for my life. I learned subjects of varying interests. For once, I was interested in what I learnt unlike crunching through high school exams. Good grades that accompanied were just an encouragement to keep going. I made friends that helped me during tough times, we would then go on to be friends across continents.
Years where you have to fight within yourself to survive is when you dream the most. A dream to go far away from the struggle and to get out of it. You dream big and the best. And you end up doing anything you can to achieve it
By end of 2013 I was reading a lot about what I can do after an under graduate degree. The motivation for this came from all the mixed emotions from 2010 of having to choose a college and wanting to do something better than what I was currently doing.
Around 2013/14 many students were considering going abroad for studies. A lot of my friends from school were talking about it. For my family this was not usual, even though a few aunts and uncles have already settled in the US or Australia. No one had left the country just to study though. For a job, apparently it is ok. It makes sense considering the biggest aspect of this step: finance. There were several hurdles. It was my wildest dreams and one of those situations where you just get drowned in several 'What Ifs' before you can even begin. With a big motivation from my sister and an eventually cooperative dad and supportive mom, I started writing exams such as GRE and IELTS. I even applied for a passport. In the next months, there was constant shuttling between Chennai and Coimbatore spending several nights in trains. Unluckiest nights were when my seat was not confirmed, so I end up sitting throughout the night journey. These quietest nights were when I could hear my dreams loudly than ever with absolutely no certainty that any of them can even remotely come true.
April 2014: Miracles are real.
We were all doing what we can. My friends were attending job interviews and eventually all of them got a job that they went on to like or moved on to something even better. By this time I had done everything that I could possibly do: applied for universities in Germany and Netherlands, finished my thesis work quite successfully (the research was published the next year), and also had a job with one of the massive software companies in India. One fine day I get this email in my mailbox saying that I was accepted into Radboud University Nijmegen in Nijmegen, the Netherlands (How the hell do you pronounce Nijmegen? And is that even a city? A country? What is it?). I applied there because the company (to whom we paid 20k INR to help with college applications) suggested it as an option for me. They suggested a course in Biomedical Sciences and while I was on their online application system, there was a drop down list. Two options: Biomedical Sciences (Masters) and Molecular Mechanisms of Diseases MMD (Research Masters'). The two minutes I chose to search for MMD in the middle of applying for Biomedical Sciences changed my life for the next years. The MMD program structure seemed like something I wanted to do. I applied and had a telephonic interview. And now they even accepted me! Yay! Happy ending? No. The tuition fees for non-EU students was 11,000 Euros a year (the course was for two-years). How did I miss these figures before applying? I would need approximately 21,000 Euros for a year and that's a lot of money. I felt devastated and a bit stupid about not having looked this up earlier before applying. Now I have an acceptance that I can never afford. After days of pondering, I decided to send the following email,
This is how desperate emails look like. What happened after that can only be described as a miracle. Apparently there was a person ahead of me who received a full scholarship (tuition + living expenses) and has not accepted the offer yet. So if he rejects it, then I will get go pursue my dreams, FULLY FUNDED. That is not a dream? It is too good to be a dream! Those few nights were sleepless and one fine day, I get this email saying that this person did not accept the study offer. While I'm sure he/she had got a better offer, this was my jackpot. I took it. I grabbed it. I was running around the hostel corridors, called my parents. I was going to fly away, far away. It was all becoming real now and I was slowly digesting it, one by one. These were the years that taught me to dream, overcome struggles, survive on my own, appreciate life and most importantly believe in miracles!
2014- 2016: Who am I?
I have pondered with this phase of life a lot. A recent post (After five years!) I penned down explains some details of how these years went. Although this leap was what I really wanted, I did not realize the depth and difference of what it was until I actually was a part of it. The days and months ran by so fast. These were the years when I started analyzing behavioral traits among people a bit more. This was necessary for me to know how I can behave with someone. It is hard to understand why this was not so important in the previous years. Maybe I was just too young to worry about it or it is probably a western culture. Some facts to support the latter is, the extent to which even friends can keep a distance and privacy. These things did not mean so much until that point in my life. I was also just 21. The transition into adult life probably requires these traits (I learnt this later). Everyone is friendly and polite. But that does not mean you have a close relationship. Sometimes it feels like you are too close yet too superficial. While a majority of acquaintances and relationships pass on like this, you always find people who are as cheerful, direct, flexible to levels that you are comfortable with. These people skip the superficial friends circle to the 'close friends' circle. You need these people when you move half way around the world in this vast planet, from a 700km radius to thousands to kilometers away, they make survival fun. They form your comfort niche. They also shape you. I was lucky to have a good support system and people who welcomed other cultures with open arms. It was not just survival anymore, but life. Hours were spent at the gate waiting for the next plane: to Istanbul or Barcelona or Stockholm or Boston or sometimes, home. Doesn't matter. The only trip that mattered was the first flight from home to "abroad'. Everything else was different versions of the same journey.
I don't think there is anything more scary in life than stepping on the flight to leave home for the first time without a return ticket. Now the world is small, everything is just one flight away or two! And that is a powerful confidence that one can possess. It changes you forever.
2016- present (almost 2020): The Transition
So where did the last six years of learning from life and graduating from two universities take me? It landed me into one of the complex degrees one could possibly take up. PhD. I enrolled as a PhD student in September 2016, two days after graduating from my Masters'. It was a natural transition for me, considering that during my Masters what everyone spoke of was to do a PhD. Besides I liked what I was studying and doing a PhD seemed like actually mastering knowledge. Ofcourse no one explains to you the knitty-gritty details that one is lost in, while actually trying to do something great!. I also wrote a post about the complexities of PhD life ('How is your PhD?'). Thinking about the decade collectively, I realized that some complexities arose during this time that can only be reasoned out as difficulties that prepare you for a transition to real adult life (if that ever exists?). I am 26 years now and starting to understand that transparent opinions are not the general norms everywhere. It depends on several parameters such as where? with whom? to what extent?. If you are 'politically correct' most of the time you are probably better off. But what is the real you if one is just politically correct all the time? A hundred percent of transparency nor diplomacy is a hard burn. One has to find the importance of being in a middle ground. Mastering this may get me ready for life in 30s.
While life was teaching me the complexities of human interactions, there were also some very good accomplishments. Most of them boiled down to the transition of being independent. Independence was the biggest gift of this decade. Not just financially, although this is very important. What counts is having an opinion on social norms, challenging thoughts that must be questioned and learning from self-experiences that makes you unique in this world. I also understood that it is okay to have one's glass full before trying to fill others. While the 93% in school made me depressed back then, I am proud of it now. So many things that mattered the most in the beginning of the decade, turned insignificant. And the other way around.
Showering all this positivity does not mean there is no insecurity. While the last leg of PhD and an entire decade of gaining knowledge is almost coming to an end, it freaks me out to answer the question 'What's next?'. What's next in life? What's next at work? I was left with nothing but self-doubt and dreams ten years ago, but now, I have dreams, belief in miracles and still trying to figure out the human interaction part but can't be more excited! For the changes in technology, politics, climate, feminism, healthcare, culture and everything that I am unaware about. Ready for the next decade!
This is part of my story. Have you thought about yours?
Cheers, Happy New Year!
- Swe
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