A Curious Mind

“I wasn’t motivated to do a PhD at all. I came into this profession out of curiosity thinking it might be cool to become a researcher and work in a laboratory. I was the kind of person who never liked going to college but loved reading on my own. I was more intrigued by various concepts rather than mere facts and probably that’s one of the primary reasons why I made it to IISER Pune during the integrated Master’s-PhD interviews.

It was after I started working for my Master’s thesis that I realized I loved doing research and wanted to continue on the same path. The supervisor I worked with, had a tenure track and was under the pressure of publishing papers. He published one with my data without even telling me that I was the first author. I came to know about it after the paper got accepted. Being an immature kid at that point, I didn’t understand how important a publication was. It took me a couple of days and a series of congratulations from different people to appreciate the achievement.

I first called up my sister to share the good news, but since my entire family has never even come remotely close to doing research, she thought that I was referring to an exam I had taken. She asked me how it was. I found it quite difficult to explain to her what a paper was. I then tried to inform my mother who was equally confused. She told me to bring that ‘paper’ home. Seeing it, she asked very…