I am good enough

“I was raised by a single mother with assistance from my maternal uncles and grandfather with the belief that girls weren’t inferior to boys. Unfortunately, I failed my Physics paper in Standard XII because of my deep-rooted childhood trauma of being mocked and taunted at by the people around me. Although it was a huge setback, I didn’t give up and eventually cleared the paper in the supplementary exam.

I went on to do a Bachelor’s, followed by two Master’s, the second being through GATE qualification, which developed my research acumen. I had an extremely competitive batch in the institute I was doing my second post-graduation in and interacting with these people from various academic backgrounds proved to be a good learning experience for me. I also received a chance to do an internship at IISER Thiruvananthapuram, under Dr. Kalika Prasad, which added to my enriching research experience. Coping with the academic pressure along with making significant progress in my research project was indeed a mammoth task, but I persevered and it made me give serious thought to research as a career.

Before joining a PhD program, I thought it would be better to garner more experience. I was fortunate to get a JRF position on a DST-SERB government funded project which involved investigating miRNAs in diabetic foot ulcers. That project brought in publications in high impact journals under my belt and…