It’s been 3 weeks since my second year at UMass ended and I wanted to reflect on a year that I can definitely say was one of the best ever!

The last time I did one of these is when I graduated high school and I felt like I needed then to put everything I was feeling into an article and sort of memorialize my time at high school through that. I’m looking to do something similar here because I think this last year has been some of the best times I’ve ever had and also a period of growth for me that I wanted to document.

Going into this year I wasn’t sure what to call it, I had made up my mind that I’ll be graduating in Spring ’24 but it was still technically my second year of college, so I went through the sem answering that question differently depending on the context and who asked about it. But for the purposes of simplicity I will refer to it as my Junior year because I am definitely going to call next year my Senior year.

In Fall ’22, I had taken a relatively heavy workload and I was kind of nervous whether I’ll be able to manage everything along with my RA job. It was a bit challenging at first balancing everything and figuring out what to prioritize. This was definitely my first hurdle in the year but soon I got into my groove, and I was ready to take on whatever the semester had in store for me. I remember Nikhil’s birthday as the stand out event from the beginning of the semester – notable since that was the first time we played Mafia as a group and that became a long-standing group tradition that I hold very dearly. This is also around the time where I upgraded from my iPhone 11 to my iPhone 14 Pro which I am very happy with but began a financial crisis that I bandaged somewhat by getting another job at Isenberg.

The semester was going really well, and on the morning of the 20th of September when I called my dad to ask about airline tickets to fly back for winter, he told me that seconds earlier, my Ajji had passed away. That morning was really tough, and so was the afternoon, and the next day and the next week after that. Ajji was someone who was very dear to me and I had so much love for her. I was almost like a robot that day going to class and doing things because I had to, because I knew that if I broke my routine and took time to think about it I would break down. Talking to Appa, Amma, Adithee, Akshay and Akash really helped me get through that time because they were going through the same thing and it felt like I wasn’t alone. That really helped me because I was able to grieve without being there. I missed my family a lot and it was the only time in the year where I wondered whether it had been the right choice for me to study in America and be so far away from my family.

The next two weeks were tough but thankfully I had really good friends who raised my spirits gradually by talking to me about it when I needed it and just making sure that they didn’t treat me any differently or didn’t stop having fun. That helped me move on because otherwise it was very tough to not think about everything going on at the time. My mourning never really ended and I still miss her a lot but the day I think of as the turning point where I was able to process everything was my 19th birthday.

My lovely friends threw a surprise party for me in the night and then that day evening we went to dinner at the best Indian restaurant in Western Mass ( and they pranked me by showing in excellent attire hoping that I wore a comedic outfit in contrast). This really made me feel very included and loved, and it felt like I had family away from home.

After this, the next month and a half was a treat. I was getting into the groove of things and everything was good. We had a lot of fun during this time, the highlight of which was the trip we took to Sadiv’s house. Sadiv’s house was delightful and his parents are the sweetest people I know. They hosted so many of us, cooked lovely food and did it in such lovely spirit and cheer that I felt so at home and comfortable with them. Despite this, I proceeded to terrorize poor Sadiv for the remainder of the Boston trip.

What came next was the most insane and wild trip of my life. The Thanksgiving trip I took with Rishi, Sriram and Anish will forever be etched in my memory. So many bad decisions starting with calling those 3 guys to godforsaken Amherst, and then a bunch haphazard and strange occurrences over the next few days made this trip unforgettable. Anyone who knows me personally will know all the funny things that happened on this trip. Yet, I think that it was a very important trip for me because hanging out with my friends from high school and seeing how we’d all changed and grown since then but were still able to enjoy each other’s company taught me that even if people grow or change, that doesn’t mean they won’t share the same bond and chemistry.

The rest of the semester went by pretty quick as we had finals and stuff to wrap up and before I knew it I was back in Bangalore. Something that was happening throughout the fall semester was my internship hunt, and all’s well that ends well but this was truly one of the biggest learning experiences for me. I applied to 176 jobs, got 8 interviews, 6 reached the final round and in the end, I got an internship that I’m very happy with but at this point of the hunt in December, things were looking very different. I had reached the final round with one of my dream companies and I felt like I had done well in the interview but they told me that they couldn’t give me a decision till the end of January.

As I came home for my break, I was very optimistic and I would even go so far as to call myself cocky. I treated it like a foregone conclusion and spoke to people about my future like this thing was already done and dusted. I regret my behaviour and attitude at the time because after everything, I didn’t end up getting the internship and recently learnt that the interviewers weren’t as impressed with me as I thought they were. This taught me that it ain’t over till its over (a lesson that will come back in this article). To be honest, going into Spring ’23, I was gutted. This really had been a dream company for me and I had imagined my life and had manifested and thought a lot about how I was going to live if I had received an internship here.

Yet again, my escape was through my friends who were so supportive and never made me feel bad about not getting it. It also really helped to have a peer group that was going through the same struggles as me. In this job market, with the recession, I was definitely not the only one who was finding it tough to land an internship but having a circle of friends who were not only going through the same thing but also sending useful resources and sharing their experiences with me, made me feel like even when you’re competing with people there’s a way that you can all grow together instead of having to push someone else down for your own success.

Otherwise, winter break was really fun. When I had come in the summer, I was taking care of Ajji, doing two summer classes and an internship so I wasn’t able to do much or spend much time with friends. I wasn’t exactly free in the winter since I had taken two math classes, but I still was able to meet every single person who I wanted to and there were so many memorable days like the day where I picked up Sadiv from the airport, saw his influence in his community and then took an auto to HSR layout where I had an amazing day with Arohi. The day with Zoe, Aditi and Denzil was also so much fun. I can’t forget the Dosa tour with Anirudh, or the day Pruths, Rushil and I drove around. I regret that I didn’t spend much time with my cousins cause I miss them a lot now. Going to Ooru was so much fun and seeing Bhoota Kola and other Jatre traditions was a rare opportunity that I really enjoyed. Had a lot of fun with my family, especially Akash and had a nice long-weekend getaway to Kabini.

Then began the first month of Spring semester. The weather in that first week was absolutely dreadful but picking up Nikhil, Urvish and Aunty from the airport was really fun and that was a nice day. To be honest, the first month of Spring was a bit annoying for me due to a very toxic element being present in my life at the time. The culmination of that was a rather large confrontation and the person and I deciding to cut ties completely. This made me realize that no matter how unproblematic I tried to be, sometimes stuff would happen to me and that I should take active action on removing things that are bothering me instead of letting things simmer under the surface until leads to a big issue. It also made me realize that I had been pretty immature in how I had dealt with some things earlier and I made an active effort after that to make amends.

This semester otherwise was very fun. Standout moments pre-Spring break included a very memorable mafia night on Goatyaman’s bday, so many lovely TSS shifts with Sadiv and Vasi, and the epic football matches that we played where we tracked the statistics of every player – Spring ’23 Statistics Tracker

Then came a rather boring Spring Break where I really missed my friends. My biggest regret of the year was not joining them on their trip to Miami. Nevertheless, when we got back, I felt the strongest sense of camaraderie and bond with my friends than ever before. While the post-Spring break part of the semester had its own fair share of fun moments, an impending sense of doom began to hit me. I had gone through yet another cycle of final round interviews and rejections. One company said they were interested in bringing me in and for me to just wait for an offer. I waited and waited and as I waited, my hopes started going down. It is very difficult to describe how I felt at the time. I had built up some sense of grandiosity about myself and my coding skills, and the internship hunt and the constant rejections made me feel like maybe this was somewhat misplaced. I became very humble and started to think a lot about whether this was the right choice. I had chosen CS over screenwriting for the supposed job security and better prospects, but I was struggling to find an internship even in CS. I felt like Sisyphus and that I was constantly pushing the rock up the hill to only get sent back down. This company after stringing me along for a month, gave me a really terrible offer that was not close to what had initially been promised. When I tried to negotiate, they pulled the offer out of my hands.

At this point, I had lost all hope and all my enthusiasm for CS had almost died down. I began to make plans with Goli about a startup to work on in the summer, and booked my flight back to Bangalore. While all this was happening, college life was still fun on the surface and I had a lot of great moments, but for some reason I was always very sad about everything and even though I smiled and enthusiastically joined all fun activities, I never felt like I was there really. Which is why the Kenny Sebastian trip, Urvish’s bday celebrations and the Six Flags trip, are kind of a blur to me now. I really regret this because on the day those were really fun experiences and I should have been living more in the moment.

By the end of April, I was very tired and I was in a very low place when I got call saying that SiMa.ai was interested in giving me an internship and they had an offer ready. I will forever by grateful that I received that call at that time because it pulled me out of the bad place that I was in. I feel like it was my bad for not reaching out to the great friend circle I had at the time when I was genuinely having trouble. After everything, I felt a massive relief and I realized that I had placed so much importance and weight on this internship that I had forgotten how to live in the moment and enjoy stuff without thinking about a situation that in the end wouldn’t have mattered that much either way. I try my best to come off as a very positive person but this made me realize that even if things hadn’t turned out well, I would still be fine.

Taking this learning in mind, I decided to enjoy May. And enjoy I did, May was one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling months of my college life. I had so much fun and it felt like I had made up for all the lost fun that I missed out on. All the late nights in North, to the goodbye parties of Rahul and Ananya, to the trip to Sadiv’s house to packing everything up in North to our final project, this whole month felt like such an escape. That being said, the reality of graduation kind of hit and seeing Ananya and Rahul graduate definitely made me sad, but also very excited for their future.

Looking back, even with everything, this was probably the most fun I’ve had in an academic year and the most myself that I’ve been. I have found a group of people with whom I don’t have to be scared of being judged or criticized. This was a very seminal year in my development as a person and I would like to thank every single person who was even a small part of it. I love you all, thank you so much if you read this far!

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