Making the most out of the situation

Hello everyone!

I hope everyone’s healthy and well.

I know the past weeks have been stressful. However, today I want to address a small group of college-goers who might have got the golden opportunity to work on amazing research projects over the summer, funded by some external organization or self.

I can understand how disheartening it is to be so close to achieving something, but not being able to reach the end of the rainbow and find the pot of gold. (For all those who are not aware, certain programs like Mitacs have decided not to host their programs this year keeping everyone’s health and safety in mind.)

Firstly, I would urge you to not consider this as a “downfall” in your career, or that you never deserved the internship in the first place. That is utterly wrong. Let us address each concern one-by-one.

1. Each committee goes through thousands of applications, and if you got through, you are not ordinary. Pat your back and be proud.
2. Consider this as a boon. I will explain how.
   • When I was in my second year, I barely got any opportunity to pursue my interests, and indeed, I was disheartened. But, I started working on simple basic projects. My major research interests are ML and Computer Vision, so I can probably give an example based on that. You can pick up easy projects. It does not have to be something no one has ever done; it could be a simple MNIST classifier. Try to beat your score. Try to understand what is going wrong and what could be done about it. Deep learning is indeed based on a black-box model, but you cannot entirely rely on the model to do everything on its own. If that had been the case, Google and Facebook would not have spent millions on their AI tech. Kaggle is a great place to start with.
   • Mail professors - in your country and abroad. With everyone working from home, they would have less workload than usual, and your mail might get read. Tell them that you are passionate about the work and would love to work remotely. I am continuing my research project with my CMU mentor, and trust me, this can work out. The professors love enthusiastic students who come up with their ideas. So if you’re beyond the basics, you could always mail the professors to guide you with a potential project. You could mention the opportunity you got (say, S.N. Bose, Mitacs or DAAD) so that they know you are competent enough. If you get through, you would not have to wait for the summers. You could start right away!!
   • If you cannot get in touch with a professor, try pursuing the project yourself! Worst case scenario: you realize your idea was not that great. At least, you will have no regrets!
   • I would highly suggest for MS and Ph.D. aspirants to prep for the GRE during this time. If things sort out, you can give your GRE in the month of May/June leaving you ample slots to reappear again, if needed. Moreover, it will not be as challenging to sit for those 5-hour mock tests, as it would have been if you had your college/internship(s) going on.
   • Lastly, use this time to pamper yourself. Not just with good sleep and good food, but with positive thoughts. Explore other domains. You never know what might click.

This is a minimal list of suggestions that I could come up with. I am here if you feel you need to talk to a senior who might have the same goals as you. Lastly, I believe in you, and so should you.