2020: The Plot Twist of the Vision Year

Photo by Daniil Kuželev on Unsplash

The year 2020 started with the messenger applications on my phone buzzing with wishes like:

May this year bring you the 2020 vision to focus on all essential aspects of life!

Anonymous, or Was that you?

2020 is the year that added so many terms to my limited medical vocabulary. The words that I was not even aware existed have now been overused to such an extent that I have started to detest them. It all began with unprecedented and then came along quarantine, lockdown, asymptomatic, carrier, contact tracing, community spread, and the list goes on and on.

Being a 90s kid, 2020 was like a symbolic marker of a futuristic decade for me, like the ones they show in sci-fi movies? And, in a way, it has been!

Like so many people around the world, I had my 2020 vision in place. It was supposed to be my year, where I would focus on my goals and achieve them. I am a full-time Ph.D. student, and hence uncertainty is a part of my life. But March 2020 was way beyond acceptable levels of uncertainty.

I always look at my thesis as a project and have a timeline in my mind. My biggest fear was to complete the work within the stipulated duration (actually, well before that, to be on the safe side!). What if I don’t? This was a question that gave me jitters!

And then, the global pandemic happened, and I had to come back home due to the indefinite lockdown. It took almost one month of trying to finally restart work because the show must go on. There were suddenly so many things to take care of without going out of the house. The levels of uncertainty were just beyond all imagined limits. But here is the plot twist!

Since the beginning of my Ph.D. program, I had dreaded working on my thesis from home, but I am doing it now. I have faced challenge after challenge, and I have adapted. 2020 has actually helped me grow exponentially. Whenever I felt low about not getting desired and quantitative results earlier, my seniors advised me to treat Ph.D. as a part of my life and not have my life revolving around my Ph.D.

I never truly understood how to do that until last month. I am sure that is the most significant achievement of 2020 for me. 

This year, I have started to rediscover myself and my love for writing as well. I had almost forgotten about this blog, but now I am back!

I am yet to achieve the quantitative goals, but now I genuinely believe that I will. It is only a matter of time!