My career journey as an Aspiring Mathematician

I was born and brought up in a small town of lower Assam, Silchar. I did my 10th boards from Silchar Collegiate School and my 12th boards from Ramanuj Gupta Junior College both under state board. After my 10th board results, my parents seeing my knack towards mathematics took me to a family friend who had recently passed out from Delhi University with physics majors to seek career guidance for me. The guy gifted me a book on “Love and Maths” by Arthur Engel, I took to reading the book regularly and with time the book ignited the passion to do higher mathematics in me. When everyone was going crazy over JEE and NEET, I had decided to take up mathematics as my career path. I became so distasteful of this craze about JEE and NEET that I did not even fill out the forms of these exams.

After my 12th boards results were out in 2020, I applied to BHU, IISER and ISI. Although due to the pandemic period and for some personal matters I could not prepare well for these entrance exams, but luckily I was able to sail through to BHU. Also, worth mentioning, my 12 board results were decent (I was above the top 1 percentile students) and since I took up study in basic sciences without having a drop year I became eligible for getting the INSPIRE (https://www.online-inspire.gov.in/) fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India. The INSPIRE scheme aims at promising students who take up basic sciences as their career path and funds them throughout their bachelors and masters provided there is no gap year in their studies. In due time, I got offered the INSPIRE fellowship and I technically became financially independent at 19 given the low cost of living and studying at BHU.

Due to the pandemic situation, I was able to spend 1.5 years in BHU. During end of my second year, I got selected to work in the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Mohali under the SRPF program of the Indian Academy of Sciences. I worked there for 2 months in Number Theory, made new friends and colleagues and got paid from the academy. I liked this place so much that I later took admission as an integrated PhD student after my bachelors.

After the third year of my bachelors, most of my friends got selected in IITs for M.Sc , some started preparing for govt. exams. It was time to say goodbye to BHU. With a heavy heart and a lot of learnings I left BHU. During that time, I got selected at IISER Mohali and in parallel to that I was doing a internship in my hometown at the Assam University. There I worked for a very brief period of time in number theory, this time I got paid a good sum under the INSPIRE mentorship scheme and after this I came straight to IISER Mohali for my counselling.

Now I am an integrated PhD in mathematics in IISER Mohali and I intend to do research in low-dimensional topology, so far, I have spent one year in this campus and I feel happy to have chosen science as my career option. I have made a lot of friends here, we have went to trips and treks together whenever we were free and most importantly helped and collaborated with each other in learning new things.

My advice to the upcoming generation of students will be to look through this jungle of competition of JEE and NEET and not to fall for the stupid one-liners/punchlines of the coaching industries. I have a lot of friends in IITs and medical colleges and I know for sure, life is not the same that is being portrayed by these coaching mafias inside of IITs and medical colleges. So do what your heart says.