The 2015 Noble Prize in Physics was declared for the discovery of Neutrino Oscillations. I was in my 10th grade, preparing for my boards. The news seemed to me like any ordinary news headline, but since it had something to do with ‘Physics’ intrigued me the most. I was always that kid who would browse through web pages to find out the meaning to new words since the first broadband connection came home. ‘Neutrino’ wasn’t an exception to this habit of mine! This marked the beginning of my journey in particle physics.

The initial 3 years of my journey in the field was limited to magical stories and amazing facts. I started reading several historical accounts and books. But when I got into IISER in 2018, I realised that my knowledge of particle physics is related to more of philosophy and history and not to the mathematical frameworks its based on. I realised there were a lot of challenges in my way, and so I started taking up online and offline courses in Basic and Abstract Mathematics and Theoretical Physics. But whatever I learn’t seemed too less to learn and understand Particle physics. It seemed impossible for me to encompass the subject.

Amongst these dying hopes I passed almost an year. I joined several workshops just to understand a way to proceed, but every way seemed too intricate for me. Finally it was 2019, when one of my classmates introduced me to a college senior, Shalini. I heared she did a project in ATLAS, one of the four major detector collaborations of CERN. When I met her for the first time I saw a compassion, and love for the subject in her eyes. It was an inspiration for me. She used to tell me stories about her experiences, she motivated me to pursue my interests. Under her guidance, I started pursuing my somewhat fading dreams again! She started inspiring me to get into Open lectures and schools at CERN, Geneva. And, finaly, I knew what I wanted to do.

2020, the year of the pandemic. My hopes were high and so was my determination. I learnt to write a decent CV, I learnt to hunt for opportunities. I applied for an internship at the University of Geneva, Switzerland. It was an ATLAS project. After an interview I was finaly selected and that was probably the happiest moments of my life.

5th of March, 2021 I got registered with my own CERN email-id and computing account. With small dreams coming true, it was exciting for me. Now when I think of it, it seems these were dreams that Shalini taught me to dream. Small milestones, big happiness:)

This page of mine is targetted to the people who are still lost and donot know a way to figure out what to do! Its a way of inspiring new minds to get into Particle Physics. Its a gesture to pass on what I recieved from Shalini.