Tricky train full of uncertainties: the next stop Singapore

Few years back, one of my teachers told me to always embrace the decision which makes me step out of my comfort zone, and this statement just keeps coming back to me with all its implications.
By nature, I am a very competitive person and I like to seize opportunities whenever they present themselves. I often become so immersed in my own goals that I forget my reasons for them…

This wannabe deep and philosophical introduction finally brings me to the point I wanted to make. Two years ago, I was beginning this wonderful, four years long to be, adventure behind the English Chanel and I would have never thought about going even further than that, but it happened.

Based on my grades, I was offered the opportunity to study abroad and of course with not much thinking I tried to take it. After a very long and quite tedious process of applying at my home university, UCL, getting the place, officially applying to my selected university, and getting the conditional admission – I still did not quite believe I would be actually leaving the place which became my home, especially considering the fact that I would be going to Singapore.

Exams were just behind the corner and I was expected to get First overall to make Singapore happen. All those possibilities, it was quite a lot to handle and I think I clung to my everyday routine of studying and preparing for exams even more. Even though it is actually quite hard to compare this year and the last one, as I always turn on my early onset dementia to forget about this time of the year.

And it did happen. I scored First in all my modules and I even did a little bit better than last year. Yet the satisfaction is still waiting to be received as I continue to have mixed feelings. I am so thrilled and excited to attend yet another world’s top university with extensive research facilities, to further pursue my interests in quantum and particle physics, and obviously to visit Asia.

Still, there is this strange feeling you get when you are about to leave a place. Like you won’t only miss the people, you will miss the person you are now at this time and this place, because you will never be this way ever again. Even if you leave just for a year.

Carrying out the risk assessment and including all variations with or without a probabilistic context, at the end of July I am indeed stepping forward into the unknown and assuming it will be brilliant. And meanwhile? I keep my brain occupied while doing an internship with High Energy Physics Department at UCL and searching for neutrinoless double beta decay within the SuperNEMO project.