A few people advised me against setting up this section and I can see where they are coming from. I am not much into social media and have an almost non-existent digital profile but decided that if I'm going to have a digital profile, why not have something that speaks a litte bit me as well?

Growing up in a very corrupt country, “baby me” thought people back home did not work hard enough. Nothing seemed efficient and the question of how we could change this culture always lingered on my mind. I frequently wondered what other countries that were similar to Nepal did better? That actually, I think, got me first interested in the idea of travelling. This eventually led me to the United States. The decision to come to the US was very risky because I had an option to study and become a doctor back home while until March, not a single college offering me enough financial aid for me to have a chance to study abroad. What made this worse was that I did not dislike the idea of becoming a doctor. In hindsight, I now realize that was not a result of me actually liking medicine but because of me loving Grey’s Anatomy. I do wonder how many people actually did end up becoming a doctor because they watched Grey’s Anatomy though. Hopefully one day I will secure enough funding to run an experiment on this (RCT!!).

Starting freshman year, I knew science was not my calling. I liked wondering about the universe but could not stand engineering. The mini break I took from watching Grey’s Anatomy also made me lose any tiny appeal I had in pursuing biology. History and Political Science did not appeal me enough for me to declare a major in it. I honestly had no idea what my calling was. So, all I did the first year of college was take as many random classes as I could which turned out to be the greatest thing I did in regards to how it shaped my academic career. I loved the discussions I had in my international studies courses but realized the importance of data and generalizability which I found the advanced courses to be slightly lacking. It did however further solidify my desire to travel. Next came dabbling in courses in literature and finance. I wanted to take a crack at learning about stocks and financial modelling – mostly because I wanted to learn what people in Wall Street actually did- and realized unless I had a lot of inheritance money to test my stock models and their returns, sticking to S&P 500 was the way to go. This momentary interest in Finance did lead me to taking Econometrics and Stochastic Calculus though and those two courses introduced me to two awesome professors who shaped my academic trajectory. What I took most from the two courses was the relationship I’d form with them. I used to spend hours in their offices just talking about random stuff and while Prof. McMurdy led me to realize the beauty of pure math (I will always prefer pure math to applied math even though I realize I am not good at it) and eventually on me deciding to be a Math major, Prof. Hecht made me realize that the answers to questions I was most eager to solve would most likely come from me pursuing Economics. I did dabble in some Computer Science courses too because I thought it would help me be a better econometrician. (Jury's still out on whether it actually did.)

I knew I wanted to pursue a PhD the end of second year and Colorado seemed like a lovely place to spend the next five years of my life (Skiing is ridiculously expensive though!). I have no qualms with the PhD in itself but the last few years have been super tough personally. Losing my younger cousin to a brain aneurysm while I started my third semester was a reminder of how fickle life is. I regret losing touch with her once I came to the US. Losing my partner 7 months later was the final nail in the coffin. Every day since her death has been hell. I am forever thankful that she transferred to CSU so that we could be together and to be honest, that’s the only reason I’ve kept on going. It felt like I would be failing her if I quit. Every day I spent with her was the best and I thank her for making the first two years of graduate school a walk in the park. Not a single second has gone by that I have not thought of her and the grief comes in so unexpected. Handling grief is something no one prepares you for. To distract myself, I’ve been trying to learn surfing and scuba diving the past two years. I’m pretty good at scuba diving now and have actually night-dived and also swam alongside sharks (the non-scary “reef sharks”). I do still suck at surfing though but as I'm trying to slowly learn surfing, I am drawn by how much the act of surfing has parallels to all the emotions I'm currently navigating. I think I'd describe grief as a series of never-ending waves. You think you are in a constant but suddenly there’s a big wave coming, and you can do nothing about it. All you can do is try to hold your breath until you eventually surface up only to realize that there’s another one coming crashing right at you again. The only thing that maybe helps calm your anxiety is knowing that you will eventually rise up to the shore. The time you're inside the waves all alone does feel like eternity though and is pretty scary! I still need to learn how the waves behave and as my physical body is trying to learn when to paddle and catch the right waves, my heart is also slowly learning how to tackle grief and catch it so that it’s not as painful to feel.

The reason I’m writing this is not to seek pity but because I know how difficult it is to go through grief. You realize you don’t have as many friends as you once thought and that after a while, life goes on for everyone while you are stuck in a nasty vortex of overwhelming emotions that physically hurts your chest. So, if you are someone going though this sucky feeling, don’t hesitate to shoot me a message. Nothing actually helps but it’s nice talking about your loved ones and whether you are an old friend or someone I don’t know; I will always have time to hear you talk about your loved one. I think there’s a fine line between compassion and pity and I’d rather no one pity someone and have a bit of compassion instead. Showing compassion, to me, means acknowledging the randomness in life and realizing that anyone can be hit with bad luck. Pitying someone, on the other hand, to me, means thinking it was something about their actions that caused them to suffer. I think the modern world could do with a lot more compassion because to me, compassionate thinking would actually help solve many of the world’s problems.

Almost a decade living in the United States now, I now often times wonder if people here are working way too much for way too little? I’ve seen people needing to take unpaid time off to go visit doctors, and many more missing a lot of important events simply because they cannot afford to miss work. I realize it’s not exactly a tale of two cities since the working class appear to be struggling everywhere. The work culture back home is getting more demanding. Baby me would have been happy with that shift but the more I hear about how the services industry is working back home, the more skeptical I get. Just like here in the US, wages are way too little for an average employer to be able to afford a home and fresh graduates prefer working freelance for foreign companies than seeking a stable job due to the power of the dollar. Life for the lower and lower middle class is gloomy- and most have realized selling their labor abroad in the Gulf is financially better than staying back home. Sitting in a café sipping an almost $10 coffee rocking a $280 noise cancelling headphone, I am in no place to make any moral judgements but I do think we need to do something to reduce the growing inequality all over the world. Four years of graduate school and I still do not have an answer, but I think providing solid education and health services can greatly help. Atleast that’s a start? Maybe this fifth year of grad life will suddenly bring me answers.....

It took me twenty years to figure out what I wanted to do with my life but every “wrong” decision I took in life brought me to realize that what I am doing right now is what I enjoy doing. My personal life has taken a bit of a hit but if anything, it’s made me realize that research and teaching is something I love and there’s not a lot of things outside of this that I’d rather be doing. I enjoy listening to the opinions of my students when I am teaching because as cliché as it sounds, I learn as much from them as they (hopefully) learn from me. Similarly, I’m thankful for all the thought-provoking conversation’s I’ve had in life- this includes my professors, friends, and all the random people I’ve met in hostels while travelling. The more I listen to others, the more I realize there’s so much I don’t know and so many questions I want to answer. Are aliens going to be cold-blooded? Is there life after death? Will Manchester United ever win the Champions League again? What makes Walmart's spicy chicken nuggets so delicious? These are questions I will leave the rest of the world to answer. For my part, I’ll be busy answering questions pertaining to areas of education, health and labor. I know it’s not as grand as finding out what really happens inside a black hole and it might not seem important to a lot of people. But, to be honest, the idea that other people might not be interested in what I'm doing does not really bother me anymore. My research is meaningful to me and at the end of the day, that’s all that matters.