Studying is exploring the known. Research is exploring the unknown.

It was 2014 when I first came across the word ‘research’. Today, in my understanding it is the epitome of human knowledge. You learn great deal of stuff during your academic journey but when you conduct research, you create new information which serves as a basis for people after you to better understand the world we live in and push the envelope to make things better.

Therefore, research or the act of creating knowledge is something I hold in very high regards.

In my first year of college I remember asking one of the professors about research prospects and being told that research in my college is non existent and that I should instead focus on my studies.

At around the same time it was one of the batchmates who told me that there exists something like STS from ICMR. I looked it up and immediately felt overwhelmed because, hey, that had been exactly me most of my life at that time, ‘competent but highly under confident.’

I kept the idea of research in my mind but in lack of any good mentorship or introduction to any kind of research in academic curriculum, I didn’t see anything happening that time.

It was in almost last year of college when I started taking things more seriously. I realised that if I don’t pursue what interests me, I might end up regretting not even trying. With that in mind, I talked to two professors whom I felt most comfortable with. They were generous enough to take time out of their schedule and introduce me to research methodology and together we worked on our first paper and later on 2 more. You can read about them here.

It was December of 2018 at that time. I started feeling confident enough to revisit the 3 year old dream so I applied for Short Term Studentship (STS) from Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR).
The first step was to prepare a proposal which is basically a document in which you suggest an idea you want to conduct research on and explain your methodology and usefulness of your work.

I was in a coffee shop with my close friend Shikhar and bounced some ideas off him. The list grew long but nothing seemed worth the effort. I have this innate thing where I can’t work on something just for the sake of working. The idea had to be intriguing enough to me. It had to resonate with me. It had to satisfy my curiosity. It had to be something ‘I’ would want to work on.

This is the photograph Shikhar clicked of that chilly winter evening in coffee shop: ICMR_STS Report Result

I remembered reading up in news how every year air pollution peaks and breaks maximum permissible threshold in National Capital Region (NCR) and being a resident of NCR myself I wanted to see how much it is impacting me as well as the people I care about.

Thus, I decided to evaluate the impact of air pollution on lung health of residents of NCR. To do this I devised a comparative cross sectional study to measure lung health based on symptoms and spirometry of residents of NCR and compare the same data from residents of people residing in a place where air pollution was within permissible limits.

In January 2019 I submitted the proposal to ICMR and I still remember the day in April when the results were out and it was selected.
It was 1:30 PM and I was in the classroom before the lunch break. I went out and took a deep breath. Congratulated myself and shared the news with my parents and a couple of close friends.

The first step was done but the journey had just started. It was April 2019 and it wouldn’t be until January the next year that the process will finally come to an end.
The next step was to actually conduct the research and prepare a report.
I started with preparing a questionnaire. My classes were from 8:30 AM-1:30 PM and then 2:30-4:30 PM and the only time I could approach my professors was during lunch, so I remember not having lunch for many days straight. After 2 months of brainstorming and 14 different iterations, I was finally satisfied with my study protocol covering all bases according to my understanding of the subject.

The next step was getting the ethical clearance for study. This was surprisingly the hardest part. You see the thing is the Ethical Committee only meets when it is called and it is only called when there are sufficient projects that need to be cleared. So even after preparing my case and presentation well, there was always a chance that the ethical committee might not meet at all and I miss the deadline. To top that, you can not perform any part of study until you get the clearance. So while I had prepared the study protocol by mid June, I did not get the ethical clearance until the end of August.
After god knows how many trips to various offices and pleadings there was finally a meeting and I got my ethical clearance certificate just 3 days before the deadline.

As soon as I got the ethical clearance, I rushed to Pauri Garhwal in Uttarakhand, my hometown to collect data. It was a 980km, 24 hour long journey but totally worth it. You see I am a fairly emotional person and being able to incorporate the place that shaped me to be who I am today seemed very poetic to me.

I came back and collected data in NCR.

The final date of submission was 30th of October and it was already end of September when I could get around the final and the humongous task of actually writing the report.
The report has 2 main parts. 1st the statistics and 2nd the text of it doing the explanation and comparison of your findings.
I started with evaluating the statistics. The results were promising.
Next I wrote the actual report/paper. Here I must tell you that no matter what you do never lose your references like I did. I can’t explain what a pain it is to get them in order in first place let alone finding them again.

I am not getting into the details of paper writing like getting the abstract right or the painful job of composing a meaningful discussion. If you need to know that then let me know in the comments and I’ll do a separate write up on that.

From September to October I used to work during lunch breaks and 5:30 PM to 10:30 PM straight which left me very little time to study for my 2nd Terminal examinations which took place in October itself. Luckily medicine is not learnt in a day and if you have paid attention in classroom you will always know good enough to do well in exams. My exams ended on 24th of October leaving me with 5 days to complete the report whose discussion was still left to be written. I took 2 days off and worked 14 hours a day straight to complete the report. After like 30 versions and numerous proof reads the final draft was ready.

I still remember the relief when I uploaded the final report on the website. I opened a bottle of beer and went straight to bed, lying there in disbelief of what I had done.

You see in life results don’t matter. You can do you best and still fail. God knows I have failed so so many times after giving my best. I was happy because this is the best I could have done, and I had done it.
Lying there on the bed that day I could see meaning in my efforts and the final product of those efforts. I was proud of my work and I think if you can say that for your work then that is an end in itself. No pass/fail can take that away from you.

After a well deserved good night’s sleep that day there was a wait for 3-4 months for the final results.

So exactly 3 months later on 25th of Januray 2020, it was my Pre-Professional Obstetrics/Gynaecology practical examination and I was sitting outside the ward, waiting for my turn for the last viva of the day. 2:29 PM on the clock and I just thought of checking the ICMR website once for the result.

The website loaded.

There was a notification for results on the right for results of 2019 STS reports.

I clicked on it.

A pdf started downloading. My heart rate rose.

It opened.

All the results were given according to your ID with no names mentioned and yes, of course I did not remember my STS ID. What a great time I had chosen to check for the results indeed. On one hand I have to go for my exam any moment now and on the other hand here I am now unable to know what happened to the thing I worked so hard for over an year. Awesome!

I opened the mail app. Searched for ones from ICMR and found one with my assigned ID.

Copied it and searched for it in the pdf.

This is what I saw:

ICMR_STS Report Result


My heart skipped a beat. I don’t know what I felt in that moment. Maybe it’s because I had already made my peace with the fact that I had given everything to this one thing upto the best of my capabilities and result didn’t matter in that moment or maybe I was exhausted from the examinations. I dunno.

I just kept my mobile phone away and went for the viva. I did good. Later I could feel every breath on my walk back home that day.

It was only after I woke up in the evening after a good nap that the tiredness from exam had vanished and I couldn’t believe what I had achieved. I had never felt happier. Something I worked my ass off had met its goal.

It has been 14 months now since I first started and 2 months since the result came out. The whole experience taught me 2 very valuable things and I want to share them with you.

  • Do not stop.

This is in general. No matter who you are, where you are, how much have you failed before, do not stop. You might hear things. It’s okay. People might tell you all time that it’s impossible. That you can try but this is not the kind of place where stuff happens. That your efforts will not amount to anything but still, do not stop. When I started with this whole thing I had no one to look upto. No one guided me. No one told me to mind the mistakes I made along the way. I even remember the day when a batchmate said “We do not do research in this place. It’s for places like AIIMS. You can look up STS and stuff but nothing much will come out of it in this college.”

But hey, I just did it anyway right ? And it’s not because I knew stuff any way special. I did it because I just started one day and didn’t stop.

  • I can do it.

This is very personal. I failed my medical entrance test 3 times. I used to be a topper in school and those failures crushed me. I lost my confidence and it didn’t only reflect in my academics later on but also in my personal life. I let people tell me I’m no good. I felt no good with my studies, my personality, my body image, my relationships. I let everything go down not because they were bad but because I had started to believe that no matter what I do, how hard I try, nothing will come out of it.

Academically it came to a point where I used to idolize the people who got selected for medical school while I didn’t. I looked upto those people as if they were something special. After I saw the result, I realized I was one of them too. That I can do it too. That people are not special, they just work hard, learn from mistakes and keep moving. And this, this is my biggest learning in last 14 months.

I’m currently working on completing the papers and will add links to them here once they get published.

I know this is a long writeup and I don’t expect anyone to read it. It follows the same philosophy every other thing on my website follows and that is, it is for those who need it. You see, I wish someone was there to talk to me when I had started. I wish there was someone to share the experience. I wish there was someone to let me know it’s possible and if you need that then I hope this eased it out a bit for you.