Recap 2025

  

2025 was a year of trials, tribulations and triumphs. A mixtape of emotions. A year where either conditional probability did not apply to my life or there were more variables in play. It was a year of shedding: both light and deadweight.

The year quietly announced itself towards the end of 2024, when I had a wonderful exploration of the Ripon Building and its surroundings. It quietly set the tone for the new year – wandering, observing and letting curiosity take the lead. The first two months were mildly eventful. I was selected to be the head of Registration Committee for Vibrance. I enjoyed the hustle – the checklist, the controlled chaos and the celebrations. I was simultaneously handling my submission for the semi-finals of the Google Girls’ Hackathon, and I’m grateful to my committee and my parents for being supportive. I had an instrumental phase, and I remember blasting the Imperial March in the middle of the night while working. It turned out to be much better than my rap phase, but if I were my own roommate, I’d have walked out.

I also had a pick of fanciful events this year. The Chennai International Book Fair, Comic-Con, an amazing Bombay trip and a few other weekend getaways.

Vibrance did a full audit of my peer circle. It was a lot of work to handle during the sixth semester. Leisure became luxury. It forced me to figure out who stays because they want to, and who stays due to convenience. I had friends who volunteered to work on the team to spend time having fun, friends who dropped by on the fest days to hang out. Eventually, a few connections faded away. I’d later realise they were a part of the second category. The on-ground work gave me momentum I hadn’t realised I was missing. I would wholeheartedly recommend volunteering for, hosting, or leading large-scale events. You gain skills that don’t always translate cleanly onto a résumé, but shape who you become once that resume lands you somewhere. And years later, you’ll remember the late-night food hunts, last-minute fixes, and half-serious conversations far more vividly than a long weekend spent binge-watching something. (And it’s definitely better than Compiler Design.)

March to May was monotonic and bruising. A hackathon we had poured ourselves into ended abruptly when our team was dismissed due to last-minute merge conflicts that crossed the time limit. It sent me spiralling. I had never been dismissed before, and I didn’t handle it well. I chased closure obsessively. Outside of that, it was exams, projects, and placement preparation on loop. Samsung PRISM work offered some intellectual distraction, even though the team was largely inactive; the problem statement itself kept me curious.

Trips arrive in multiples. And are triggered by the purchasing of new shoes. A good friend and a frequent collaborator invited me to another hackathon, this time at Bangalore. We built SafeSteps, a routing app that suggests safer paths by analysing neighbourhood crime data. We placed third. It was fun, validating, and quietly unsettling in a way I wouldn’t understand until much later.

That summer, I was accepted into the ACM Summer School on Cryptography at the Trust Lab, IIT Bombay. Those two weeks were, without exaggeration, the best part of the year. It was my first truly solo trip: my first solo flight, a new city, unfamiliar streets. I’d always enjoyed cryptography, but the camp made me realise that security might be more than academic interest; it could be a direction worth pursuing seriously. Beyond the lectures, the people made it unforgettable. Wandering through Bombay with them, talking endlessly - those are memories I’ll carry for a long time.
To the Sobo group and Geetanjali, thank you for making my summer brighter.

Refreshed from Bombay, I turned 21 with enthusiasm. My final-year project centered on applied cryptography, and the placement grind intensified. I wasn’t shortlisted for most roles, and even when I was, I found myself being oddly selective. This is something I now realise I could have approached with more curiosity and less caution.

August arrived with drama. July-August is the most ominous time of my year, and there is  enough data to back it up. This time, I lost out on what felt like a perfect opportunity due to a systemic flaw. Ironically, that very day, my friend and I submitted a project to the Société Générale Hackathon. I then went almost entirely off-grid for two weeks, equal parts exhaustion and emotional recalibration.

In September, we were informed that we’d made it to the finals. We presented live, won second place, and unexpectedly, I found the closure I had been chasing for months. That moment turned into an interview opportunity, which turned into an internship, and eventually a PPO. I received the offer on my dad’s birthday, a detail I’ll always smile about. I’m excited to share that I’ll be joining Société Générale next year as a Cybersecurity Analyst Intern.

 Life has a strange sense of irony. In my first year of college, I swore off cybersecurity because it felt overwhelming. I kept chasing whatever was supposed to spark passion, only to realise that nearly all my hackathon work revolved around building safer digital systems.

The rest of the year was calm, almost gently so. Farewells were said. My friends and I visited the new Wonderla (the power-cut rumours are true, plan wisely. But people often under advertise the fun. It is really good, try the water rides!). The semester itself was refreshing. Cognitive Robotics sent me into philosophical spirals I didn’t resist. Communication for Cyber-Physical Systems made me revisit my less-loved corners of signals. Digital Marketing reshaped how I think about content, persuasion, and visibility.

2025 asked for a lot, and eventually gave enough in return. Sometimes, you just have to endure a negative maxima. After all, life is a sinusoidal wave.

I’ll be starting the new year afresh – a new role, a new city, and infinite possibilities.

Here’s to a fruitful and eventful 2026 ahead!