For many reasons, this was the first summer I was free to get involved in research.  I immediately started applying for work-study positions. The first position I came across was a Hindi researcher position with Professor Virani, who was, as stated in the posting,  “trying to save medieval literature from disappearing”, a noble task. I immediately applied with no expectations at all. I have always been fascinated by ancient civilizations and texts. Everyone has at least one middle school hyper fixation, mine was monarch butterflies and ancient civilizations. 

Having taken a full term of Sanskrit, I had some experience with ancient literature, but literally no experience in an academic research sense. I applied, forgot about it, and started frantically applying to lab positions. I was trying to get some lab research positions before graduation, but every cold email resulted in a negative response, or even worse, no response at all. It was a little disheartening, but I was hopeful. 

One day, I received a “Congratulations!” email from none other than Professor Virani. I was surprised, to say the least. I know this was a popular position, and many people had applied. I didn’t think that I, someone who had all except 3 STEM courses in her transcript, would get this job. Nevertheless, I’m glad he took a chance. I accepted the offer I had instead of waiting around and joined the Dream Team. It gave me something much cooler to do over the summer than wash glassware. 

The first project assigned to me consisted of working with a 15th-century script which recorded literary works in South Asian languages. Professor Virani said I would be “one of the few people in the world who will be able to read this script.” This excited me to no bounds. As I started working on transcribing texts, I had a window to the lives of people who experienced the world long before I came into it. 

I’m thoroughly enjoying the work so far, and all of this worry about it being “too late” to get a position just reminded me of this quote I recently read in “The Time Keeper” by Mitch Albom:

“It is never too late or too soon, it is when it is supposed to be."

See you next time!

Shreya D.