Hello, everyone. I am writing this post because I cannot express what I am feeling to anybody. I am from India. I come from a small town. I was always considered a “gifted child” in my society but I lost everything. In my 10th exams, I scored 95+ in my boards and was patted on the back. In my 12th grade I also scored 95%+.
When I was in 9th grade, my interest in physics was ignited. I started reading a lot of popsci books and my love of the subject grew gradually. In 10th I formally started studying theoretical physics. I started with CM by Taylor and then eventually came across QM by Shankar. I fell in love with that book and after I finished it, I picked up Srednicki’s QFT. I studied them very hard and was introduced to String Theory in 11th. I started reading research papers and then I started researching. Though my work but not at all exploratory, but it was good enough to get published in a low tier journal (not JHEP). I even participated in various international conferences and gave talks in String Theory and AQFT.
I was looking forward to become a physicist but now it looks like everything is falling apart. I applied to various schools in the US but only got into 3 (Ohio University, Stony Brook and Rutgers). I was going to apply to Caltech and MIT but I missed the early action deadline and thought that they won’t admit me in RA. I was hopeful to get into UChicago but was rejected in the EA round. I wanted to join Stony Brook because their research (in my field) is exceptional, but didn’t get any scholarship except university scholars or the usual $6k one.
I gave the JEE (April attempt) but only managed to score 89%ile, and since I come from EWS qualified for JEE Adv. Now I feel like I can’t score good in Adv because I wasn’t able to do good in mains. I feel like an idiot because I devoted all my time into research and didn’t prepare at all for JEE. I registered for IAT but I don’t think that I’ll be able to do there too.
I wanted to do so much but now I am slowly suffocating in myself. I joined a local coaching but I don’t think I have it. I lost everything, my hopes, my dreams, my aspirations, everything. I feel that there is nothing left for me. I have thought about ending it all but I feel like I should give it a last try. I went from giving presentations in Theoretical Physics to a failure who can’t do anything.
I don’t know what will happen to me, but if nothing works out, I atleast have a way out.