Aparajithan Venkateswaran

© 2025. All rights reserved.

Year 2024 in Review

02 Jan 2025

My annual review for 2024 is here (after skipping the 2023 version). This contains less stats and more personal reflections. And you will see why.


Looking back at 2024

Big milestones

  1. I defended my dissertation and successfully graduated
  2. I started my new job as a data scientist

Travel

  1. Traveled to Florida for a workshop
  2. Traveled to San Francisco for fun
  3. Day trip to Bainbridge Island, Washington
  4. Traveled to Portland, Oregon for a conference
  5. Traveled to Yellowstone National Park
  6. Traveled to Vancouver, Canada for a conference

By the stats


Looking ahead at 2025

Some goals

  1. Run a half marathon (I’ve been setting a running distance goal for the past few years but I’m feeling positive about it this time)
  2. Visit Europe or New Zealand
  3. Learn 12 new songs on guitar


Some reflections

There was a period of time right after graduation when I started my new job during which I felt a little lost. For the better part of the past 27 years, my goal in life was well-defined. In school, it was to graduate from high school and get into a good college. In college, it was to graduate with a degree and either find a job or get into grad school. Obviously, I went to grad school. In a Ph.D. program, the goal was to perform “novel” research and defend your findings (and find a new job). Very loosely defined path, but the destination was defined. In August 2024, I had done all of that with a job lined up to start in a month.

Now that I started the new job, I was left with two holes. First, there was no goal. At least not in my professional life. Yes, there were projects I owned and had to make sure they were progressing in the right direction. But they did not have the “levelling up” aspect of formal education. Once a project was done, you either moved on to the next project or you continued to maintain the product. Sure, you could level up in your job i.e., get promoted. Again, that was not the same as the “levelling up” you get in formal education, where you start a grand new chapter. These were more “journey” than “destination.”

Add on to the fact that my social life was completely upended. Throughout college, I was surrounded by other students. There was a sense of camaraderie as you work through the same assignments, study for the same exams, and share large portions of our lives in the same pursuit. At work, you do not get that bonding with your colleagues through shared experiences.

I guess both problems were of separating “professional” from “personal.” In college and grad school, the boundaries are blurred. The research bleeds so much into your personal space (working late hours and on weekends) that it becomes a part of your identity. As a result, my social life was inherited from the professional life. The social inheritance can be a good thing when you are going on the same journey. But I think I took it too far in that the professional identity took over the personal identity. So in the process of achieving my professional goal, I lost my sense of personal identity. And that crisis manifested in those two ways.

Admittedly, I had (am still having?) a difficult time with the transition. I have some strategies that I have been trying out to fix the social life. For instance, I proactively stay in touch with my friends. For people in town, this means organizing dinners, board game nights, and other similar activities where I get to see familiar faces. For people far away, this means reaching out for phone calls, sending memes, and maybe even planning trips. And I force myself to say “yes” to social events where I get the opportunity to expand my circle. I’ve only been good at this for the past few weeks but I am feeling positive about it already. Another thing I want to try in 2025 is attending meetups. This is a bit nerve wracking but, in the worst case, I likely won’t meet anyone there again, so I have nothing to lose!

As for the first problem about “goals in life,” I am sad to say I don’t have definite answers. I have been trying to fill out my calendar trying new activities. Last month, I signed up for dance lessons, which is an activity that old me was least likely to engage in. It was a little outside my comfort zone and I enjoyed it. I think it would be more fun if I got to practice more. So I am tabling further investing time into it for the future. Next, I am looking at signing up for karate lessons. You get the idea of what I’m trying to do here.

However, these feel like temporary answers and do not address the underlying question. What is my next destination? Journey before destination, yes, but is there a point to the journey when there is no destination? Asked differently, how do you make the journey without knowing the destination?

As I continue the search for my answers, I wish you a happy new year!