On March 25, 2022, I finally attended my Master’s graduation ceremony. The event itself was very simple. The atmosphere was also completely different from when I graduated from Institut Teknologi Bandung in October 2018. There was no festive celebration; just a brief faculty-level ceremony, calling names one by one, and handing out diplomas.

I didn’t even attend the main graduation ceremony because I still had to finish an experiment in the lab that morning. So I only came in the afternoon, picked up my graduation certificate, took a few photos for documentation, and then went back to my usual routine.

Perhaps one reason the ceremony felt rather “quiet” was the due to caution from the coronavirus pandemic. Although it wasn’t as strict as in previous years, large gatherings still hadn’t fully returned to normal.

After picking up my diploma, I went to the lab to take a photo with my advisor. To my surprise, he had prepared a graduation gift for me. It was unique and very “research-themed”: a special ice cream spoon made from a material with high thermal conductivity. When you hold it, the heat from your hand flows directly to the tip of the spoon, making even hard ice cream in a cup much easier to scoop. For me, it was a memorable gift—something closely connected to the research I had been working on for the past two years.

That day, I felt relieved, as if a huge weight had finally been lifted. But that relief lasted only a day. Because the very next morning, I had to face reality again: April 1st was my first day as a doctoral student. Along with it came the expectation to publish three scientific journals during my three-year PhD—effectively, one journal per year. A new journey had begun, one that would be just as challenging as the last.