I immediately registered as a PhD student under the excellent leadership of my supervisors in January 2016. This was a very important day of my life as I was taking up a new role apart from being a wife, a lecturer, and a mother of a 7-year-old little champ. Just wanted to remind you all that this was not the end but a new beginning.

My research was mainly into the novel drug delivery methods using nanoemulsions. This is a very hot topic of research currently. We were working with a few natural bioactive compounds, especially those that have established anticancer properties, but the challenge is about their bioavailability.

The best part is that I was very new to the field of formulations and nanoemulsions. I needed to learn from scratch like other research students. I had to seek help from many people whom I came across discussing the procedures and various methods that I can do to achieve the best formulations. Weeks and months rolled by, and I was not closer to my formulations.  The best part is that for one whole year, I took the pains to just know about the chemicals and the basic steps involved in the preparation of my nanoemulsions. The challenges which I faced every day were of a new kind and a few of them gave me sleepless nights. I know that these are the criteria for any PhD student at any given point in time.

I realized during my second year of research that apart from my three important criteria there is one more aspect that has made me stronger and still keeps me motivated. They are none other than my friends. During my hard times, they were the ones who reignited me and made me dream about the day when I can graduate. At one point, when nothing seemed to work right for me, like any other research student I also went through this phase of giving up.

Before I realized my mental state, my friends were smart enough to understand me and they advised me that I was not allowed to think of giving up or withdrawing from this. They did everything for me so that I can again focus on my core research work and motivated me which made me say “NEVER EVER GIVE UP ‘’.

Having said that I again started to work very meticulously on my next phase of work, cell cytotoxicity. Being an anatomist, it was crazy for me to enter the tissue culture lab where everything puzzled me. With the support of my supervisors and friends, I was enjoying this journey, though I was in tears after every 72hrs when my results didn’t come out as expected due to some technical difficulties. For almost 18 months, I was in the tissue culture lab and didn’t realize I can be a pro in doing the MTT assay which put a smile on my face.