The Call: On May 4th, at exactly 15:24, my phone rang, and to my delight, it was my PhD supervisor, Prof. Manindra Agrawal. I was certain he was calling to inform me about my defense date. And indeed, he did, but there was a twist. The defense was scheduled for 16:00 on May 5th, leaving me momentarily stunned. Unsure of what to say, I quickly asked if it would be an online or offline defense. Thankfully, it was an online defense, saving me from last-minute travel arrangements to Kanpur.

The Miscommunication: After confirming the details, Prof. Agrawal inquired about the status of my presentation slides and assured me that he would be sending an email shortly. Once the call ended, I immediately reached out to Bhargav, my friend, to share the news. However, when he checked his email, it stated that my defense was scheduled for 16:00 on May 4th, causing panic and confusion to set in. But within moments, another email arrived, correcting the typo in the date, relieving my worries.

Preparation and Last-Minute Hiccups: With little time left to prepare, I decided to reuse the slides from my Open seminar. The following day, I received a call from Prof. Rajat Mittal, who was quite disappointed with my decision not to be physically present in Kanpur. I explained that I had been informed about the defense 24 hours prior, leaving him speechless.

As the clock ticked closer to 15:50, I tried to join the Zoom meeting, only to encounter an error message indicating a broken link. Anxiously, I contacted Bhargav to check if he was facing the same issue, and fortunately, he was. Just as I began to worry, Prof. Agrawal called, asking why I hadn’t joined the meeting yet. I explained my technical troubles, and he promptly sent the correct link via email and my phone. Despite trying different browsers and networks, I still couldn’t join the meeting on my laptop. Ultimately, I resorted to joining from my mobile, raising the new challenge of presenting my slides effectively.

To address this issue, Prof. Agrawal kindly offered to control my slides on his end. However, he was taken aback when he saw that the slide count exceeded 100. In reality, I had only prepared 30 slides, but the pauses in the presentation format had caused the PDF to display a larger number. The flow of the presentation suffered as I had to request Prof. Agrawal multiple times to advance the slides. Despite these challenges, the audience ultimately appreciated my presentation. The panel included Prof. Manindra Agrawal, Santanu Sarkar from IIT Madras, Urbi Chatterjee, Angshuman Karmakar, and Shubham. Now, I’m officially Dr. Mahesh Sreekumar Rajasree.