where it started
Grade XII
Psychology sat in my timetable next to physics, chemistry and biology.
I topped ISC Psychology in 2022 with a 94/100, and finished Grade XII with 91%.
1Psychology
the last role
The public voice
Public Relations
Dec 2024 to Jan 2025
Led external communications and stakeholder relations. In a focused two-month sprint, I spearheaded the organisation’s public-facing voice, owning outreach and relationship management end to end, and built PsyConnect, a student community initiative on Discord.
Along the way, Avantika took me to my first ever conference, on bipolar disorder, and I was the youngest person in the room. Meeting people living with bipolar, and the families who love them, gave me a new way of seeing life.
It also showed me why men need mental health circles and emotional support systems as much as women do, and how much a community matters today.
22the degree
B.Sc. Applied Psychology
Five semesters across the whole map of the mind. The foundations: cognitive, social, developmental, personality, physiological, neuropsychology, evolutionary, and systems and theories. The applied edges: counselling and psychotherapy, family and marital, health, educational, community, industrial and organisational, criminal, neuro-forensic and environmental psychology, and the psychology of modern life, relationships included.
All of it grounded in the research toolkit that proves any of it: statistics, experimentation, psychological testing and assessment, analytical review, article writing, and case and field studies. Then the professional layer: motivational training, soft skills and communication, and a clinical summer internship.
2the degree, continued
B.Sc. Applied Psychology
- Superhead of the Progress Department and Research Member of the Psych Committee
- On the Student Council (Admin and Communication), Science Club Creatives, Eureka Newsletter Creatives, and Hospitality Member of PaperPlanes Fest, plus many other community initiatives
- Dissertation: From Clicks to Compassion, on digital empathy (further on)
- Pitched Polars Apart, my concept app for campus loneliness (further on)
Committees and clubs
Where I was involved
Find them:
the degree, continued
B.Sc. Applied Psychology
Motivational Training
An extra course I took with the economics students, 2025
An interview with an HR Vice President on the cultural change she led, read through Lewin and Kotter, and an essay on closing the gaps that leave remote workers out.
my dissertation
From Clicks to Compassion
Online, we lose faces, tone and gestures, the cues empathy usually runs on. So does empathy still carry through a screen, and does it make people kinder there? Most research asks this offline, in the West. We asked 417 Indian college students who are chronically online.
- Digital empathy moved with helping others online, both giving and receiving support (r = .76)
- and with emotional intelligence (r = .75): related, but not the same skill
- Women scored higher on digital empathy and online kindness, with no gap in emotional intelligence: a difference in expression, not capacity
what I did
Behind the 417
- More hours online went with lower empathy, kindness and emotional intelligence (r = −.70): quality of time online matters more than quantity
I shaped the study
I mapped it on a Miro board, then chose and finalised the scales, variables and hypotheses on my own. I also researched a moderation model the team set aside to keep the study focused, and emailed every scale’s author to notify them of use, keeping the proof of permission.
I brought in 219 of the 417
I built the survey on Tally with an automatic filter that screened out anyone scoring below 15 on internet use, so every response came from someone truly online. Then I took it to LinkedIn, Reddit, Discord, WhatsApp and campus, with QR codes for both campus and online, and watched the dashboard until the sample was in.
what I did, continued
Behind the 417
I ran the numbers
The full analysis was mine, in Jamovi: normality checks, Pearson and Spearman correlations, and Welch’s ANOVA for the gender differences. The professor’s workshop taught SPSS, so I carried those skills over to Jamovi myself.
I held the paper and the team together
I wrote the results, discussion and limitations and formatted the whole dissertation in APA 7. As the team’s link to our supervisor, I kept the meeting minutes, split the work and tracked the deadlines, then ran the Turnitin plagiarism and AI check and got the black book printed.
psychology, through pop culture
Reading the world
My favourite assignments were the ones where theory met something I already loved: a film, a song, a manga, the internet arguing with itself.
- Is Mental Illness Trendy? An essay on romanticising mental health online
- The craziest YouTube apologies, through Lazare’s theory of apology
- Labor by Paris Paloma, through evolutionary psychology
- Junji Ito’s horror, through Carl Jung
- Himizu (2011): trauma after the Tōhoku earthquake
- River’s Edge (2018): Tokyo teens and the darker side of people
psychology, through pop culture, continued
Reading the world
- Romeo + Juliet (1996), through the psychology of love
- Love as a social construct: how songs, films and media teach us what love should be
- My own Maslow hierarchy: his eight levels, read through my life, plus one I added
- Addiction, through psychoanalysis
- Finding Nemo, through defence mechanisms
applied work
Out in the field
My first study
Interview study, Sept 2023
Do AI tools change how we think and connect? I interviewed three students, coded their answers into themes, and noted the biases in each interview.
Nayi Soch, Nayi Shuruaat
Workshop proposal, Mar 2026, with Mubasshira Aibani, Shreel Patel, Tanya Iyer and Krina Maru
Teaching new parents learned optimism: a skill you build, not a trait you are born with.
applied work, continued
Out in the field
Women safety in Mumbai
Experiment, Oct 2024, with Arshnoor Kaur, Mehek Soni, Mubasshira Aibani, Ojasvi and Tanya Iyer
A group experiment on how women respond to exploitation in the city. Of three hypotheses, two held.
Peer pressure and teen decisions
Literature review and research poster, Apr 2024
Why teens take bigger risks around friends, and a study I designed to test it.
psych pitch, MIAW ’24
Polars Apart
The brief, Shark Tank style: four minutes to pitch a product for students who feel lonely and disconnected. You can be the life of the party and still have no one to call at 3 AM.
My answer was an app that turns mental well-being and peer connection into a game. I came up with the concept, designed the logo, helped build the deck, and pitched it on stage.
how it works
Life as a game
Two polar bears, facing apart but joined by one name: close, and still alone. The app is the bridge.
- Pick an avatar. Nobody chooses their starting stats, but everyone can level up
- Earn ice crystals in your igloo wallet for small habits, like drinking water
- A mood calendar that turns into a pixel artwork by the end of the month
- Matches by interest or nearby, with an icebreaker task to do together
- A space for each of 100+ emotions, with advice and a route to a helpline
psych pitch, first prize
Why we feel someone’s there
Why does a power cut make a quiet room feel like someone is in it? We took the feeling of an unseen presence nearby and asked whether darkness, isolation and stress can explain it, without needing ghosts.
Our study: Indian students, everyday settings like power cuts and empty corridors, and apophenia, the habit of seeing meaning in random patterns, as the lens that turns stress into a presence.
We took first prize, and I won the medal. The win also gave us the chance to run a second piece of research, with professors of our own choice.
14the poster
First prize
The question, the literature and what we expected to find, on one page.
my first internship
The Mind Clinic
Until the summer of my second year, I had never had an internship. It was mandatory, so I chose a mental health clinic near home, led by a psychiatrist and an RCI-registered clinical psychologist, and walked into therapy rooms for the first time.
Day one was case history taking. Within the month, I had sat in on sessions covering childhood bullying, ADHD, gender dysphoria, grief and anxiety, career counselling and parental psychoeducation, watching how clinicians frame a problem, build rapport and choose what to try next.
16what I learned, wrote, and kept
4 research projects
I practised the Binet–Kamat on a peer, role-played Mental Status Examinations, and learned the Rorschach, TAT, MMPI, WAIS and WISC, along with DSM-5 criteria and the Mental Health Act 2017. Teaching sessions on diagnostics showed me how to read assessment outputs clinically.
Then I wrote four research projects, each turning what I was watching in sessions, and what I was reading, into a structured write-up. My file came back with stars on it, and a certificate at the end.
- Emerging childhood disorders
- Psychological tests and what each one is for
- Why CBT is used to treat depression
- The impact of CBT on self-efficacy, a literature review
what I learned, wrote, and kept, continued
4 research projects
Some cases were hard to sit through, and some days I wanted to cry. That is how I learned that resilience is as much a skill as empathy.
Case histories stopped being forms and became stories of people’s lives. And therapy, I realised, is less about asking questions and giving answers, and more about making space for people to find their own.
18where the advocacy started
Beautiful You
A mental health organisation translating clinical and psychological insight into content young people can actually use. I grew with it across three roles, spanning content, podcast production and public-facing communications.
It began in my first year, when a senior, Avantika Bharad, came to our class to talk about the organisation she had started. She spoke so proudly of her brainchild that it lit a spark in me for mental health advocacy, and I joined as a content member.
the first two roles
Words, then the mic
Content Member
Aug 2023 to Apr 2024
Drove social engagement through research-backed copy. I wrote posts and reels that translated psychological insight into narratives young audiences connected with, and grew the follower base across platforms.
Podcast Manager
Apr 2024 to Jul 2024
My efforts earned me a promotion. I ran the Beautiful You Podcast end to end: researched and edited episodes, uploaded them to Spotify, designed thumbnails, edited the long-form video, and cut short-form Instagram reels that consistently landed 500 to 2,000 views each.
episodes I produced
On the podcast
- Managing Mental Health in a Christian Community, with Gazit Chaya
- Mental Health and Motherhood, with Avigail Gimpel
- Dealing with Trichotillomania, with Ouafae Moudni (Ep 47)
- Mental Health and Hustle Culture, with Akansha Jain (Ep 48)
- Gen Z, FOMO and Modern Relationships, with Netra Bhatia
- Living with Bipolar, featuring Medha
