Esteemed Scholars, I’m pleased to announce that I won a Best Student Paper Award
I do not know how much politics is involved in these kinds of awards, and honestly I am not going to overthink it too much. I am just enjoying this small milestone, especially because it came from a proper international conference with a solid technical program and researchers from many different countries. I know it's not a Nobel Prize, but I will gladly take it.
It feels especially meaningful because I wrote most of the paper from a hospital bed while dealing with some pretty shitty health issues. Everything is fine now, fortunately, but at the time it was not exactly the ideal writing environment. In a strange way, writing the paper was also one of the few things that helped me get through it. It kept me busy, distracted me from the pain, and gave me something concrete to focus on instead of overthinking my situation all day.
So getting a Best Student Paper Award for this specific paper feels genuinely good. The research itself was, of course, part of a collaboration, but the actual writing, structuring, and pushing the paper through the deadline was mostly on me.
Per aspera ad astra.