My professor called it "the year of firsts." I hadn't thought about it that way until he said it—just kept moving from one thing to the next, chasing deadlines and opportunities as they came.
But once he named it, the pattern became obvious.
The Label
"Year of firsts" sounds aspirational when someone else puts that label on your work. Like an achievement unlocked, a narrative arc reaching its peak. Reality felt messier—less arc, more zigzag between France, Finland, Japan, Sweden, Amsterdam, Qatar, UK. Countless hours in transit, living out of carry-ons, working on flights, adjusting to time zones that never quite aligned.
The geography mattered as much as the milestones. You don't do a "year of firsts" from one location. You do it by showing up where the work actually happens.
First CHI—Japan. Flight from France, layovers, arrival in a country where I didn't speak the language. First time presenting a poster to an international audience that actually engaged with the work. First time understanding what "the CHI community" means beyond abstracts in a database.
First CHIWORK—Amsterdam. Another flight, another hotel, another conference badge. First experience as a student volunteer, which means first time seeing how much invisible infrastructure holds academic conferences together.
Between France and Finland, routine became relative. Work happened in airports, on trains, in hotel rooms between sessions. The research stayed in Finland, the job stayed in France, and everything else happened wherever I landed that week.
First US8 as a study moderator—Qatar. First time running user sessions where real participants generate real data. First time the Middle East became part of the research circuit.
First preprint. First persona-relevant citation. First journal publication. First revise-and-resubmit from CHI2026. First teaching a masterclass in AI and data science—delivered after flying back from yet another conference.
But also: first double-rejection from IUI despite positive reviews. First time watching the same paper get contradictory feedback from four different venues. First quantitative analytics exam on two hours of sleep after a cross-continental flight.
The label my professor gave me fits. It just fits in more dimensions than he probably intended.
The Pattern
The wins clustered together in ways that made sense only afterward. US8 in Doha taught me that study moderation is pattern recognition—knowing when to probe, when to let silence work, when a participant's hesitation signals something worth exploring. Then back to France for work, back to Finland for research meetings.
CHI in Japan meant twenty hours of travel for a week of immersion. The poster presentation mattered less than the spontaneous discussions with researchers who stopped because the topic intersected with their own work. The hallway conversations generated as much insight as scheduled sessions. Then the flight home, writing up observations somewhere over Siberia.
CHIWORK in Amsterdam meant another week away from France, another week's worth of Samsung work compressed into early mornings and late nights. Student volunteering means you see the coordination required to make hundreds of academics arrive at the right rooms at the right times. You understand why logistics expertise is research expertise. You also understand that geographic presence is non-negotiable.
The Sweden course on ecosystems required crossing yet another border. Two days of intensive work that fed directly into research on persona ecosystems and shaped a book chapter combining HCI with ecosystem frameworks. The trip seemed like overhead until the insights justified it.
Teaching the masterclass in France forced clarity I didn't know I needed. You can't fake understanding when twenty people watch you work through AI and data science examples in real-time. That session improved my research explanations more than any advisor feedback—and happened between flights to Finland and back.
The Wins
Some firsts matter more in retrospect. The first paper presentation at QuantUXCon felt significant at the time. Looking back, what mattered more was learning how to present technical work to audiences with different priorities than mine.
First-author publication in a highly reputed international journal. First time seeing my name leading a citation. First time understanding that publication is the start of a conversation, not the end of work.
The R&R from CHI2026 felt different from straight acceptances. Someone read the work carefully enough to want it improved, specifically enough to outline what improvement means. That takes more engagement than a desk reject.
The preprint established presence in a conversation I'd been observing from the outside. First persona-relevant citation meant someone found the work useful enough to build on. Small victories that signal you're entering the field, not just studying it.
Attending my research group's first doctoral dissertation defense taught me what completion looks like when you're still in the middle of the process. Watching someone else finish what you're working toward provides perspective that coursework can't.
The Losses
IUI rejected same paper in two different rounds. Both had positive reviews. Doesn't matter—they're still rejections.
One paper hit four venues before finding somewhere that wanted it. Four rounds of reformatting, reframing, resubmitting. Four sets of reviewer comments that contradicted each other. "Too technical" at one venue, "needs more technical depth" at another. "Insufficient literature review" followed by "too much background, get to the contribution faster."
That paper's now in revise-and-resubmit. Which means it might still die.
Other papers are scattered across the publication pipeline at various stages. Some in review. Some being revised. Some waiting for decisions. None of them guaranteed to survive.
The quantitative analytics exam on two hours of sleep was intensive, laborious, the kind of test that demonstrates you can still function when everything works against you. Aced it. Don't recommend the approach. But it taught something about capacity under constraint.
The rejection pattern is real and instructive. You learn what different venues actually value by watching identical work receive opposite feedback. You learn that "contribution" means different things to different communities. You learn that timing matters as much as quality.
What Matters
Looking back at the list of firsts, here's what stands out: attending conferences taught me more than publishing papers. Running user studies taught me more than reading about methodology. Teaching forced clearer thinking than any writing exercise.
But all of that required being there. Japan for CHI. Amsterdam for CHIWORK. Sweden for ecosystems. Doha for US8. France for work. Finland for research. Each location represented immersion in thinking I couldn't access remotely. Each trip forced engagement with perspectives that don't exist in your home institution's echo chamber—whichever home institution you happened to be operating from that week.
The countless hours in transit became part of the work itself. Research doesn't happen only at desks. It happens in conversations after conference sessions, in hotel rooms rewriting papers based on hallway feedback, in airport lounges catching up on work that accumulated while you were physically elsewhere.
The publications matter for the CV. The rejections matter for learning what different venues actually want. But the actual growth came from showing up—literally, physically, repeatedly—to conferences, to courses, to other people's defenses, to teaching opportunities that seemed secondary to "real" research.
The "year of firsts" label my professor gave me works because it acknowledges both directions. First successes and first failures. First acceptances and first rejections despite positive reviews. First times teaching and first times bombing exams on no sleep after international flights. First sustained period maintaining research presence across multiple countries simultaneously.
What the label doesn't capture: the capacity-building that happens when you keep submitting after rejection, keep attending conferences when papers get rejected, keep teaching and researching and showing up—across continents, time zones, and institutional boundaries—when outcomes remain uncertain.
Next year won't be the year of firsts anymore. It'll be the year of seconds, thirds, repetitions. More papers, more venues, more opportunities to get things wrong before getting them right. Probably more flights, more borders crossed, more time zones navigated.
The R&R at CHI2026 needs work. The rejected papers need new homes. The in-progress research needs completion. But 2025 established something more important than any individual first: the ability to treat academic research as a continuous process rather than a series of discrete victories or defeats—and the ability to maintain that process across the geographic fragmentation that modern research requires.
My professor called it the year of firsts. What he named was real. But what actually happened was messier, more distributed, more exhausting, and more necessary than any single label captures.
That's what matters. That's what carries forward.