In May 2026 I was approved for an O-1 visa. It’s the US visa for people with “extraordinary ability”, which is a very grand name for something that mostly involved me collecting documents for months.

The fun part came a few weeks later. Someone from my college, Model Engineering College in Kochi, messaged asking if they could share the news. I said yes, a little nervously.

The first poster they made used an old, blurry group photo of me that had been run through some AI filter. The person on it did not really look like me. By the time I saw it, it had already gone out to a few WhatsApp groups. 🙂 I sent them a proper photo, they fixed it, and the fixed version ended up as the very first thing on the college website. Statue of Liberty, American flag, the works.

mec.ac.in, July 9, 2026. Slide 1 of 18.

After that, teachers and students I had never met started sending me congratulations, and the alumni cell even did an Alumni Spotlight on LinkedIn. It was really kind, and honestly a little hard to know how to respond. I’ve always been more comfortable keeping things quiet than taking credit. My mom said it was good that it was out there, because it might make some kid at MEC think they could do it too. I hope she’s right.

Big thanks to everyone at Athena, my lawyers, and the people who took the time to write letters for me.

And in case anyone thinks I made this up, here’s an archived copy of the college homepage from that day.