Oh well!
Perhaps, having internet at home is not such a good thing after all.
This year, I am one of the coordinators of the summer research programme at our institute. We received a very large number of applications by email [1] and by spending an hour everyday, I was gradually processing them and forwarding them to the concerned faculty members [2]. With internet at home, however, I spent all of Sunday (morning till late night) working on this, forwarded about 500 remaining applications in one go and felt happy and relieved (and grateful to have internet at home). Today morning, I woke up with a severe headache and could not hold myself together after teaching my morning class. So, I had to take a day off. Come evening and I am down with fever :-(
Oh well!!
[1] Yes, I am aware that a smarter method of processing applications for academic activities is by encouraging web based applications, which also sorts them out and prepares databases. Our team of coordinators totally underestimated the number of applications that our summer programme will receive and have learnt this the hard way!
[2] This has been an interesting learning experience. I now know the key research areas of many of my colleagues. I also know that those colleagues who have words like cancer, nano, cosmology, neuro or anything "quantum" on their research profiles are likely to receive the maximum number of applications from students with very ambitious research programmes. For example, one student, who applied to work with a faculty member specializing in neural science, wants to explore how to make dead men speak!
Perhaps, having internet at home is not such a good thing after all.
This year, I am one of the coordinators of the summer research programme at our institute. We received a very large number of applications by email [1] and by spending an hour everyday, I was gradually processing them and forwarding them to the concerned faculty members [2]. With internet at home, however, I spent all of Sunday (morning till late night) working on this, forwarded about 500 remaining applications in one go and felt happy and relieved (and grateful to have internet at home). Today morning, I woke up with a severe headache and could not hold myself together after teaching my morning class. So, I had to take a day off. Come evening and I am down with fever :-(
Oh well!!
[1] Yes, I am aware that a smarter method of processing applications for academic activities is by encouraging web based applications, which also sorts them out and prepares databases. Our team of coordinators totally underestimated the number of applications that our summer programme will receive and have learnt this the hard way!
[2] This has been an interesting learning experience. I now know the key research areas of many of my colleagues. I also know that those colleagues who have words like cancer, nano, cosmology, neuro or anything "quantum" on their research profiles are likely to receive the maximum number of applications from students with very ambitious research programmes. For example, one student, who applied to work with a faculty member specializing in neural science, wants to explore how to make dead men speak!
4 comments:
In Chicago, the Senior Mayor Daley had the dead vote, not just once: "Vote early, vote often" was the urging to the party faithful. Maybe your summer applicant can be sent to Chicago as an N1 rep to work on how dead people vote. :-))
...how to make dead men speak! :)
I could remember my kind of fascination as a sophomore!! :)
Right, sophomore is something that we used frequently when we were in the 2nd year of our program.
Ah! Starry eyed students :) how they annoy us now (or at least annoy me). Sometimes I wonder if they annoy me, not because they are naive, but because I am scared to meet my past self.
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