Reproducing an edited version of an old post

I am visiting another N institute this week for a workshop.  It is simply amazing to be here.  The workshop has been beautifully organized and I am delighted to feel the positive vibes and enthusiasm of colleagues at this institute.  I am also very happy to meet many friends after more than a decade (and acquaintances who I knew only via email before).  I thought I would write a detailed post about it, but the workshop is very intense and we have been given "bed-time" reading.  So, I will simply post an edited version of something I had written about long ago, before Abi posted a link to this blog and made it familiar to Indian audience.

This post was about a particularly negative experience at N1 (which I removed once I recovered from that experience.)   There is no point in going into that story again, but here's the second half, about what I learnt.  Please note that this was written only a few months after starting my faculty position at N1, when I was learning to handle administrative tasks for the first time.  I was in tears that day, but I find it particularly funny as I read it now- so, thought I would share it :)  This part is being reproduced verbatim:

What I knew theoretically, but learnt practically from the ordeal:

1) Get ALL the facts absolutely correct before uttering them in a meeting.  There is no room for any mistake, even with respect to apparently irrelevant details.

2) If two super-important tasks are to be done at the same time, plan well and finish one before the other.  If this is not possible, speak frankly to your colleagues and ask for help.  It is better to express inability to do something than take it up and mess it up at a crucial time. 

3) Seniors all over the world get angry when mistakes are made by juniors.  In India, however, people express their anger/displeasure more openly.  In fact, this senior-junior thing is taken way more seriously in India than in the West. The sophisticated method of pointing out an errant colleague's mistake in person and behind closed doors is not always followed here.  Be prepared and don't take it personally.  The colleagues in front of whom you are taken to task have probably lived through it too.

4) When a colleague gets angry, keep quiet and wait for the tide to pass.  If you feel that he or she is making a mistake, wait for him or her to cool down before pointing this out. (I guess this is a common sense technique).

5) Resist the urge to pass on the baton and scream at innocent people later in the day.