I have now completed a month at IISERP. Apart from some delays in arrival of my household luggage from IISERK and acquiring internet connection at home, the transition has been very smooth. Well equipped office space was alloted to me on Day 1, administrative joining-in formalities were done promptly, I found a suitable apartment [1] and got a new car on Day 2 and started driving practice immediately thereafter [2]. While I waited for my luggage etc to arrive from N1, I enjoyed the warm hospitality at my favourite guest house.
My colleague, Prof. Sunil Mukhi, who joined a couple of months ago, summarizes his impressions of IISERP very well in this post and I couldn't agree more.
Here are some things that I like most about my new workplace:
1) The Mathematics group, of which I am a member, is fairly well staffed. Other than a comfortable teaching load, this ensures that committee work and other responsibilities get evenly distributed among all members. So, while a couple of colleagues can focus on, say, building the course curriculum, some others can take care of student counseling etc. One group takes care of seminars etc and another takes care of library matters pertaining to Mathematics. We even have a Happiness Committee which organizes regular get-togethers to facilitate interaction between faculty and students. I will write later about the responsibilities given to me.
2) We have a separate course structure for PhD students. Mathematics graduate students need more course preparation than other STEM fields and we have the requisite courses to offer to our students. My student seems to be benefiting from this a lot. While he has started work on his PhD project, he is taking some core foundational courses that he had missed out before.
3) My colleagues, including the senior ones, across all STEM fields, are in general, very friendly and approachable. This is totally not meant as a complaint, but it took me a lot of time to make friends in my former workplace. For months, I went to the office, did my work and came back home without talking to anyone. It was more common there for people from the same grad school to hang out together.
By contrast, over here, it is impossible to be left alone in a corner while having lunch at the faculty lounge. Even if people come in groups, they reach out and talk to others on the table. I like that very much.
[1] "Suitable" is an understatement! This apartment is a dream. The kitchen itself is bigger than the biggest room of my previous dwelling!
My colleague, Prof. Sunil Mukhi, who joined a couple of months ago, summarizes his impressions of IISERP very well in this post and I couldn't agree more.
Here are some things that I like most about my new workplace:
1) The Mathematics group, of which I am a member, is fairly well staffed. Other than a comfortable teaching load, this ensures that committee work and other responsibilities get evenly distributed among all members. So, while a couple of colleagues can focus on, say, building the course curriculum, some others can take care of student counseling etc. One group takes care of seminars etc and another takes care of library matters pertaining to Mathematics. We even have a Happiness Committee which organizes regular get-togethers to facilitate interaction between faculty and students. I will write later about the responsibilities given to me.
2) We have a separate course structure for PhD students. Mathematics graduate students need more course preparation than other STEM fields and we have the requisite courses to offer to our students. My student seems to be benefiting from this a lot. While he has started work on his PhD project, he is taking some core foundational courses that he had missed out before.
3) My colleagues, including the senior ones, across all STEM fields, are in general, very friendly and approachable. This is totally not meant as a complaint, but it took me a lot of time to make friends in my former workplace. For months, I went to the office, did my work and came back home without talking to anyone. It was more common there for people from the same grad school to hang out together.
By contrast, over here, it is impossible to be left alone in a corner while having lunch at the faculty lounge. Even if people come in groups, they reach out and talk to others on the table. I like that very much.
[1] "Suitable" is an understatement! This apartment is a dream. The kitchen itself is bigger than the biggest room of my previous dwelling!
7 comments:
I see you dropped your anonymity somewhere during the move! As an exercise I had tried to figure it out and, it turns out, guessed right, even though we have never met -- so it must have been blindingly obvious to those who know you. Have fun at IISER-P -- I have visited it once and hopefully will again, many times.
Just left a comment but I see that I missed your previous post, which explains it :)
Thanks Rahul. Hope to meet you sometime in IISERP.
The funny part is that very few people who know me read this blog (and among these few, most read it because I told them about it)
Some of us actually discovered the blog on our own and thought about recommending it to Kaneenika, since the story of the author of the blog was so compatible with her!!!
Matilde, LOL, that makes for a great story :)
I expect there are many who read you regularly and didn't tell you - I learned of many of my readers only when they started asking why I'd been silent for a while!
@Kaneenika, At least one person could not have known your real name! I knew you were in IISER (obvious) and that you were not from Pune. But did not (and could not!) go further thinking that would be a spoiler! All the best for non-anonymous blogging, and look forward to more interesting posts.
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