Nine years at IISc

 

I can’t believe I’m completing nine years of service at IISc. It feels like I joined the other day, sitting at the Institute ‘tower building’ with Supradeepa (who joined on the same day) to complete the paperwork and some formalities of joining.

The nine years have been quite a learning, fascinating and humbling journey for me so far, professionally speaking. I’m continuously learning, unlearning and re-learning about how to interface with people, how to supervise students, how to network, how to plan and what not to do, but most importantly how to manage time. My wife will have a laugh for sure if she reads this, for, she knows I’m terrible and pathetic in managing time even now; however, compared to the ‘me’ of 2014, I know that I manage time better now 😊 So, it’s relative, you see. I wasted the first 2 to 3 years of my life at IISc without any meaningful planning, for, I was not sure of what research directions to adopt, and I procrastinated the process of ‘thinking, reading, updating and planning’. If my dept. Chair hears about this now, he’s gonna be super upset, Lol. In any case, if I were to interview the ‘Digbijoy’ from 2014 for a faculty position at IISc, I’d rate him 1 or 2 on a scale of 1 to 10, and outright reject his candidature. I wonder how and why CeNSE/IISc hired me back then! No, I didn’t mean my PhD training was bad; in fact, I was super lucky to get a superb PhD training and a unique platform to learn in my grad school days. But as a person, I delayed maturing after joining IISc and I procrastinated on many fronts, especially on ‘thinking & planning’. 

However, I take pride in the fact that I am growing and learning through the years, and although I’ve not accomplished anything significant in my research so far, I believe and I hope, that I am better poised now than before, to do research which is relatively more meaningful and could possibly help contribute to my field.

I’ve also learnt that every researcher or faculty member has his/her own way of doing research, of maintaining his/her group. For instance, I’ve now learnt that diversifying too much is something I can’t do, which means, I narrow down and focus on one or two specific topics or rather sub-topics within my area of work. I’ve also learnt that managing big groups or many students is something I’m not very good at doing. So, small group, specific problems to address, and effort to do high quality work – is all what I should strive for. ‘High quality’ is a subjective and ambiguous term, for, there’s no conclusive way to assess whether a work or a paper is of ‘high quality’. Do we measure citations or impact factors, or do we look at how the work has translated into real-world technologies, or do we evaluate if a work led to something which helps society? I don’t know. So, I follow my friend Supra’s philosophy in a way, which is – you should feel happy about the work, and if you feel really contented that you’ve done a good piece of work, then that is your gift, your award.

The reason I have learnt to manage time better (at least, relative to ‘me’ in 2014) is simply because of my first kid who is now 4.2 years old. And that brings to the conclusion of my short post, which is, my personal journey in the last 7 years has been more fascinating, overwhelming, fulfilling than my professional journey in that life has changed in ways I couldn’t have imagined in 2014. I’m learning every day in my personal life, of navigating the landscape of relationship with various people, and still making mistakes. Now I realize that family is everything. My two kids make me complete in all respect: the elder one has taught me the value of time like no one else has done, and the younger one made me realize how lucky & incredibly blessed I am. And my wife, of course, is my best friend, my honest critic, my support 24x7, the mirror where I see myself, and the engine that runs the family!

Lastly, my honest assessment of myself on a scale of 1 to 10, in my various roles. 1 means the worst performance, 10 is the best performance.

My role as	Rating	Remarks
Advisor/supervisor to students	7	Fluctuates between 6 to 8.
Researcher	6	Average work so far ☹ sometimes, slightly above average.
Teacher	8 to 9	Too many accolades for my NPTEL lectures from many, many people/students all over India and even abroad convince me that this is one role I’ve not disappointed myself 😊