May 2011 archive

Summer is here…

It has been a couple of weeks since I wrote a post here. It is certainly not because I have been busier than usual – in fact I forced myself to work from home a couple of days in the past two weeks to get some real work done. Time just flies, especially when there is a lot going on. Yesterday evening we went to hear a South Indian classical music concert by T.M. Krishna at the Stata Center in MIT. It was a fantastic 4 hour concert that once upon a time only those living in Chennai in South India were treated to. This is one of the benefits of living near Boston – we get to hear a lot of quality Indian music. We used to drive two hours from Middletown, CT to come to Boston to hear some of the best artists. Our jealous friends from central CT, who had two hours of driving left while it was a mere 20 minutes for us now, were making a note that how bright it was (at 8 PM) – as if it was going to last till 10 PM!

I got up at my usual time at 5:30 to see the brightness after a whole week of miserable weather. The apocalypse that was promised on 21st of May has come and gone and we all are still here. I remember the days when the academic cycle’s effect on libraries and technologies were far more noticeable than now – especially on technology support. Summer was a time to engage in all sorts of major projects (because it was the “lean time”) to get ready for the Fall. Whereas this continues to be true (you can tell that the summer has begun by looking at all the books that are waiting to be shelved!), it just doesn’t feel the same. It seems that we are engaged in major projects all the time!

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What are Goals and Why Bother Setting Them?

It is that time of the year when semesters wind down and everyone is looking forward to the summer and graduations. I am off to Florida later this month to attend my wife’s nephew’s high school graduation, and of course play some golf. I was talking to a friend from India this past weekend when my wife was at UConn commencement about how different things were back home. We did not have graduation ceremonies for high school or for finishing undergraduate degrees! We all wrote our final exams and the results were published in newspapers (now they are available online). The day after the results, newspapers carried stories about the disappointed souls – some of them way too disappointed because they did not get the highest ranks in their respective schools! I completed my Masters degree in Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, where we had a commencement, primarily due to the foreign connections of the IITs. Things are beginning to change there.

For administrative staff in Higher Ed, this is also the time when performance reviews are done and goals are set for the upcoming year. Having worked in Higher Ed for 25 years, I know that these processes have been relatively new. I was a skeptic about this whole thing when we got started, but over the years, I have come to understand the value of the process.

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Ubiquitous Connectivity

We had a fabulous parents weekend in Hanover, NH, where we spent time from Friday till Sunday afternoon. Listened to President Jim Yong Kim, a terrific speaker, who described some of the serious issues such as bringing binge drinking and sexual assaults and what the administration is doing to address these. He also discussed the 16 Habits of the Mind and how this will figure in the curriculum planning going forward. We also met with the parents/guardians of our son Varun’s roommates, which is always a lot of fun. One of Varun’s roommate is  William Kamkwamba, the kid from Malawi, who built a windmill to power his own home. Tom Rielly, who is a community director at the famous TED conferences, had a part to play in William coming to Dartmouth, so he joined us for dinner one night. We had a fantastic time and talked a lot about emerging technologies and Tom’s views on ubiquitous connectivity.

Tired after long nights on Friday and Saturday, we went to bed a little earlier than normal and were woken up by a phone call from our son Vivek who called us about Osama bin Laden’s death because I did not respond to his chat message. We got up to watch the President speak and see all the celebration on TV. Great news after ten years and amazing how the mission was carried out. I should share with you a tweet from GhostOsama which read “Well this sucks…I accidentally enabled location on my tweets.” On that note about ubiquity of connections…

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