It is that time of the year to recollect what happened in the last one year, as a way of preparing, planning for what lies ahead. Apart from the usual academic classes that I handle, there have been a few more eventful things.
The 'eventful' things of the year that I could recollect starts with the Chennai ThinQ Retreat in March. It was indeed an eye opener into Philosophy and the overall alignments of ThinQ (www.schoolofthinq.com) towards education. While the mainstream education focuses on the Ontology, ThinQ proposes to focus on epistemology and base the curriculum based on a detailed study of comparative epistemology across disciplines.
Later in March, I was selected as the mentor of change by the Atal Innovation Mission. The AIM aims at getting school students to find innovative solutions to the local problems that they find. While this is a wonderful initiative by the GoI, I am afraid it needs a little more backing up for both the school and the mentors. More of it later.
After a memorable family vacation in May, the academic year started with a good note - the sanction of a grant from the GoI. The grant proposed to investigate the effects of osmolytes on protein-DNA interaction with an aim to delineate general principles and ability to tune the specificity of protein-DNA interactions.
The IIE-2018 course of ThinQ started in May and extended until late October, which was again a great learning experience. Had the opportunity to attend two of its One-Day-Meetings, which, as usual was illuminating. Later, the November retreat sensitized to the typology of arguments and the separation of the "why" and "how" questions. But the main take-away of the retreat was the sensitization to trans-disciplinarity and the ability to identify "ideas" (at least, I got what I meant as "idea" only now!).
November also saw the "Gaja" cyclonic storm in Thanjavur and nearby districts which was extremely devastating. We, at home, had no power for three days - a unique experience. Luckily we had a relative at the heart of the city where there was power. The important learning: One can live without power, but not without water!
Comes December then with my son's 4-th birthday. This year, I didn't get myself too much involved in the conduct of the INSPIRE camp at SASTRA. Handed down the torch two years ago and sort-of hand holded it until last year. But this year, the coordinator of the last year hand-holded for this year's coordinator. So, I am happy that what I initiated has been successfully passed on and trained to be passed on for the fourth consecutive year. With this, the year comes to an end on a good note.
The year ahead is starting with the IIE-2018/19 F2F workshop in Pune - eagerly waiting to experience - a new set of participants, a new set of lesson plans! A few more pending commitments, satisifying grant requirements/objectives are things that carry over from 2018. As for new initiatives for the year ahead, looking forward to establishing the Teaching-Learning club at SASTRA such that the Department of Education can take over. Need to plan something so that ThinQ's educational goals can be taken forward. With this, let me stop by saying that I am looking forward to 2019!! :-)
