What's New, this New year

The NewYear 2009 came without much fuss this year. Though the loudspeakers in the neighbourhood kept us awake till 12.0am ,on our part we were passive spectators to the change in calendar. The semester also ended in Dec last year so we had vacation (or rather still having) till 19th of Jan 2009. Today however we were called to evaluate exam papers and I spent the whole day turning pages after pages…it was a pleasure when the pages contained good stuff but it was a headache to wade through some of the pure gibberish material the students had come up with. What really takes the cake is that some of this undiluted garbage is written in neat handwriting and overflowing into never ending pages!!! I was hoping all the students pass through as our job is much dependant on that – but some students did not give any cause for those grace marks. The papers will be evaluated by an external examiner also and I am hoping he is filled with compassion on these students. Anyways, we are supposed to get 75% of the students pass to hold on to our jobs so a few students not making it may not matter.

On a happier note, I praise God for answering my three prayer requests. One was for the practical exam in molecular cell biology that I was responsible for. I was quite apprehensive about it as an external examiner conducts it and it is well known among professors that they can be testy at times.It turned out that the external examiner was known to me and he was very kind and compassionate. Some of my colleagues were not so lucky and some were even asked to do the experiments along with the students and complexities were added to the procedures.All my students fared well scoring over 80%.It is only the grace of God as these students are no Einstein’s!!!

The other request was for my research seminar before all the faculty members of the Institute . It was a nail biting event but it went off well and many congratulated me on the presentation saying they enjoyed it a lot. God be praised.

The third request was for the conference at Pune and my fears over how my sister Dolly ( who is physically and mentally challenged) would take my absence. God was in control and she was very happy and cheerful and the conference went off without a hitch.

Now I have another prayer request and you can join in praying for me – my upcoming grant presentation before Expert Committee at Gorakhpur, Uttar Pradesh. I got the letter two days ago from Department of Science and Technology, New Delhi informing me of the event on 24th January ’09. I didn’t even know where Gorakhpur was and had to scramble to get hold of an India map. I fly to New Delhi and take the train to Gorakhpur so the whole event takes me just 3 days instead of 6 if I took the train. It is a lot of money to fly but I am hoping my grant will get funded making it worthwhile. I hope my college refunds some of the amount. Anyways pray about it too.

So much for now.More later