{"id":1139,"date":"2020-08-01T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-08-01T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=1139"},"modified":"2025-12-05T05:14:23","modified_gmt":"2025-12-05T05:14:23","slug":"my-life-at-iia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/?p=1139","title":{"rendered":"My life at IIA"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Dr. Sangeetha CR<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I joined the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in 2010 for PhD and had very little knowledge about research. Being a shy person, pursuing your dream in research is a bit difficult, as you need to interact with people. But it is not an impossible dream to have, and I realized I needed to overcome my weaknesses gradually. In a way, the course work during PhD helped me to get over some of the difficulties. We had to give talks as an exam, which helped to overcome my stage fear to some extent. We had a two-team group project where we needed to discuss with other students. We also had to do a project which gave us a brief look into what research is basically about. I realized over time that the structure of the course work was designed to prepare you to get over the initial awkwardness in the field. Of course, this may not be true for all since not everyone would have the same issues. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In IIA, we get to choose our supervisor after we finish our course work. That has both positive as well as negative sides. The positive side is that it gives us sufficient time to interact with faculties in IIA and choose a field after exploring all the current research activities done in the institute. You can make a list of faculties in the field and interact with them, their PhD students and senior students of IIA. One needs to take the opinions of senior students, but the final decision should be yours alone since it is you who will have to interact with the supervisor. The negative feature is that you can\u2019t have specialized courses in the area of your research. Also, when we joined for PhD, each faculty could only have a maximum of two PhD students. This restricted us from joining our field of interest and was strongly opposed by most of the students. Soon, it was changed to five students per faculty, which I hope is still there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

It is essential to enjoy life little by little, as and when possible. It is vital for our overall wellbeing. Spend half an hour to an hour a day for personal activities like pursuing a hobby, exercising or reading non-academic books. Maintain your health as research is stressful. Have an occasional outing with friends; there are a lot of good budgetfriendly restaurants in Bangalore. Ask the locals for lovely places to visit. In short, have a life!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

On the other hand, the facilities provided by IIA were well equipped for research. We were given a computer system with internet as soon as we joined, which I think may not be the case everywhere. The library is well-populated with lots of books, connections with other research institute libraries and subscriptions to a variety of journals. If you can\u2019t access a paper, you only need to write to the librarian to get a copy of the paper through their connections with other libraries. The computing facilities were also wonderful when I was a PhD student. Interacting with seniors in the first year will help understand the facilities of IIA, which may not be available in written format. IIA often had a lot of visitors during my PhD days, which led to a good amount of seminars, colloquium, talks and discussions. In my early days of PhD, I attended almost all the talks. This helped me prepare for my talks, and to understand what to do and not in a talk. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The non-academic life in IIA was wonderful. I had inspiring seniors, helpful and supportive batch-mates, and obliging juniors. Even though I was from Bangalore, I stayed in Bhaskara due to the Bangalore traffic. Life in Bhaskara was pleasant; the common area on each floor was used for occasional recreations and discussions. Annual festivals like New Year, Onam, Christmas and Bengali Durga pooja feast were celebrated with gusto. Such activities helped us unwind and relax. I hope these fun activities are still carried out in current times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A piece of advice to the current and future IIA students would be to enjoy life as it is. The stress of work will be there throughout life. During PhD days, we want to have sufficient material for thesis, during post-doctoral days we need to keep publishing to get a job, and even after we get a job, there will probably be some work-related stress. Hence, it is essential to enjoy life little by little, as and when possible. It is vital for our overall well-being. Spend half an hour to an hour a day for personal activities like pursuing a hobby, exercising or reading non-academic books. Maintain your health as research is stressful. Have an occasional outing with friends; there are a lot of good budget-friendly restaurants in Bangalore. Ask the locals for lovely places to visit. In short, have a life!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

About the author<\/strong>
Dr. Sangeetha CR<\/strong> <\/strong>is a Post Doctoral Fellow and her main research interest is on magneto-convective flows and waves in the lower solar atmosphere.
Email: cr.sangeetha@gmail.com<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Sangeetha CR I joined the Indian Institute of Astrophysics (IIA) in 2010 for PhD and had very little knowledge about research. Being a shy person, pursuing your dream in research is a bit difficult, as you need to interact with people. But it is not an impossible dream to have, and I realized I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":184,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false},"categories":[24,20],"tags":[46,32,47,95],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1139"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3463,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1139\/revisions\/3463"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1139"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1139"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/library.iiap.res.in\/collaborate\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1139"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}