A Day Like Today

 Remember Bryan Adams?

Today has been a day like the one in his song where I never want to see the sun go down.

An altogether perfect day- did some writing for the Rural Primary Care group, had some intense discussions on the same, did my taxes (at last!), took a nap, and after I woke up, I found the syllabus for a virology course that my buddy Dr.Chitra asked me to teach.

And this discovery is what has thrilled me to bits- the virology course is exciting! I'm reading Pranay Lal's book "The Invisible Empire" and all sorts of ideas are rattling around inside.  

Have decided that I will read 10 pages of the book every day and blog about the same. This way, the book will serve as my primary source material for the course and I'll become more familiar with my own field. This also means that I should be done with the first reading of the book in about a month, give or take a few days. 

RK and I usually take stock of our year and make plans for the next one around this time every year.  I usually categorise my plans into smaller bundles like "travel" or "scholarship" or "grant-related" or "how to make more money in a happy way". Last year, I realised that my scholarship output  for 2020 had been rather dismal and so this year, I really worked hard, got a publication out, got one more submitted, got my team to submit 5 abstracts at conferences (of which 4 have been accepted for oral presentations! And the 5th could win the video presentation category, with God's grace!) and gave multiple presentations at local, national and international forums. So I feel like having that discussion last year and making that plan for this year was really helpful in pushing me to achieve things. 

So for the next year, my scholarship plans will include my teaching this course, blogging about the learning I've gleaned from this book and others that I study for the course, getting my team to write two papers (with them taking the initiative, and me as the mentor), and me taking the initiative on two papers myself. Plus, I know that our larger group itself has a couple of papers planned so I'll get to be on those as well. 

So really, this course is something that is new and I'm looking forward to it. Maybe next year, I'll pick another course to teach so I constantly keep learning things that are useful to me.