2018.08.07. Organizational Meetings

(Right now: Just woke up.) 

This week is the first week of classes in the University of the Philippines Diliman (UPD). And, as is often the case in the National Institute of Physics (NIP), the Monday of the first week is used for organizational meetings of the laboratories and groups. These meetings are intended to set the course of the group for the coming semester or academic year, and to re-engage the members through socialization. 

My former students are now under their new advisers, and, needless to say, they went to their respective organizational meetings yesterday as the newbies in their respective groups. Mich is now under the Video and Image Processing Group of Dr. Maricor Soriano, and, although she already joined in their general cleaning the Saturday prior, she got welcomed (formally) by her new group during their first seminar session yesterday. Ciara and Vlad (and also Mae, but she was out on a family emergency yesterday) joined the lunch meeting of the group of Dr. Johnrob Bantang yesterday. Jas joined an organizational meeting of the lab she is intending to join in her new institute, the Institute of Environmental Science and Meteorology (IESM). The lab is headed by an NIP alumna, Dr. Gay Jane Perez, who brought along the culture of jumpstarting the group through an early-in-the-sem meeting into her new home. 

Now, I am officially jobless 😂 but it doesn’t mean that I have nothing to do. In fact, I still have a lot of research papers to finish with these kids, who I intend to co-advise later on. Because of this, I scheduled a dinner with them yesterday, after they have all had their organizational meetings with their new affiliations. My intention is to tell them the goals and targets regarding our research works that we have not submitted yet. 

And I was able to do so. I told them about their papers and our target conferences. We probably used a few minutes to discuss those things. 

But, you know. The meeting quickly evolved into one of our classic “research meetings” where we mostly teased each others about our lives. 

It’s nice to see that despite the big changes that have happened, some things just don’t change.

My team during the SPP 2018 Puerto Princesa. Photo credits to Mich.

So while they will be busy acclimatizing with their new groups, I will be preparing to slowly sign off off their daily lives. 😊