Life as a JPAL RA

Fresh out of Oxford and armed with my research gear in August last year, I joined JPAL as Research Associate (RA). I was told during one of the interviews that an RA is essentially ‘the CEO of a project on ground’.

Now that I analyse my life over the past one year, I am amazed at the versatility of roles I have ended up performing and the multiplicity of skills I have ended up gaining.

My first month on the job involved heading to the hinterlands of my homeland in Punjab. Intensive fieldwork and piloting with my PI and co-RA amidst the remotest schools close to the international border was an extraordinarily adventurous and eye-opening experience. I was right at the grassroots interacting with people and navigating my way through the real world. I could finally relate to concepts learnt at grad school – whether it was spotting a tinge of ambiguity aversion in the choice made by a student or understanding unusual trends from data. That was my first and foremost role in the new job – that of a researcher.

On the weekly skype calls with my PIs, I felt like a reporter – meticulously organising my diary from the previous week and reporting the list of weekly events and insights from the field. My PIs would do a lot of brainstorming/design discussion on call which would drag up to 3 hours sometimes. What started as a bit of an overwhelming and challenging role eventually became something enjoyable.

A few months into the job, I realised that I had to be the lynchpin to get anything done. If it was about conducting a test at a school – then everything from start to finish was upon the RA. The design of question papers, the formatting, the printing, the arrangements, making a procturing plan to finally getting the papers evaluated and catalogued for future reference. As the project scaled up I eventually had a field staff of 30 who would do those jobs for me. Having been through the nitty-gritties personally helped me manage them effectively.

When I moved to Amritsar, I initially found the role of being a manager of staff to be slightly challenging. I had to make sure they had enough work to keep them busy at office. Then I learnt an important trick from one of the candidates who I was once interviewing. Funnily, I had asked him if he had had any managerial experience and if he could share any tips about how to handle shirkers. He said he ensured that he reached his office before everyone else to chart a delegation plan beforehand. Voila! That was such a treasure of an advice for me at the point of time that I adopted it instantly.

Mid-way in the year, came the baseline assessment – a massive task to conduct our pre-intervention assessment of 5000 students in our sample. We planned bit by bit, prepared on war footing, working late into night, excited to finally begin with our baseline. We piloted, executed, learnt from failures and accomplished the gargantuan plan finally. To begin with, in order to hire surveyors, I had to take on the role of an HR manager. Suddenly, I was reading ‘how to hire’ guides online and then grilling candidates with my list of questions. Moving to the other side of the interview table was certainly a novel experience.

After this brilliant pool of people were hired, I took on the role of a trainer leading a team of 19 new recruits, training them about the tricks of the trade, the protocols and techniques of administering a task, conducting extensive field drills. Once this enthusiastic bunch was trained and ready, seeing them at work, working with students was such a fulfilling experience. I could see my younger piloting self in them – one who would return home dead tired after an exhausting day of repeating a script but with eyes full of exciting stories from the ground.

On other days, I would be couched in front of my laptop, organising and cleaning data to be sent to my PIs for final analysis. All throughout my role as a planner and manager moved simultaneously on the side.

Sometimes it would become overwhelming but working on an education project offered the luxury of internal satisfaction when field visits to schools were involved. Just a little smile or compliment from a cute kid at school would light up my day. The peace of knowing that the work is making a difference to a kid somewhere would compensate for the work hangovers.

There were some rare days when I had to don unique and completely unexpected roles as well. Once a filming crew from our donor USAID visited Amritsar. I had to be a director for a day – deciding filming locations for the team at schools and planning bytes and shots for them. At the hotel after school visits I had to be the TV anchor asking questions to the academicians invited to speak on the project. At the Chandigarh office, I was a pedagogue and content creator – thinking from the viewpoint of a 3rd grader if a question in a certain frame of words would make sense.

Amidst these diverse roles, there were some common lessons I ended up learning.

I became more empathetic to the plight of common people. Prior to joining JPAL, I had solo-travelled by public transport – train, plane, AC bus at the maximum. After moving to Amritsar, I travelled by a ‘local ordinary bus’ for the first time. It was such a heart-warming experience. The faces of village folks travelling alongside gave me so much peace, filled the crevices of my soul. They were never in a rush like people in the metros and seemed to carry around a state of equilibrium. Their presence alone was enriching enough for me. Besides the people, the rickety state of transport and delayed schedules taught me the most important lesson about public goods.

Also, my role as a manager opened my eyes to the state of unemployment in Punjab. I had never expected my interview room to bustle with so many candidates for a job posting with a salary that looked quite meagre to me. I slowly discovered that the local field staff I was managing were the same age as me, most were older, in fact. I was deeply shaken the first time I realised this. It was such a painful irony that even though we hailed from the same state, had enjoyed a similar childhood, but here in this office by sheer quirk of fate - I was the boss and they were my employees. It was a terribly humbling experience – the joy on their faces at landing this small field job opened my eyes to how privileged I had been.

It has been a year and 2 months at JPAL and I feel more mature, more humble and more committed than ever. Immensely grateful to JPAL for providing me this down-to-earth grassroot level experience that has shaped my worldview significantly.