How good am I?
So, my institution awards money to faculty to pay them to write grants over the summer. By the program's guidelines, I'd be top priority if I applied and, assuming I had a generally good proposal, would likely receive the money.
The internal proposals are due Friday. I have good ideas, but nothing written. The internal proposal involves things like the budget and timeline of the external proposal (ugh! Isn't that what they are giving us money to take the time to figure out?). It would be good to receive some summer salary and it would be good to have a some external motivation getting me applying and writing over the summer.
If I feel in May (we're done May 4) like I felt in May with Dianthus, I would like doing some research.
But . . . . I've felt incredibly crappy recently. I was really afraid that I was going to fall asleep at 6:30 yesterday and the Mister would return from his evening class to find Dianthus fallen in a giant heap of tupperware and me incapably zonked out a few feet away. So yesterday I projected this feeling forward and realized that there was no way I could finish the thing (given that I have labs Tues. + Wed. and a Dr. appointment that involves three hours of driving on Thursday) by Friday, much less want to work on the actual grant come May.
But . . . today I am feeling good and think that surely I could put something together.
But . . . I just realized that is also involves a two-page CV and I don't have a current two-pager. That alone could take up too much time.
So . . . I'm writing you instead.
Do I go for it?
And, reminder, every time you update your complete CV, update your short version as well.
5 comments:
I was so close. I started doing some extra research and writing down ideas and getting all excited (about a tree of heaven project!) and I'm not sure just what it was, but it may have been that the CV not only needs to be 2 pages but in 12 point font that made me realize that just updating my short one or cutting and pasting from the long one (both in 11 pt. font) wasn't going to do. Or that I need signatures.
So I'm not going to do it.
But I still want to.
Plan for next year and don't feel guilty about it. :-)
I agree with Beth. Start thinking about next year now. It's hard to do without a looming deadline, but will help you next year. I'm in a similar situation but have a couple of weeks. It's a grant that I'm not sure is a great fit for what I want to do, but I figure that if I put some work in on finding collaborators and writing something up I will be better off when the right grant comes along, even if this one isn't perfect. But I am also afraid that I could be wasting my time...
Haha The 11-pt font threshold made me laugh. I can't figure out why it takes so long for me to update my CV when I don't feel like I'm producing much to add to it?!
It's the "not feel guilty" part that I have trouble with (though in principal, I also agree with Beth!).
Yeah, my husband (who had encouraged me not to frantically apply this week) had the audacity to say, "but just select all and make it 12 point".
Oh, sweetie. Then it would be 12 point, but it wouldn't fit, the margins wouldn't work and the very cleverly spaced subheads would no longer be cleverly spaced.
My very practical reason for not doing it is that the internal proposal has to be for a specific external source and my agency doesn't have 2011 guidelines up yet and, I realizes with a start, not only might the guidelines be very different than 2010, they might not have any money to give.
I won't feel guilty if I actually get some writing/proposing done in May and June.
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