Wednesday, January 15, 2014

The Fellowship of the Grant

Dear Diary,

Whew.  I'm exhausted.  I just toted a tiny grant proposal all the way across middle winter.  I wasn't really equipped at first to handle this task and take the precious to the end, but I had a great band of comrades who helped me out.  The ability to fund oneself is important as one grant can rule them all and, in the physics, support it.


Sure, we bickered about how the essays should be written, what they should be written about, who to send reference letter requests to, and ultimately who gets the money if we win, but the real adventure is between friends.  At first, the essays seemed to dig too deep and too greedily.  Strangely enough, the more I attacked the essays in a short amount of time, the less effective I was.  So, it was important to space things out.*

I had enormous writer's block and had to rewrite everything approximately infinitely many times, but it led to a good place.  I am worried that if we wind up some of the essays any tighter, then they'll snap in half while the reviewers are reading them!

And if I win, the precious will be mine!  I'll be invisible to all external granting woes!  It can even go on my CV!

...oh, and there's the sweet physics I'll get to do too...

*-But maybe not three movies worth...

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