I've written out and submitted to my PI the first 4 parts of my mock grant (the written portion of my comprehensive). Its have been a hard and brutal process. In good way. If that is possible. I am constantly getting my ass shredded to itty bitty bits by questions, things I need to know, things I need to think about. I just want to do science people! Stop haggling me with all these hypotheses, caveats and plan B's. I'm a genius don't you know! I have amazing hands and my experiments will work, giving clear and interpretable data!
No, i'm not a genius and yes I know these things are good for me. I swear this is the best place to be having this torture inflicted upon me, if there is such a thing as having a "good place to inflict torture". I just need to remember why I came here. Oh Yes that's right, I wanted to learn how to do science properly. WTF was I thinking??!!! This doing science the right way, learning techniques so that I'm not bullshitting and I am respected is HARD people. Its freaking hard. Oh gosh yes its nice at the end of it all to know that I am respected, my work is valued and trusted but damn it my head hurts. My brain, throbs at the end of the work day. I didn't know that my brain could actually throb in pain from thinking too hard.
So I've completed three re-writes of the first 4 parts of the grant. The lit review, the prelim data, the General and specific questions, you know what I thought was the hard part. Hehehe. Uhm, yeah how am I going to answer those questions? What am I going to do? Exactly. Not maybe sorta, possibly, I was thinking. But EXACTLY.
I didn't think my brain could hurt even more.
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11 months ago
2 comments:
It's excellent training for the rest of your future career :)
No, seriously, having students write a mock grant is an absolutely brilliant idea. I've helped a few trainees with fellowship applications that are chock full of evidence of a lack of formal training in this field (I was in the same boat once too. I have sworn never, ever to look over any of those old applications again - too depressing!)
Good luck with getting all this stuff behind you so you can get back to the bench! Oh, and at least the Canucks won for you last night!
Thanks Cath, I totally haven't been told that its good for me:)). Its pretty scary what my initial drafts looked like.
And yes they finally got there act together yesterday. I was so not impressed with them yesterday. talk about demoralizing.
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