{"id":1463,"date":"2015-10-05T18:44:18","date_gmt":"2015-10-05T22:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/?p=1463"},"modified":"2015-10-05T18:44:18","modified_gmt":"2015-10-05T22:44:18","slug":"strike-one-for-the-pi","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/2015\/10\/05\/strike-one-for-the-pi\/","title":{"rendered":"Strike One for the PI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sara\u2019s post last week<\/a> about applying for grants hit me right in the middle of, of course, applying for a grant. I found Sara\u2019s tips very useful and loved the advice from the Chronicle on how not to get a grant. I also enjoyed Adriana’s take on not getting grants<\/a>, as well as the excellent\u00a0comments. \u00a0This week I thought I’d add my own (really great) experience with\u00a0not getting a grant.<\/p>\n

There was a time when I thought I\u2019d never apply for a grant to do math. I mean, I\u2019m a number theorist. What do I need money for? Numbers? Paper? I thought that only professors at R1 institutions needed to apply for grants, to support PhD students or strengthen their tenure cases. How incredibly wrong I was. I feel lucky that I don\u2019t need a lab or to buy any expensive machinery for my research, but I do need time to work, to stay connected through conferences, and to travel to work with my collaborators, all of which cost plenty of money. For this year I have start-up funds and a yearly allowance from my department, but I\u2019m also applying for the second time for the AMS-NSA Young Investigator grant<\/a>. Last year I thought it would be nice to apply so I plunged in and spent a few weeks working up a research proposal. I didn\u2019t get it (strike one). However, I present:<\/p>\n

Four reasons it was worth applying for the grant I didn\u2019t get<\/strong><\/p>\n

1) Writing this grant forced me to let go of old plans.<\/strong><\/p>\n

I have always been interested in lots of varied problems and had picked up several different projects since the beginning of graduate school. In my earlier research statements, I had included all my projects in an attempt to demonstrate breadth and adaptability. However, I could tell that a proposal that included all of these would seem scattershot and poorly focused. The separate background sections alone would take up most of the length I was allowed. So I had to choose one area where I was most interested in going, at least for these first few years. I decided to focus on curves over the rational numbers and finite fields, topics where I had active and exciting projects, instead of some other topics where my work was older or my questions weren\u2019t as well developed. It was hard to cut those topics loose in my mind, but also liberating, because after consciously laying them aside (for now!), I have more energy for the ones I have chosen.<\/p>\n

2) Writing this grant made me ask better questions, and gave me ideas on\u00a0how to start answering them.<\/strong><\/p>\n

My previous (mostly job application) research statements were focused on explaining the research I had already done, with a few questions for future study. When I wrote those other statements, my goal was to show that I was an accomplished researcher with plans to keep my research moving. The grant\u2019s research proposal had a different goal\u2014I was asking for money and concretely stating exactly what questions I would answer with that money. First I had to ask myself what problems were really interesting, then sell those problems as being worthwhile. Second, I had to show I could solve them. I wanted to showcase my accomplishments, but only to demonstrate that I had the background, skills, and good ideas to address my stated questions. It seemed important to show that I had convincing plans of how to take at least the first steps. Of course that meant I had to really think about these first steps, and I found that I had ideas I\u2019d never bothered to organize before. I thought I didn\u2019t know how to start, but that was because I hadn\u2019t honestly thought about how to start. Now I have.<\/p>\n

Also, in the process of solving a problem I tend to get tunnel vision and ignore all diverging paths. I want to know this one thing!!! Who cares what else I know? Who cares about anything else?!?\u00a0\u00a0 And then it\u2019s on to the next thing. In writing this proposal, I found that looking back on the work that I have done and thinking from a little distance about where I would like to go revealed the landscape very differently. I can see how one project might relate to another, and how this approach might apply in this other situation. It made me really excited about my research, and gave me more ideas I probably wouldn\u2019t have had if hadn\u2019t taken this time to reflect and try to create a narrative.<\/p>\n

3) I will never again underestimate the amount of time it takes to apply for a grant.<\/strong><\/p>\n

After applying once, I have now done everything wrong once. With all this excitement about my research proposal, I didn\u2019t spend much time last year thinking ahead about any of the other parts of the grant application. I assumed that the major part of the proposal was the research plan, and didn\u2019t even think about the other parts carefully until a few days before the deadline when I logged in and started submitting my application. If you\u2019re a beginner at writing grants, as I was, let me save you some pain and tell you right now that there are many more parts to the application. There\u2019s the short summary, the budget, the biographical details and time commitments, the indirect rates agreement from the University, and the approval of the research office at the University. And also several other things that I\u2019ve forgotten at the moment. Of course, I\u2019d read the website and skimmed over the list of requirements, but they all seemed minor compared to the research proposal. When it came time to submit, I was somehow totally surprised by the fact that I needed to be in contact with my own University\u2019s research office to get their approval and deal with indirect costs. The short summary sounds like no big deal, but it needs to do a lot of what the research proposal does, but in ONE PAGE! Holy cow. That is hard. Each supporting document took approximately 2 to 10 times longer to prepare than I\u2019d anticipated. I wrote panicked emails to my university\u2019s research office\u2014\u201cHelp, this grant is due tomorrow and I need your approval!\u201d They very kindly stepped up to help me at the last minute.<\/p>\n

\"This<\/a>

Did Gaudi apply for grants? \u00a0This application didn’t take as long as building La Sagrada Familia, but it did take most of my trip to Barcelona.<\/p><\/div>\n

And let me also mention that the last minute was happening for me in Barcelona, where I had gone on my fall break. This was really exciting, my first ever non-mathematical trip overseas. I thought I would just finish up the details on the plane and then submit my application from the airport when I arrived. Then off to enjoy my vacation! Needless to say, that didn\u2019t happen. I was completely preoccupied and stressed for the first 4 days of my trip\u2014trying to find wifi in Barcelona cafes, figuring out what time in Spain I could expect to get a reply from someone in Philadelphia, and what time exactly was the cut off for application submission. In the end, my proposal had several embarrassing typos, because of time pressure and because I wasn\u2019t able to print for a final proofread on paper. By the time I hit \u201csubmit\u201d I was exhausted, and felt really awful for spending the trip glued to my laptop. This doesn\u2019t sound like much of a positive about applying for the grant, but I would never have imagined it could take so much time and now I know. I will never make such a ludicrous plan again.<\/p>\n

4) The reviews from my rejected grant may be the most valuable feedback I have ever gotten on my research.<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I received an email last summer letting me know that I didn\u2019t get the grant, I was disappointed. The next email, with the reviewer\u2019s responses, sat in my inbox unopened for a couple weeks. I was steeling myself for some tough reading. When I finally read the reviews I was shocked. The reviewers were unbelievably nice, generous\u00a0people who gave me a lot of encouragement and very helpful feedback on my application. They took the time to read it carefully, make thoughtful comments on the content, and very kindly suggest ways to improve it. These were clearly people who knew the area well, and they offered additional references and pointed out applications that I had not emphasized. \u00a0This was perhaps the most extensive\u00a0feedback I had received\u00a0on any document since my thesis. \u00a0I have to say that some reviewers of my papers have also offered excellent feedback, but the grant reviewers discussed\u00a0my whole research program–it was a little like having the opportunity to explain my research without nervousness to\u00a0four experts in my field, then hearing their considered responses. \u00a0Far from being painful, reading my reviews was one of the most positive experiences I have had in sharing my research with the larger world. I was so excited that I wanted to revise and resubmit right then! Unfortunately the portal didn\u2019t open again until September.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This year has been much better. I went in really knowing what was required and started my application online over a month before the deadline. I had time to let the University\u2019s research office know what I was up to, and to ask my wonderful PhD advisor some questions about my research proposal. I have printed, proofread, and fixed scores of errors. I have revised the proposal to use the strange but appropriately formal language of \u201cthe PI\u201d<\/a> (and I do picture myself with a mustache every time I say that, in case you were wondering). \u00a0Of course, my application may not be funded this year either. But a) it might, b) there\u2019s no way I will ever get funding without applying, so I\u2019m not giving up, and c) if nothing else, round 2 will make the round 3 just\u00a0that much better.<\/p>\n

Please let me know in the comments if you have any great grant advice, or have made any of the grant mistakes that I did. \u00a0Good luck!<\/p>\n

<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sara\u2019s post last week about applying for grants hit me right in the middle of, of course, applying for a grant. I found Sara\u2019s tips very useful and loved the advice from the Chronicle on how not to get a … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n

<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[59,58],"tags":[113,112],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dealing-with-rejection","category-grant-proposals","tag-grant-proposal-reviews","tag-nsa-young-investigator"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3c1jI-nB","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1465,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions\/1465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ams.org\/phdplus\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}