{"id":293,"date":"2008-10-21T01:16:00","date_gmt":"2008-10-21T01:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/10\/21\/tracking-my-contribution\/"},"modified":"2008-10-21T01:16:00","modified_gmt":"2008-10-21T01:16:00","slug":"tracking-my-contribution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/2008\/10\/21\/tracking-my-contribution\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracking my contribution"},"content":{"rendered":"

Given that I am almost halfway through a two year contract, it is very important that I can justify my continued existence to my supervisors. (The situation is that if <\/em>they like me they will try <\/em>to find the money to keep me when my current contract runs out!) I am planning a longer post on exactly how I hope to do this, but for now, here’s a breakdown of sent emails (a pretty decent indicator of my contribution) for the latest grant application deadline.
<\/span><\/p>\n

First, by the numbers:<\/strong>
Number of PIs: 2
Number of grants: 3
Number of revised resubmissions to the same agency: 1
Number of reworked grants previously submitted to a different agency: 2<\/p>\n

This round was not exactly typical, as there were no “new” grants. (I put new in quotes because if there is one thing I have learned in the last year it is that proposals are very rarely, if ever, written entirely from scratch). I was therefore mostly a project manager* \/ editor \/ proofreader, although I did draft various sections including technical and lay abstracts, budget justifications etc. And I spotted a fatal error in one hypothesis that needed to be corrected – the result of too much late night caffeine in the PI’s house apparently!<\/p>\n

<\/span>By the emails:<\/p>\n

<\/span><\/div>\n

<\/strong>\"\"<\/span><\/a>(ETA: I am having all kinds of problems with this format. The categories, from the top down, are:<\/span>
<\/span>
Thank yous<\/span>
Arranging PI and coapplicant signatures<\/span>
Requests for information: CVs, details of other funding etc.<\/span>
Arranging institutional signatures<\/span>
Sending people new files that I’d worked on<\/span>
Sending people existing documents that I’d filed<\/span>
Delegation of various tasks<\/span>
Arranging collaboration letters<\/span>
Requests for information: budget<\/span>
Requests for information: admin (panel, suggested reviewers etc)<\/span>
Requests for information: scientific content)<\/span><\/p>\n

This is the first time I’ve done this kind of analysis, and it will be very interesting to compare this breakdown to how I spend my time when we’re submitting new grants. Like last February’s one resubmission and four new grants<\/em> <\/span>extravaganza<\/em><\/span><\/a>… I am already signed up for one grant for next year’s equivalent competition! Expect much deranged blogging!<\/p>\n

Oh, and I lost my 100% record for grant applications in which one of our group’s PIs was the principal applicant. But the PI didn’t expect to get that one anyway (they are funding at the 6% level, although he thinks we came close). I don’t think we’ll get the next one either… I reckon we’ll get two of the next four though.
<\/span>———————
*Apparently I was too efficient! We got one of the three grants sent off a full day before the deadline. The PI came up to me and admitted to being dazed and confused. I reassured him that the grant was indeed complete and had been sent off with all required parts included. “But isn’t it supposed to be a last minute panic?” he asked. I offered him the chance to work on the other two grants, which were still in the panic phase (although I eventually had them packaged the night before and sent 3 hours before the courier deadline), but he declined. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Given that I am almost halfway through a two year contract, it is very important that I can justify my continued existence to my supervisors. (The situation is that if they like me they will try to find the money … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-career","category-grant-wrangling"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/293\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/occamstypewriter.org\/vwxynot\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}