Grants require blood, sweat, and tears....and more blood?

No, really.

At 3 am some day early last week, I was working on a draft of my latest grant.  I was editing by hand at a fairly good pace (especially given the hour) when a spot on the paper made me pause.

Hmmm...  I peered at the reddish pink ink smudge.   I wiped at it with my forefinger, but I only smudged it worse.  Another spot on my grant smeared in a similar fashion.

I turned my palm over to see if ink was on my hand (although I was marking in blue ink, not in red).  That's when I realized I had a fairly nasty paper cut that was slowly but methodically dripping blood onto my grant.

Brings a whole new meeting to bleeding for your work, huh?

Reviewing friends

Apparently I have more friends than I thought.

'Cause get what just popped into my inbox?  A grant review request from an agency for a friend.  And not a conference buddy friend.  An actual, we-got-educated-together (not in that way, you sick bastard) friend.

I know, especially with the size of academia, that I would review a grant or paper for a friend eventually.

I just didn't think it would be this soon.

Or potentially have to be a negative review.

How do you get a summer salary?

As I've written previously, I do not get a summer salary.


Would I like more money?  Obviously.

I have two options to get a summer salary:

1.  teach

2.  Write and receive a grant that can include my summer salary.



Many of my colleagues do not seek out summer funding.  They then refuse to work in the summer because they aren't being paid.  I don't have that luxury.  I need to work in the summer to get enough research done.


It is challenging finding funding for a PUI's summer salary.  Sure, I can write and hope to get (after two or three re-submits?) a giant grant to Big Funding Agency.  But are there other sources of summer money for PUI profs?

To Prius or Not to Prius

I'm thinking of taking the big plunge.


For the first time in eight years, I'm contemplating buying a new-to-me car.


I want a small, four-door car with good gas mileage.  I'm willing to go electric.  Or partial.  Or whatever.

I'm going to trade in my current small, four-door car with good gas mileage, and I'm willing to pay cash.  (Frugal Professor is frugal.)


Suggestions?

Adjusting expectations at a PUI

I'm a tenure track professor at a predominately undergraduate institution (PUI).  Current grad students often ask me what's the most important thing I've learned about my job.  In my opinion, the most helpful thing I've learned in my first two years here is to adjust expectations.

I've adjusted my expectations about scholarship.  With my undergraduates only spending four to six hours a week on research, I have had to recalibrate with respect to research productivity.  Research tasks that would take me a week to accomplish might take my students all semester.  I don't anticipate submitting a paper before June.

I have also lowered my expectations about the strength of incoming students.  I've found that I can't take for granted that my freshmen are coming into college with the math and writing skills that I would expect.  More time is taken in the first semester to bring all students up to speed on written communication and problem solving.  Would it be awesome to just teach to the top 10% of my class?  Of course.  Would it get me tenure?  I doubt it.

Perhaps the biggest adjustment is to the state of funding.  My start up funds were not too terrible, but I can't bank them for next year.  I have to spend everything up and just hope I can get enough preliminary results to warrant a Big Funding Agency to decide that I deserve to be in the special top 13% group (or whatever the funding line is).  There are essentially no internal funds here, so I have to get outside funding.  This is a daunting enough of a task at a research institution, let alone at a PUI.  And so I've learned to not be surprised by the lack of internal and external funds here.  What if I run out of money next year?  Me stressing about the worst case scenario certainly won't help my undergrads be more productive.  All I can do is keep truckin'.



Now, should I passively accept subpar students or a paucity of funding?  Of course not.

But it certainly helps me maintain my sanity if I can adjust my expectations for the time being.

Unplugging to preserve my sanity

Geekmommyprof recently posted about the question that seems to plague all academics on vacation: to unplug or not to unplug?

I come from a very, very long line of workaholics. Some were famous in their academic circles. Some weren't. And some went bonkers (literally!) from their need to constantly work.

I attended a very rigorous liberal arts college for undergrad. As a student body, we worked extremely hard Sunday through Friday morning... and then binge drank Friday and Saturday nights. This is in stark contrast to my PermaU students. They only go out on the days that end in y. At my undergrad, virtually no one went out during the week. It's still a toss-up as to what I was closest: Cuervo or Kant? Vodka or Voltaire? Scotch or Smith? (Just kidding. I hate scotch.)

In graduate school, I was in a brand new research group. Being in the first crop of grad students of The Boss meant lots of one-on-one interaction (whether we wanted it or not). It also meant a lot of pressure to obtain grants. We submitted seven R01-type grants (and dozens of smaller grants) while I was in the group. In addition to getting preliminary results in the lab, graduate students were responsible for making grant figures, writing portions of the text, navigating the grants and contracts office, and making the FedEx runs. I can count on my hands the number of times Monday-Friday I was home before 7. And I left the house by 7 am. During the typical week, I worked 7 days and averaged 70-80 hours per week. During grant times, I never worked less than 14 hours straight. One memorable submission required two weeks straight of 16+ hour days. No food breaks--- meals were delivered or fetched by an undergrad.

Looking back, I am proud/shocked/sad that I pushed through it all.

Fresh out of grad school, as a visiting ass., I still did not know how to reign in my workaholic tendencies. I worked straight through weekends. During the week, I was on campus by 8 am and rarely left before 10 pm. I told myself I worked hard because I had to. Really, deep down, I knew I worked so hard because I wanted to. I felt compelled to pull such insane hours.

Then I moved and got on the tenure track. I got a Puppy. I was reunited with N.A. I knew that in order to maintain a long-term relationship AND keep up with Puppy, I would need to approach my work time in a very different manner. I could no longer pull such insane hours.

More importantly, I recognized that I didn't have to pull such insane hours. By being smarter about my work allocations during the week, I could tend to the house, the Puppy, and my life on the weekends.

So I self-imposed a no-campus policy on weekends. That is, I do not go into campus Sat/Sun. No matter what.

Being at a PUI allows me to do this. Also, my research is not such that I have to check on reactions each day. And my students can certainly survive with just email contact from me. The world will not end if I only work Monday through Friday.


At least that's what I'll keep telling myself until the senior members of the department notify me otherwise.

Getting back into research

If you teach at a primarily undergraduate institution, then you know firsthand how challenging it is to get research done during the academic year. Resources are scarce, and most undergrads at a PUI can only commit a handful of hours a week in the lab...if that.

It's been so refreshing / stimulating / exhausting to be thinking about research again. With my research students on holiday for another week and a half, I have all day to myself to read, think, and write. The jump from very little research activity to fulltime lab work can be a bit of a shock to the system, as some of you have pointed out. For example, PUI prof wrote about her perspective in a recent post.


All I can hope for is a productive summer. It's hard enough to get funded in ANY research lab, let alone once just staffed by undergraduate researchers.*




*which is a post in and of itself!

Taxing taxes

I usually wait until pretty late (um...say, the 13th of April) to do my taxes. I do N.A.'s taxes as well, and I would rather do them at the same time than do mine first and have to answer similar questions two months later.

When people find out that I haven't sent in my taxes yet, (and they always do-- what is up with that? Weird competition?) they express shock. I suppose this could be because I'm fairly organized in other aspects of my life (read: super anal), so the contrast is surprising.

But still.


Is it really that big of a deal to wait until April 15th to file?