Picking up the pieces

Gingerbreak man (Photo by Tseen Khoo)

So, you’ve lost out on the major grant rounds for last year. It only took about eight months to find out, right?

Often, you’ve waited with all of your career possibilities riding on the outcome.

And you got nothing.

As the congratulatory emails, posts, and drinkies ramped up, it was easy to get a little bitter and twisted about the whole thing. Of course, you’re happy for your diligent and savvy colleagues who were given recognition but…what about you?

I can say that I truly understand how you feel. I threw my hat in the major grants and fellowship rings many times; very few times was I successful.

I’m writing this post for you to read after you’ve had a few weeks to get over the angst and disappointment of not scoring a grant, hopefully had a break, and been able to take a step back.

If you’re going to persist in the academic caper, it’s very useful to find a constructively destructive way to channel that post-grant-announcement frustration and anger, that feeling that you’ve been cheated. I would suggest gardening or metal-smithing; anything that allows you to wield tools or make loud noises.

There are no guarantees about winning the grants race, but you can do your best to ensure you make it through the heats.

Top 5 things to pick up the pieces, post-grant-unsuccess:

What is research?

End of the game, by Jonathan O’Donnell on Flickr

We all know what research is – it’s the thing we do when we want to find something out. It is what we are trained to do in a PhD program. It’s what comes before development.

The wonderful people at Wordnet define research as

Noun: systematic investigation to establish facts; a search for knowledge.

Verb: attempt to find out in a systematically and scientific manner; inquire into.

An etymologist might tell us that it comes from the Old French word cerchier, to search, with re- expressing intensive force. I guess it is saying that before 1400 in France, research meant to search really hard.

Guidelines to Grant Success

That was the easy bit by Jonathan O'Donnell on Flickr

There are three key points for efficient grant application writing:

1. Read the guidelines,
2. Read the guidelines, and
3. Read the guidelines.

Research developers like to trot this one out regularly. It usually gets a laugh (or an eye-roll, ymmv), but it’s TRUE.

I am a strong advocate of this mantra at the moment because university research offices around Australia are geared up for major Australian Research Council (ARC) funding rounds. ARC grants are arguably the most difficult and prestigious to land.

When talking with researchers about their applications (including using the ARC’s online system), I often have this experience:

[Five minutes into our meeting, where I feel like I'm not making much headway]

Me: [casually] So, you’ve read the funding rules and instructions to applicants, right?

*crickets*

That’s my ‘ah-hah’ moment. It explains why the researchers are having so much trouble getting started on an application, and why they don’t even know what headings to use.

Major grants are tricky beasts to wrangle no matter how many times you read the guidelines. However, funding bodies are generally clear  (often painstakingly clear) about what information they want from you and how you’re meant to present it. I alluded to the kinds of things guideline-reading can do for you in Research Grant Writing 101.

Here are five fab reasons why training yourself to read and digest each funding scheme’s information can make your life easier: