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*headdesk*
Mar. 19th, 2009 09:39 pmI knew this next month was going to be pretty awful. The ARRA (spit) included a load of money for the NIH and, in response, the NIH created a brand new grant mechanism, called RC1. They're also setting aside moneys for administrative supplements and competitive revisions (another fancy phrase for "supplement") to existing projects.
As soon as the ARRA was signed, I knew there would be a flurry of ZOMG WE GOTTA APPLY FOR THIS NOW! BRONWYN!!!!
Sure enough...
"I've got like 5 grants we need to write!"
"We've gotta get a supplement for our Phase II"
"We HAVE to get this cancer grant in before the SBIR program dies!"
You know what's really awesome? The fabulous ZOMG WE GOTTA THROW MONEY AT THIS NOW! mentality of the ARRA means that this brand new packet of funding and its brand new set of requirements I have to learn comes with a proposal deadline of APRIL 27.
Actually, that's the best-case scenario, but applies to the mechanism we really can't use.
It gets better. The supplement application, for which I already have the basic framework of a proposal and budget pulled together (because I rock), is due on APRIL 21. Eeks.
It gets even better, though. At 3 o'clock today, our company president sent me an *urgent* e-mail containing a rough (and I do mean rough) draft of an SBIR proposal that MUST be submitted for the next SBIR deadline because ZOMG the program is gonna die in July if the congresscritters don't save it! That deadline? April 5.
That's right, I get to pull a proposal together on a cancer topic I know nigh on nothing about, in less than 2 weeks. In fact, he wants it done by Monday morning.
And then I have to get another one out within the following two weeks.
While continuing to do ever more development work on the candidate release of our software package and its accompanying website.
Don't worry if your brain just blanked out, mine did, too.
I'm staying up way past my bedtime to figure out how I'm going to make sense of this cancer proposal, and I'm going to try to get to work a little early because I have to give a report on the user testing I performed yesterday. I spent all day on that report and it still isn't finished, but because I'm a scatterbrained idiot, I failed to e-mail it to myself and therefore can't work on it right now.
So instead, I'm just bitching about it and making your eyes glaze over.
Samuel's 2nd birthday is next Thursday and I very much wanted to have a photo album and video put together for it. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't even know how to make the video, and I certainly won't have time to learn it now. I'm a shitty mother. I don't even a birthday party planned for him.
This is so not what I wanted to do with my life. I left academia because I didn't want to spend all my time begging for funding. Yeah. See where that got me?!
Ugh. Back to the grant.
As soon as the ARRA was signed, I knew there would be a flurry of ZOMG WE GOTTA APPLY FOR THIS NOW! BRONWYN!!!!
Sure enough...
"I've got like 5 grants we need to write!"
"We've gotta get a supplement for our Phase II"
"We HAVE to get this cancer grant in before the SBIR program dies!"
You know what's really awesome? The fabulous ZOMG WE GOTTA THROW MONEY AT THIS NOW! mentality of the ARRA means that this brand new packet of funding and its brand new set of requirements I have to learn comes with a proposal deadline of APRIL 27.
Actually, that's the best-case scenario, but applies to the mechanism we really can't use.
It gets better. The supplement application, for which I already have the basic framework of a proposal and budget pulled together (because I rock), is due on APRIL 21. Eeks.
It gets even better, though. At 3 o'clock today, our company president sent me an *urgent* e-mail containing a rough (and I do mean rough) draft of an SBIR proposal that MUST be submitted for the next SBIR deadline because ZOMG the program is gonna die in July if the congresscritters don't save it! That deadline? April 5.
That's right, I get to pull a proposal together on a cancer topic I know nigh on nothing about, in less than 2 weeks. In fact, he wants it done by Monday morning.
And then I have to get another one out within the following two weeks.
While continuing to do ever more development work on the candidate release of our software package and its accompanying website.
Don't worry if your brain just blanked out, mine did, too.
I'm staying up way past my bedtime to figure out how I'm going to make sense of this cancer proposal, and I'm going to try to get to work a little early because I have to give a report on the user testing I performed yesterday. I spent all day on that report and it still isn't finished, but because I'm a scatterbrained idiot, I failed to e-mail it to myself and therefore can't work on it right now.
So instead, I'm just bitching about it and making your eyes glaze over.
Samuel's 2nd birthday is next Thursday and I very much wanted to have a photo album and video put together for it. I don't think it's going to happen. I don't even know how to make the video, and I certainly won't have time to learn it now. I'm a shitty mother. I don't even a birthday party planned for him.
This is so not what I wanted to do with my life. I left academia because I didn't want to spend all my time begging for funding. Yeah. See where that got me?!
Ugh. Back to the grant.
