Dearth of posts <= not dead, but very busy. Proposalpalooza on top of my teaching overload, a taxing university committee and all the regular demands of running a research group, everything topped off with a hearty helping of mandatory travel for an annual program review for a funding agency in whose good graces I really want to remain. So flipping out a bit.
Random bits:
1) At my apparently advanced age, I can only pull off 2 nights of going to bed at 1 am after working like a dog and getting up at 4 am to catch various planes. On day 3, I get a splitting headache that does not respond to heavy doses of Advil, so I cannot think straight and thus cannot work on my proposal, which defeats the purpose of insane travel schedule that was supposed to leave me this Thursday to work on my proposal. Scheduling fail.
2) I hate feet. Specifically, the feet of all the many barefoot people I happened to run into at airports and on airplanes over the past few days. There was definitely a surplus of bare feet in flip-flops with calluses so thick that they resemble hooves, crumbling pedicures, and uncut toe nails. Feet are like armpits: lots of people don't take very good care of them, they often smell, and they reveal way too much about one's personal grooming habits to be flashed at unsuspecting strangers. Socks and shoes, people!
3) There are no women in my field. At the very large program review, where several multi-university programs were reviewed, I was the only female PI. There were a couple of other women in the audience (2 students and a woman from a national lab) but no PI's. When I mentioned that to my collaborators, they all immediately jumped to point out there really were not zero women, that there were indeed these other 3 female specimens. Like that makes it OK. Of 30+ PI's I am the only woman, that's bad. And I am not even mentioning all the other non-PI guys there (probably another 30 or so). The sad part is that I expected my collaborators not to care. I would not say they are sexist, as they do treat me with respect, but they are certainly not at the forefront of the battle for the equality of sexes.
4) My Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) is not on my side. Again. We have this ridiculous internal deadline, where the proposal is supposed to be submitted to the SPO office a fairly long time before the official deadline. I am not saying 3-4 days before, I am saying two weeks before. This makes sense for complicated multi-university, multi-PI grants with lots of subawards and shit, but not universally. I usually submit all my boilerplate for them to look over weeks in advance, but want to have enough time to work on the technical part. I try to be considerate and ask how long the designated SPO person would allow me to work on my technical part, because I need the time and it's a simple single-PI proposal with no frills and the boilerplate has been in for them to look at for ages... I get an email where I am scolded as a "naughty PI" for asking for the extra time and that perhaps I need a refresher of why the ridiculous lead time is really absolutely necessary for them. Adding insult to injury: not only will you not give me extra time, you will attempt to take time away from me by making me listen to the bureaucratic bullshit again.
5) Chatting candidly with one of my collaborators about the ridiculousness of some of our colleagues' behavior, the trials and tribulations of being a PI, and the awesomeness of being a parent, all while having excellent wine at the hotel bar, is a rare and delightful treat.
14 comments:
Having worked closely with and in SPO, long lead times for _all_ projects protect queues. Sure, _your_ project is simple and straightforward -- but the 3-4 major projects that may be ahead of you might not be. And you are implicitly expecting them to slot you into the schedule ahead of those when you ask for an exception. I'd be very surprised if you are happy to be asked to drop a review of a major manuscript from one of your students to review a 5 page conference paper due shortly just b/c the conf paper is _so simple_.
if you are happy to be asked to drop a review of a major manuscript from one of your students to review a 5 page conference paper due shortly just b/c the conf paper is _so simple_.
Anon, this actaully happens all the time. White papers for collaborative proposals and short urgent manuscripts (conference and journal) get dropped in my lap all the time. I don't know that I am happy to do it on a short notice, but I certainly do it.
Bottom line is that the SPO staff don't look at the techincal parts of the project anyway, and most PI's do need extra time for the techical part alone. I wish there would be a way to OK the nontechnical part and provide extra time just for the technical. But apparently there is no efficient way to do that.
Or, since you mentioned protecting queues, perhaps it would be possible to implement something like what doctors' offices do (different scheduling timeframes for urgent care or annual well checkups, for instance).
Anyway, I asked the SPO person well in advance if more time would be OK. I didn't drop something in their lap at 4:55 pm on the submission date, so I am honestly aggravated that I got the "you're a naughty PI" email because there are those who are (who do drop everything off at the last minute) but they are BigWigs so no one tells them anything. I imagine it is easier to be a hardliner (or simply vent) on a (supposedly less scary) not-ancient and female PI.
your handling of the situation (turning in all the biosketches and crap well ahead of time and requesting extension on two-week-deadline well ahead of time) would usually be met by a grant for extension from our SPO. We routinely get our 10 b-day deadline reduced to 5 days even without having done those things.
I'm at a major public U with a gigantic SPO--dunno if that makes a difference or not.
"My Sponsored Programs Office (SPO) is not on my side. Again. We have this ridiculous internal deadline, where the proposal is supposed to be submitted to the SPO office a fairly long time before the official deadline."
Two weeks! That's insane! I'm sorry "@anonymous" but I have no sympathy for those SPO folks. If they can't get their shit together and work more efficiently (by say having more people, or –gasp– working overtime) that's their problem, not mine. Their job is to facilitate proposal submission and not impede it. If they want biosketches and justifications and shit early fine, but I'm working on my proposal until I feel it is ready and will not compromise just because you guys cannot get your shit together. In my university it used to be 2 days, now its 5 days because of grants.gov, which is bullshit, because it doesn't take longer to submit grants that way. Plus they insist they be full business days, so for a proposal due on a Monday, you need to turn it in two Fridays before - for what, so it can sit in their office while they spend the weekend grillin' and chillin' while I could be working on the fucking proposal...
Anon@8:48 PM
Are you kidding me? Two weeks? Does your SPO actually write the proposal-I cannot imagine two weeks being needed to do anything other than that. I understand that there may be many proposals in the queue, but that still does not mean two weeks are okay. In general,SPOs need to realize that they are there to HELP the faculty and not the other way round. Further, it is the grant dollars that pay for the SPO. So that means being team players. If faculty work long hours during certain times of the year, SPOs should understand that they are on the hook too.
Personally, I am in favor of a model where the PIs submit an informal budget and the technical portion to the funding agency directly. Anyway, 90% of the proposals get rejected, so all that budget checking is in vain. The 10% proposals that do get recommended for funding can then go into the gory details of the budget. That way, SPOs can run with fewer staff, leaner admin etc.
Did I understand that first anonymous correctly that a two-week time slot if necessary in order to ensure that the proposal can sit in a waiting queue long enough? Not particularly convincing, I have to say.
Two weeks is ridiculous. Our SPO wants three business days, which seems reasonable. The person in SPO who handles my proposals only asks for the biosketch, budget, justification etc., not the research plan, although I gather most people in SPO ask for everything.
Given that some SPO's can do things in three days, the argument for two weeks doesn't hold up.
For a much-smaller fellowship grant, my admin person wanted it a week ahead, but didn't mind me having a less-than-final technical part in it. I don't understand why they cannot swap the science-portion alone later, as long as they have procedures put in place for it.
Mine has the same crazy policy, but I find that it matters very much who the contact person is as to how reasonable they are about extending deadlines. I will often have everything except the technical part done before the internal deadline. Since our version of your SRO just checks the technical part for formatting and covering all the required sections (i.e. they are not technical people), they are often cool with extensions. They do caveat their extensions with "we may not give your proposal a complete review", but I am OK with that.
In news unrelated to two week deadlines.... feet gross me out, too! Why why why do people think it is okay to go barefoot on planes? I actually sat next to someone who picked at his toes throughout the flight. Barf.
Two weeks seems ridiculous to me, too. But I think that is what the advance is in my new MRU. Apparently it has to go through several administrators. Ugh. I hope that you are able to switch out some of the technical stuff-this is how it was at postdoc U.
I'm sorry about your feet. I personally abhor wearing shoes, and I tend to have on flip-flops all the time. I don't pick at my toes on the plane, though. Still, socks are like prison for my toes.
Oh man I hate feet. I am so glad I am not the only one. Flip flops are a way of life at university and people will prop their feet up on chairs and I'm just disgusted. I'd really rather see you walk around in the grossest, dirtiest socks than have to see your feet. Nice thing about working somewhere where you need closed-toed shoes for so many areas, people often err on the side of covering their feet.
Eli is going with the you want a job then you help me out.
Thanks everyone for the comments - I kinda dropped the ball on this comment, got to busy.
Thanks for the moral support regarding the ridiculousness of the university lead time for proposal submission.
And it's good to meet a couple of fellow feet avoiders! :) I promise, if we ever meet, we will not shake feet! :)
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