Eliminating grant deadlines is a feminist issue

“You’re such a productive academic mama! I didn’t do anything the first 4 months after my kid was born.”

Reading this recently in my inbox was unsettling. It was in reference to the fact that I was writing and replying to emails, with an infant at home.  What the sender didn’t, doesn’t, understand is that I don’t feel like I have much of a choice.  As an early career academic trying to figure out The Next Steps (AKA someone hire / fund me please!), there are a round of grant + fellowship deadlines this fall that won’t come up again for at least another year. And by then I won’t be eligible for at least one of them. In other words, external forces just don’t care what else I have going on. Their deadlines are not negotiable.

To some extent, I get it. I really do. I’ve ended up backing out of or turning down several things this fall that understandably are time-sensitive and involve large groups of other people- conferences, workshops. Deadlines and set time-frames help organize these groups and keep everyone on task. And these opportunities are important, but I just couldn’t make them work this fall.* One workshop required that I teach a module to peers on a pre-determined schedule, which I couldn’t commit to [with an infant nursing on demand who isn’t taking a bottle]. One conference was willing to let me present remotely/electronically, but said I had to commit to being available to answer questions live [again, I didn’t think that was a realistic option personally].

But I truly do not believe that this kind of inflexibility needs to be true for all academic opportunities. I feel especially strong about this when it comes to grant deadlines. 

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How I finally got NSF funding

Being tenure-track in the sciences these days means being stressed about funding. Compared to my advisors, who were getting their labs started in the wake of Sputnik and increased governmental investment in science, grant writing is probably what early-stage professors spend most of their time on.

I hated grant writing my first two years; I wanted to do science, not write about it.  My first federal grants got triaged, and looking back I wish I had given myself a year or even 18 months (you can probably guess from this that I have a hard money position) before submitting a federal grant. But, as most of us are, I was advised by my senior colleagues to use my teaching release to draft grants, and so I submitted what I can only call ridiculous proposals. I will say that it helped to see how many pieces go into a federal grant early on, so that I could properly estimate the time needed in the future.  Still, I was a lamb heading to slaughter when I submitted that first full grant. It’s hard to get preliminary data when your lab’s only member is you, the PI, and you have to teach and advise and learn how to get reimbursed and where to order toner and all those other things our advisors hid from us about the academic life.

My reviews in my first couple years left me utterly deflated.

Not as easy as apple pie: Running the research conveyor belt while publishing apace

Photo by Tom Gill on Flickr. Used under a CC license.

It’s apple season. I’ve got apple sauce, apple crisp, and a crust waiting for apple pie. I’ve also got apples in the fridge, apples on the counter, and apples on my desk at work. Unfortunately, there are also apples going bad, and apples in the compost bin. I don’t have enough time to turn all of the apples into their delicious conclusions.

I’ve also got a lot of professional projects going on. There are grants and papers to write, students to advise, data to analyze, and unfortunately, some of those projects aren’t moving as quickly as I would wish. In fact, there’s the real risk that some of them will “go bad” while waiting for attention from me.

So I’ve been thinking a lot…about apples…and about prioritizing my research efforts. It turns out that when peeling apples, you’ve got some time to think.

I’ve been envisioning research as a sort of conveyor belt.