By hook or by crook

One of the worst feelings in science is to beat your head against the wall, trying to get your ideas funded, only to see multiple RFAs and PAs appear several years later. Or, to see someone finally get “your” grant funded.

I have three suggestions for sanity.

1) If you’ve stopped fighting on Idea 1 because you got funding to work on Idea 2….try to be philosophical* about it. I have approximately 10 fold more scientific ideas than I can ever dream of supervising at one time.

2) keep at it. Keep sending in apps even if someone else got funded. Who knows? Maybe you will end up the only one of multiple grants to actually produce anything!**

3) do it anyway on the back of some other project you have funded. Yeah, it can be risky come renewal time but….screw it. Life is too short to let your best ideas languish until you have specific funding.

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*the first full grant I ever wrote…
**I won’t lie. That shit feels good.