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The devil is in the details November 9, 2013

Posted by mareserinitatis in engineering, research.
Tags: details, NSF, perfectionism, proposals, writing
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A few months ago, I read an article written by someone who is a comp sci professor at MIT.  I think it was in sci am.

I’m too lazy to go look it up, but if you read the article, you’ll know which one I’m talking about.

In that article, she talked about the stress of starting a tenure track position until she talked to a colleague from the business department.  This colleague described his assistant professor spot as a “six year post doc.”  She liked that approach because, when you look at a TT spot that way, you’re less likely to stress over it.  And it apparently worked for her because she got tenure.

I’ve been thinking a lot about that approach, not just about in approaching job uncertainty, but about using that kind of attitude toward a lot of things in general.  In the past couple weeks, therefore, I’ve been trying to apply that same type of reasoning to proposal writing…which finished up today (until January, at least).  This has lead me to an interesting hypothesis: I’m not writing proposals to get money, I’m writing them to get feedback.  (One can also use this approach when thinking about paper submissions as well.)

The reason I’m thinking this is because this is the fifth time I’ve submitted a proposal on the same topic…but the second time it has gone to NSF.  Last year was the first time, and it was passable, but I had the idea just over a month before the proposal deadline.  I had less than six weeks to assemble the research team and write the proposal from the ground up.  It wasn’t great, but it came in somewhere in the middle of the pack.

A couple months later, we submitted a smaller version to a local funding agency.  A month after that, to a larger one.  Having started with a good basis for NSF, this one was a lot easier to write.  It was after this larger proposal that the smaller agency came back and requested a ‘revise and submit’.  We got some very good feedback from this.  Shortly after we began executing our revision, we received feedback from our NSF and other proposal.  Some of the feedback was very similar to what was provided by the local agency, but there were a lot of other things addressed.  We definitely had better reviews on the other large proposal and have been encouraged to resubmit.  And the local agency did give us some funding after our resubmission.

So what have I learned from this?  This process is somewhat hit or miss, but I’ve been learning that each time I put my submissions in front of a new pair of eyes, I get more and more suggestions.  I will admit: sometimes the comments are just plain stupid.  More often than not, however, there will be some points that I either failed to explain clearly or issues I hadn’t anticipated.

I imagine that will happen this time around, too.  I honestly don’t think that this proposal will get funded by NSF, even though I do think it’s bulletproof.  (I have to admit that I fail to see how something bulletproof could require that much time and revision, but that’s the way it goes.  It’s like homework as an undergrad: it expands to fill the time allotted.)

I asked a colleague if he would submit a proposal he knew wouldn’t get funded, and he relayed that he’s spent months working on proposals that never got funded and he’s had rush jobs that did get funded.

All of these experiences, both my own and those shared, have made me realize that it’s not worth it to kill myself agonizing over the details.  I can only do the best I can in the time I have available.  If I try to do 100% the first time out, it’s likely I’ll just waste a lot of time and likely miss the mark anyway.  (Unless you’re one of those people who is so famous that you can send in proposals in crayon and get funding.  I know…that doesn’t exist…but doesn’t coloring submissions in crayon sound a lot more fun than fighting with MS Word and it’s tendency to shift pictures around right when you’re ready to submit?  Not that I would know anything about that.  Also, I wish more of my colleagues used LaTeX, not that it’s in any way related, either.)

Okay…I still do agonize.  I am thinking of the brand new proposal that I wrote up with contributions from several coworkers.  We submitted today, and I’m not happy with it.  But I’m also fairly certain that it wouldn’t get funded anyway, so now I have a good basis for the next submission window…and a lot of positive feelings about the fact that my coworkers did a lot to help get this going.  They were amazing, and it’s those types of interactions that make me keep wanting to do this.  (How many places have you worked where people have come up and said, “Do you need any more help? Is there something I can do?”  Unfortunately, I couldn’t ask them to bring me some gluten-free donuts.)  And finally, I will have feedback for the next round…assuming the reviewers focus on the content, anyway.

It has occurred to me that the fact I’m not in a TT spot right now makes it easier not to stress about this.  I’ve only been doing this for 18 mos., and the reality is that my employment is, by a lot of measures, ultimately out of my control.  So while my employment situation is not that of a ‘standard prof’, I also wonder if going through this now will make it less stressful if I ever do end up in a spot like that.

Maybe I’m just completely off the mark.  Would you try to make it perfect the first time?

For now, however, I am going to try to catch up on all the sleep I missed this week in my pursuit of non-perfection.  Also, there will probably be a lot less babbling in the coming weeks about proposals and a lot more about silly student tricks…