Need to vent about grants.

[naupakamama]

To all the other professor mamas out there, I am getting so dejected with grants and grant writing. On the first round of reviews, I actually got very good and excellent reviews. I really thought with some tweaking, I would get the grant the second time. I just got the second round back and lets just say that I got the worst reviews of my life by far. My grant got one of the lowest rankings.

Right now I have a four month old who is coming to work with me (and a four year old who goes to school/daycare) and I can't find the time to get the preliminary data that I need. I just feel so overwhelmed trying to balance being a new mom and staying a float in my career.

And how can essentially the SAME grant get great reviews one time and be the bottom of the barrel the next. Grrrrrr!!!!!

Thanks for listening to me vent.

[Geofizz]

:

(I'm assuming you're talking about NSF.)

I've had the same thing as well. VG to E with one G on the first round, then G and the dreaded F for the second round. With cruel reviews to rub it in.

Call your program manager for feedback on the pair of proposals.
Show the proposal and reviews to someone you trust to get feedback.
Consider teaming up with a CoPI.
See if there's a better panel or agency to submit it to.
See what comments in the reviews are legit. Did you not make yourself clear? Bite off too much? Missing relevant citations? Too narrow a perspective?

My first proposal was funded after I submitted it through one panel, but it was then reviewed by a second panel without my knowing it. The program manager then told me that every proposal in my field gets reviewed through both panels. I submitted the second proposal through the second panel then in hopes of... I'm not sure. Denied once, bombed the second time. I then discovered that a consequence of which panel it went to as its primary kind of set the population of the mail reviewers, and NOT what I wanted/needed. So I submitted on time three to the first panel, and it got fully funded.

I also spent 3 weeks of rewriting that third time just on writing my hypothesis. 3 weeks for what ended up being two sentences.

This part of academia blows chunks. I'm really sorry.