Ok, well I’m back. Not that I was holidaying it up or anything. I feel like I’ve spent the whole of December lying on my back in bed. First that little GI thing I got from my daughter and then the nasty sinus head cold that I’ve had for the last 5 days. Imagine cooking Christmas dinner for a houseful of guests, and walking 3 households worth of dogs like that. I’m better today, thanks.

Now I’m starting to think about January and February, and all of the competing responsibilities I have for the next few months.  See, I think I’ve taken on a lot….rather, I KNOW I’ve taken on a lot. Writing and teaching are going to be especially heavy in the next couple of months, and I’m always asking myself how much I can logically take on in any given time period, and of those tasks- where my efforts need to be focused most and what can get less attention, at least in the short term. There is triage going on in my head, and the triage is based first on what needs to be done to get grants goals accomplished and get grants renewed, and second on everything else.

Anyway, as far as getting grant goals going and grants renewed. I know that in order to get these things to happen I have to get the new people that I have hired up to speed and working, and I have to push out papers. I have 3 papers that I want to turn out relatively quickly, for one I have a nearly complete manuscript, for a second I have to motivate my postdoc to give me some text, and for the third I need to put my head together with my collaborators and we have to turn out a manuscript quickly or we are going to get scooped on the story. I’m DELIGHTED to have all this writing to do, writing about actual data, that is. It is this, and getting the lab moving now that I have filled up the group, that I really want to be doing. The fact that I want to be doing the writing makes it easy to have this as my top priority.

There are also lots of tasks that are less fun, or let’s say that I get less personal satisfaction from, that also need to be done.  I’m teaching here and there in various courses in the spring, and for two of these courses it will be the first time I am delivering the material. For one of the courses, taught out of my home department, I am taking over some established course material and I am charged with updating the content. I don’t find this fun (I’m not sure anyone does), but I know it needs to be done. For the second course there was a bit of a crisis and I decided to be a good citizen and help out. Now, I know what you are all saying… (you… VOLUNTEERED?…WTF)… but I think these things need to be done from time to time, and this teaching is in a department where I have a joint appointment- so it is a bit of calculated pay-it-forward.

This all seems pretty straightforward when you look at it from the research intensive faculty perspective. Individual research program first, teaching second. Right? But the problem with this is that this is not how the institution seems these responsibilities- or it is, at least, not how they talk about them. I hear about a bazillion hours of stuff in meetings on curricular redesign, how and where lecture hours are to be delivered, and the needs of the professional/undergraduate students, and absolutely zero on developing a strong research program and managing and running a productive group. I spend countless hours fighting for small amounts of resources, mainly facilities type resources, that are necessary for me to get research done- it just doesn’t seem to be a priority of the institution. Sometimes it feels like their triage is the exact opposite of my triage… theirs is teaching first research second… and mine is research first… teaching second.

A reader of the blog recently wrote me the following question:

I noticed in your bio you list your past experience as including a stint as a non-TT faculty member, and I was hoping you could detail a bit more about what that position entailed (rights and responsibilities, degree of independence) and offer some advice on how to make the transition from that to TT.

So, I’ll oblige.

Indeed, my first faculty position was a non-tenure track position. In my case this was a faculty position in title only (i.e. I was not was not yet independent), and was awarded to me basically so that I could submit my own grants. I had no service responsibilities, neither did I have any rights. In my institution truly ‘independent’ non-TT positions (where you are not reliant on another PI for space, salary etc) are incredibly rare. More usually- those on the non-TT faculty track remain employed in their postdoc lab… and are simply elevated to grant submission status.

If independent non-TT positions in my institution are rare, then folks who successfully move from non-TT to TT positions in my institution are vanishingly rare. DrMrA is federally funded tenured faculty in another college in the same institution- and that wasn’t a darn bit of help. The only thing that made a difference, was moving on to a full-scale job search, submitting about a billion applications all over the country. I had quite a few interviews, and a number of respectable offers. I did not have a federal grant at the time.

Times have changed since I was converted to TT, so how this is going to work is a bit of a wild card. The national academic job market right now is DREADFUL.  Why does this matter? Well, fewer jobs advertised, means fewer jobs you can apply for … a huge number of candidates means that short lists are stacked with AWESOME candidates… and all this translates into fewer offers for you. And even if all you want is to be promoted to TT faculty in the institution where you are currently non-TT, you need those competing offers.   I think you get the picture…. Go on the job market anyway.

Anyway- what happens if in all of your grant writing and submitting as non-TT faculty, you land a large federal grant… let’s just say, for the sake of discussion, that you are awarded an R01. Congratulations, you are in a strong position to get a TT job, but in a year where the academic job market is practically non-existent. NOW WHAT?

My own personal opinion on this one is that you might do several things.  First, go out on the job market for every job that you might be qualified for. Second, make back up plans that include working on the assumption that you are going to be staying where you are for a while and you want to have the most productive possible time. Make a mental list of what you absolutely cannot do without in the next year, and figure out who you have to talk to, to make those things happen. It seems like you might need independent space- lab and office, for yourself, any personnel you need to hire to accomplish the goals of your grant, and for equipment that you might need (everyone needs a refrigerator and a couple of freezers, and all these things have a footprint).  What else might you need, animal housing space, administrative support…?

How about promotion to the next step up on the non-TT ladder– I suppose this is a personal choice but I’m not sure it is something I would bother with. It isn’t going to make much of a difference in your job search, and I’m not sure what it gets you in your home institution.  How about a raise? Again- at my institution those on the non-TT are being paid by their post-doc advisor or off their own grants- so asking the department head for a raise isn’t something that would be very successful here. This probably varies from institution to institution.

Would my list of wants be extensive or conservative?  I suppose my lists are always extensive- just based on the criterion that if you don’t ask, you won’t get. But at the same time I would always remember that in my non-TT status, the department didn’t owe me ANYTHING. I was not an independent member of the department, whose salary was being paid, and whose career they were invested in with actual startup $$. In some ways, although it seems counter-intuitive- on the non-TT once you have a grant, and the department is ALREADY getting something of your indirect costs (IDCs)- they don’t have very much incentive to convert you to tenure track. Why? What will they gain- they already get your IDCs.

At that point threatening to leave and take your IDCs with you, plane ticket and competing job offer in hand, is the only approach that is very motivational for departments to convert you to TT. I suppose with that thought  in mind, I would plan to spend the year generating as much data, writing as many papers, and making myself as marketable as humanly possible.

A friend came to visit me last week, and that person commented on something I had written on this blog in sort of a sideways fashion. It is a relief when friends recognize some grief you are holding in, or pick out some off-hand comment you made that just doesn’t sound right- and give you the window to let it go. Anyway- that conversation has given me the courage to write about a few things that are going on with me that are difficult.

I have a picture on my office wall of a large group of young people in caps and gowns- taken almost 20 years ago. They appear to have no cares on a very happy day. I am one of the people in that picture. I remember what life was like then, I had few responsibilities- I was trying to made it through grad school (which was 50% girls FYI), was fairly naive, was NOT in a position that had any power whatsoever, and really only had to handle one task at a time. Oh maybe I remember some more ideal version of the past than was reality, maybe- probably- looking back now, it looks pretty perfect though.  I can say for certain that I never expected that my career would become important to me, and that managing the balance of my job, my marriage and my children would shape me as it has.

People who have known me a long time, comment that I have changed. I’m never sure how to take that- and on one level that hurts, on another level- I know it is true. At that second level, I want to scream-

HOW COULD I NOT BE DIFFERENT NOW THAN I WAS THEN???

And I’m not much one for screaming- maybe that helps you to understand how much emotion is behind those simple words.

How have I changed? I’ll just stick with one aspect of this for now.  I have developed a hard edge to my personality- an assertiveness that I’m sometimes unsure how to channel or control at work and in other parts of my life. This edge is something that I sensed before many times in women I knew who were higher up the academic ladder than me, but I never understood. There is a strong societal message that it is just unbecoming for girls to have this edge, this assertive (maybe sometimes even aggressive) way from time to time.  Us girls are so programmed to be NICE, be accommodating, to go with the consensus, to be reasonable. When I assert myself, which lots of times just feels like plain old protecting myself… I get told that I’m not being ‘nice’ (insert more screaming). A remark that I imagine is much more loaded and cutting to a woman than to a man.  I feel like I work up against that societal message time and time again every day and it is wearing…. and it is like double jeopardy to be called out for not ‘nice’ because of it.

So am I different now because of this- heck YES.  Was there any other option? I don’t think so.

I want to talk about compliance. I mean, I REALLY want to talk about compliance.  Research compliance, that is. I know you are all wondering WHY… well, I’ve just spent a month in recovery from this particularly delightful aspect of my job.

In all seriousness, research compliance is a very important part of conducting research in an academic setting, that … once again… nobody teaches you before you hit the door of your first faculty job. This includes compliance to all regulations relevant to research involving animals, recombinant DNA, dangerous chemicals, and biohazards. You are not going to believe it when I say this, because everyone thinks AUPs are so onerous, but the AUPs are the easiest part of the whole business for me (that’s Animal Care and Use Protocols to the uninitiated). At my institution, as I assume at most institutions, there is an ‘office of research compliance’ or some such, that handles all these issues in separate sub-domains. There are federal regulations and guidelines for every those areas that we must follow.

The bane of my existence today is compliance in the area of biohazards, I think that I have alluded to this before once or twice. This is an area of my job about which I was totally and utterly clueless as a student and as a post-doc, but that I now need to know a whole lot about. You see, I work with pathogens infectious to humans. And that wouldn’t be a problem for me because I know the risks, risk factors, and appropriate safety practices to protect myself from infection with my favorite pathogen (MFP), and they are really pretty basic common-sensical type stuff. And I can’t find a single case of laboratory-exposure related infection with MFP in the literature… nor have I ever met one in person… and the resulting human disease is generally mild and self-limiting.

I am, however, responsible for the safety of people that work in my lab, and who are exposed to MFP. I take this responsibility quite seriously, but I walk a fine line here.  I transfer my knowledge of risk and appropriate safety procedures to those that work in my lab during a safety training specifically about MFP…but I do not want to scare them. I want them to realistically understand the risks that they may face, and know the proper way to avoid or minimize those risks to themselves and their lab mates. I would never want to minimize the importance of this training – that’s why we do a pathogen specific safety training- but there will always be a risk to working with these pathogens, no matter how small.

Let me say that one more time:

There will always be a risk to working with these pathogens. We do the best we can to mitigate that risk, but it can never be totally eliminated unless we stop doing this kind of work.

There, ok, I feel better now that we’ve got that out there.  There is a set of federal ‘guidelines’ that set out a blanket set of suggested procedures for safely working pathogens in different biosafety catetories called the BMBL for short (Biosafety in Microbiological and Biomedical Laboratories- put out by the CDC). Some of these procedures, for example if you are working with highly infectious agents, select agents, agents for which there is no treatment etc, must be strictly adhered to. Again, this seems like good common sense.

More moderately infectious (let’s say) and essentially non-pathogens also have a set of basic regulations that must be adhered to… i.e. no mouth pipeting, no eating-drinking-smoking in lab, no food in the fridge where you store the pathogens etc.  Again, pretty straight forward.

However, there is also a more onerous set of procedures for pathogens that are let’s say- moderate individual risk of rarely serious disease for which preventative or therapeutic tx is available, and low community risk. Now, there are quite a few pathogens that fall into this category – all with different infectious doses, routes of infection, routes of transmission etc.- all with different ‘risks’ if you will. Many of these pathogens you could more easily contract from your local environment- the food in local restaurants, the supermarket, sometimes just from digging around in the dirt.

So- how do we properly apply an onerous set of guidelines to a group of pathogens that are very diverse in terms of the actual ‘risk’ that they pose? Do we treat absolutely everything that we work with as the most risky member of the group- or is there leeway for the investigator (who usually knows quite a lot about the pathogen that is the subject of their life’s work) to make a determination about which prescribed blanket procedures mitigate an actual risk for their particular favorite pathogen, or not?

What say you.

I received the following question in my email in box earlier today:

Hi DrDrA,
I recently discovered your blog, and have found it extremely useful. So now I’m contacting you directly for some help.
I had an extremely successful interview at my dream university for my dream TT job. In a couple weeks I go back for a second visit, and I’m preparing for negotiations. It’s a large state school, so I have a ball-park idea of what kind of salary to expect, but nowhere can I find information on what a reasonable start-up package is. I have a list of equipment I need, plan on requesting salary for a tech and a student or two, etc., but I have no idea whether this total dollar amount is reasonable. I can’t find hard, cold $$ amounts anywhere. I’ve asked around at my current department, and to other postdocs that have recently started TT jobs (n=2), but these figures vary widely and aren’t at institutions that are comparable to where I (hope) will be going.
If you have any thoughts, or can point me in the right direction, I’d appreciate it!

Sincerely,

About to be TT faculty (ATBTT faculty)

How awesome is that!? I think it is really excellent timing because I’m imagining this scenario going on all over the country- it is prime time for second visits and offers for academic faculty positions in the US right now… so I offer to you my reply to the question, and solicit your opinions and helpful suggestions for this intrepid junior faculty to be:

Dear ATBTT faculty:

Thanks for your question. I’m glad you find the blog useful, and congratulations on your second visit!

There are really two parts to your question, I’ll take them one at a time.

1.  Salary- you should be able to get a good idea of the salary range if this is a state university.  State universities have operating budgets, and these are usually public information. You will have to do some asking around as to how to obtain information from the operating budget- sometimes this can be found online, sometimes not. At my large state institution, one just walks into the library on campus and asks to see a copy of the operating budget- the library reference desk has a copy you can look at, ours is broken down by system component, then colleges within the system component, then by department- and it is very, very detailed. You can see the salaries of everyone- and if you know who the most recent hires were and what their training was- you should be able to hit salary spot on. Do not feel badly about seeking out these numbers- this information is very important for your ability to negotiate for a reasonable salary.  Probably the most important reason to do this (as I think I’ve discussed on this blog before) is that every raise you will ever receive is a percentage of your base salary- negotiating a higher base salary can add up to earnings of hundreds of thousands of dollars more over your lifetime of working.

2.  Startup. This is A LOT trickier, as you have realized- and good numbers are hard to come by.  This is because the amount of startup really depends on what you do, how much – i.e. do you need a FACS machine with all the bells and whistles to the tune of 500K, or are you a field biologist that goes out into the field with your eyes, a shovel and a notebook… you get my point, I think.  But with that said- and because we do similar things (I think)- I started the status quo was to ask for the $$ you would need to set up and run your lab for 3 years.  With the current funding climate, you may want to extend this time a little bit. Figuring this number will be based on figuring out what kind of stuff you need to buy to set up your lab, and how much you will need for salaries. Several years ago when I myself was looking for a job, the opening salvo at a large state university  was 500K- and this was the beginning of the negotiation. I know that this is currently the opening offer from places I am familiar with that might employ someone like you.

For equipment- you’ve probably got a list already, figure supplies for 2-3 employees for 3-4 years. A rule of thumb is $1000/month per employee (sounds like a lot, but look at the price of kits these days)- if you want a guestimate. If you use any particularly expensive reagents (Cy3 costs can kill ya,… or research animals and per diem etc.), you will need to figure that in. For personnel- you should be able to find out what is the starting salary for technical help in the department where you are going for the second visit, through casual conversation during that visit. You probably already know how grad students are supported there, and what the cost in stipend, fringe, and tuition if applicable- and if you don’t know this already- the second visit is the time to ask. I think it is reasonable to ask for the equipment you need, supplies/animals/etc costs for 3-4 years, and then personnel – including a tech or postdoc, and a student- then include this all in the number that you ask for.

I know that’s probably not very helpful in terms of specific numbers for your particular case- but this should at least get you in the ballpark. Remember going in -that this is a negotiation. So, going in you know you probably won’t get everything that you ask for- but the goal is to get what you need to be successful and get tenure!

If you are game, we can ask the BLC readers what they think as well- they always have bundles of useful advice!

Good luck and feel free to contact me with any additional questions you may have,

DrdrA

So there you go, followers of the blog- got opinions on this topic?

I follow the rules, most of the time. When they seem silly to me… I argue them… which usually fails.

A question for you all:  Does your institution require one AUP per grant, or do you do blanket AUPs that cover the species and procedures in more than one grant?

**To define what I mean by “blanket”- a single AUP covering several procedures in detail, that covers the work in two grants (just for example).

Drugmonkey reposted an older post about the ‘hierarchical nature of the modern academic bioscience labororatory’, and this repost has generated quite a long comment thread which I have been following loosely. Part of the discussion has revolved around mentorship of trainees- including trainees who choose not to pursue an academic career.

Comrade Physioprof commented  …

I would be committing malpractice if I were to attempt to advise my trainees about how to succeed in industry, SLACs, high school teaching, or anyfuckingthing other than the tenure track.

Yikes. While on some level I get where this comment is coming from, I think it’s a cop out on an important responsibility that we have as mentors- a role, which I might add is not rewarded AT ALL by the traditional methods of reward in academic bioscience ($$, papers). While I’m reluctant to get in a blog fight with  C PP (whom I otherwise adore, just so you know), but things have been a little dull lately so  I’m going to face the fear and do it anyway.

Why is this a cop out?  Well, first- we admit and train vastly larger numbers of Ph.D. students than there will be tenure track positions to fill. Let’s save ourselves now and not feign ignorance on this please. I do think that once we admit someone, we have a responsibility to the student beyond just sayin’ ‘I’ll help you if you choose/or are intellectually capable of the TT track, otherwise leave your lab coat on the chair on your way out after your 6th year…’, just as the student has a responsibility to learn and work to the best of their ability for their mentor and for their own advancement on whatever track they choose. Getting a Ph.D. isn’t like going to the police academy… an example mentioned by some of the commenters… where you spend maybe 2-3 months of your life. We are admitting people to a 5+ year program, we will spend huge $$ on their training in exchange for a big chunk of their effort and life. To me, admitting 10x more students than we know that there are TT positions for with the idea that we are only going to mentor the single one that will choose this track, essentially throwing 99% of them to the wind, is ethically wrong.

Why does this attitude bug me so much? Because it’s not just about telling them about alternative career options, it’s deeper than that. I’ve encountered PIs in my career who felt that they couldn’t mentor trainees who weren’t interested in the tenure track- those trainees became viewed/treated as labor for hire. I guess my feeling is, that if one of my Ph.D. students tells me that they want to be a teacher, that doesn’t give me permission to abdicate my responsibility to teach that person how to do experimental biology. It doesn’t give me permission to just give them a list of experiments that need doing so I can analyze their data. And it doesn’t give the student a pass to stop tryin’ to learn what there is to be learned in a Ph.D. program either.

It gives me an extra opportunity though- to try and supply additional training experiences for that student when its possible- maybe monitoring PBL sessions or teaching a lab for undergraduates or medical student’s once in a while. Hopefully this allows  that student to leave with a leg up on the teaching position that they want when they finish their degree, in addition to having learned to be an experimentalist and having made a contribution to the field.

As for mentoring people interested in other careers where they might use their biology expertise, say law or industry. Let’s face it, how difficult is this really?  I surely can’t recite the required prerequisites for law school to a trainee, they are going to have to figure that out on their own. But I can put them in contact with people that I’ve met throughout my career that DO know about this as a career path that might be able to give them a leg up. And man, don’t tell me that you don’t know any such types- if your Ph.D. class was anything like mine, you are the only one of the class in academia- the other 9 are either in law, teaching, or industry- and only an email away.

Fiinally, to come around to the ‘we’re training more than we can put in TT positions’ again- I have a colleague who only rarely takes Ph.D. students, and primarily hires post-docs. This mentor makes sure that all the postdocs that work in his/her laboratory- get teaching experience during their time in the laboratory. Why? Because this mentor has problems training too many people for too few positions, and then having put them out there with no skills to fall back on if their TT ambitions should not come to pass…

Just a thought.

P.S. Isis also has a post up about DM’s post and C PP’s comment that I didn’t see until after I wrote this post. You can find it here!

I started out the week writing about my crazy family schedule- and then blabbered on about the importance of showing folks interested in this career what it really looks like.. day in, day out … from the inside. Many of you have posted comments on my two previous posts- and I’m just delighted by this. But gosh- it always comes back to Whimple’s comments.  His comment on the thread on my last post touched on lots of things -  what effect such crazy schedules might have on kids, on marriage, on my ability to be fair or family friendly later on in my career … should I be promoted… sit on study section etc. etc. ..

So, I started out writing a reply to Whimple- and to others of you who commented on the last post- and it just became too long… so I made it a post instead. Here goes:

Whimple-  I adore you too- but believe me, I’ve seen it all.

First, our schedule wasn’t always so crazy.  We seem to go in cycles of crazy and sane schedule wise. When I did my Ph.D., I did not have children until the very end. I worked very 8-5 , and rarely (unless to take care of cell culture) on the weekends- same after my older daughter was born for about 2 years time. In my fourth year of vet school- there were periods of craziness depending on what clinical rotation I was on.  This was unavoidable, because horses just don’t foal 9-5, and that little dog with the flail chest might crash, and it won’t be on your schedule. When I was a postdoc and my husband was a pre-tenure TT faculty,  and our children were small, our work/family schedule was easier- mostly because I bore most of the child care responsibility, and I wasn’t particularly invested in my job at the time.

Second, I’m not going to lie to you- our schedule has been nuts in the last 2 years- with cycles of continuous grant writing- while hours spent grant writing may feel productive (we write lots of pages)-unless the grant gets funded, they are not.  But these hours take away from actual productive work – running the lab, mentoring and paper writing (the only work that counts by NIH standards, I’m depressed to say). No papers… no grants … vicious cycle. I hope we are going to break that cycle now. And- needless to say- no grant equals NO JOB. I have lots of skills and am not afraid of doing something else- but I have chosen to give this career a try and give it my best effort. … and my kids are now old enough to keep telling me they don’t want to move away from this town and their friends, and they say that I better get my grant.

Third, my children are no longer day-care age (as they were at earlier points in my career). They are school age, and with school age come after school sports/ events/ and extracurricular activities- and also school events that occur during the middle of the day as well. Now we are not just juggling two adult schedules, we are also juggling schedules of two sets of kids events and activities. Instead of 2x schedules to manage, we’ve got 4x. It’s actually exponentially more difficult. (Kind of like 2 kids is more than twice the work of one.)

Fourth- then there is marriage. DrMrA is, as I’ve stated before on this blog, the bedrock of my existence. We have been together almost two decades. I’m not going to lie to you about that one either- we have so much joy- but we can also be as pissed off at each other as the next couple. There will ALWAYS be competing influences that challenge our relationship – whether they are job issues, whether they are kid issues, whether they are aging parent issues or whatever (and I can tell you we have them all!)… but in my heart I know that we have a marriage that we are both committed to- and if adjustments need to be made, they will be. And, I suppose I failed to mention that we frequently see each other during the work day- as our offices are close.  This is something we have been fortunate to be able to do for most of our relationship.

And finally- how will I behave when and if I’m so fortunate to get tenure, be promoted, and sit on P&T or study section?  I suppose only time will tell. But- I will say this. All of my grad students and my post-doc have kids (in fact, most of them have TWO kids). Two babies have been born to lab members in the last three years- and there may yet be another. One of my lab members bears the majority of the child and household responsibility because the spouse travels continuously for job responsibilities. These lab members are pretty 8-5, but when something critical needs to get done- they find a way. Personally, I think this is an excellent thing- a life skill really- that I hope I’ve been able to teach them by example. Since I’ve been here we’ve recruited 4 faculty members, the majority were women, the majority were people with children … most had >1 child. So, I think I should be judged not by what I might do at some hypothetical point in the future, not by what I might think- but by what I have actually done to change the face of science (or just my institution), or the family friendliness of science by my own actions. When it comes to P&T and study section- I might actually have to be on the inside to be able to change things for the better- I’m doing my best to make this happen.

Yesterday evening I was watching the kids getting covered from head to toe in mud from the sand pile across the street  (something all kids should do once in a while), and chatting with a friend in my front yard. This friend works in academia- and has recently been asked to take on additional responsibilities.  This offer essentially amounts to a promotion for her (Yay!), and she’s excited about that. Whilst pitching the promotion to my friend, her boss asked her if she thought she could handle the responsibilities of the new job. My friend was a bit taken aback, surely she was performing her current job well (otherwise why?? the offer of a promotion)?  My friend said that the new responsibilities weren’t anything extraordinarily different than what she was dealing with at other points in her career, and she wondered aloud WHY her capabilities should be in question at this point… and her boss said…

Well, are you going to be able to handle this, you have two kids!

Am I the only one letting out a loud gasp right now? I hate these kinds of comments. They catch me off guard when they happen to me (as happened with my friend), and I never have a ready comeback. On the day-to-day I want to believe that we’ve moved past this- so I’m unprepared when some jerk comes up with something like this.  Maybe it would be useful for me to make the point right now that said boss, is a man, my friend is a woman, and they BOTH have two children in thier immediate families. Hmmmm. I bet no one ever expressed doubt that he could handle his job… you know… because he has two kids. I’m awaiting all your snappy comeback lines to such comments so next time this happens to me (or to you), WE’LL BE READY.

I realize that an unusually long silence has fallen over this blog in the last week or so. I’ve got nothing to say for myself there …other than… shit happens in the last week before a grant is due. Usually, A LOT of shit happens during that week.  Perhaps I can tell you a little story with a happy ending.

Yesterday I had a very unexpected, odd, and wonderful experience. I’ve been pushing myself very hard at work in the last week finishing the A2.  Because that’s just some of the shit that happens… right… in the last week before the thing is due. I’d been in my office until 1 am three nights out of the last 7. I developed a sinus infection, which- if you’ve ever had a bad one you know- makes you feel like your face is hot, swollen, and ready to explode off your head at any minute. I lost my voice. My collaborator remarked that I sounded terrible (which was true, and I felt equally awful) on the phone on Monday. I knew I had to be done with the grant on Tuesday- and remarked in return that if I could do 24 hours of labor for childbirth (which, if I recall was back labor because my older daughter was born face up- read PAINFUL), I could manage sinus infection+grant for the duration … <24 hours.

And I did, I held myself up in the chair, medicated myself to the max, gritted my teeth and Got.It.Done. (For the uninitiated- don’t try this at home.)  As we were exchanging final drafts yesterday- remarking that you really know when a grant is finished by how you want to throw up every time you read it there towards the end… I still had the inserting and sizing of the figures, checking the final draft and printing of the PDFs (to send on to our grants administrators who actually do the submitting) to get done. But, the end was in sight- and I knew I really only had about 45 or so minutes left.

Then, my office phone rang. Nobody I know calls me on my office phone… and when it rings it’s usually all wrong numbers. But I answered it anyway.

Good thing I did, because it was my program officer calling. I am to fill out the Just-In-Time paperwork for not one, but BOTH of my scored grants. Immediately. I know it sounds crazy- but I don’t think I was appropriately excited about this yesterday- I was just too bone dead tired to be excited.  But today, I kinda feel like this: