Wait! Just before you start, before you start your project grant application, take a moment.
Take a moment to consider your idea, your brilliant idea! The beauty of it. The wonder, the possibilities!
In the months and years to come, I want you to hold onto that feeling – make sure you remember it. Make notes about it. Go back to it. It will sustain you.
When you are in the depths of grant-writing hell, it will sustain you.
At 2am, when you need to be asleep, but the budget won’t quite work, remember that moment. Take a deep breath, and dive in again.
When your rock-solid, of-course-we-are-committed partner pulls out, remember that moment. Use it to push past the hurt and channel it into more productive work.
When you get the assessors’ reports, and it is clear that they have got the wrong end of the stick…
When those reports are contrary, contradictory, confused (and confusing), go back to your central idea, that moment. Let it restore you. Then use that clarity to reply to your critics.
When the grants are announced, and your hopes are dashed, remember that moment. In your disappointment and anger, remember what those first exciting moments of the idea felt like.
When it is your third attempt, and you don’t understand why you are even doing this any more…
When the money finally comes through, but it isn’t quite enough…
When you have to reshape your project to fit the funding, and it doesn’t really work anymore…
When you have spent six months in contract negotiation, and your contract whisperer sends through a new request for changes…
When your bullet-proof, rock-solid, no-possible-issues-at-all ethics application gets bounced…
When you just need to hire a research assistant…
And Human Resources won’t let you employ the person that you wrote into the application…
And it takes forever…
And it shouldn’t be this hard…
And there are so many applicants that it is going to take forever to even shortlist them…
And there are no decent applicants…
Or no applicants…
When the person that you do employ turns out to be a bit of a dud…
When your data turns out to be a bit of a dud…
When your analysis turns up nothing but dud…
When your hypothesis turns out to be a dud…
When you feel like a dud…
When you feel like your team isn’t really a team anymore…
When, technically, it isn’t, since Payroll isn’t paying anyone because there was a tiny little hitch with the timesheets…
And they are really very sorry, but there really isn’t anything that anyone can do, really…
And people can’t pay their rent; their mortgages; their debts…
And, for some reason, they blame you…
When they are screaming at you…
Or when they just make you want to scream…
When every stupid thing in this stupid university makes you want to scream…
When Finance transfer your funds to another department (and they use it to buy a bus)…
When you have to track your own finances, because the university system is completely opaque…
When the university has helped your project to death…
What do you mean; nothing under $5,000 is insured?!?
When there isn’t as much money as there should be…
When the exchange rate drops…
When the penny drops…
When the equipment doesn’t arrive…
When the equipment doesn’t work…
When the technique doesn’t work…
When the website doesn’t work…
When the survey doesn’t work…
When the intern doesn’t work…
When coffee doesn’t work…
When hope doesn’t work…
When you can’t even remember why you wanted to do the stupid work…
When your memory doesn’t work…
When nobody listens…
When nobody cares…
When you don’t care anymore…
When you just need to get away…
When the tickets cost three times as much because you have to go through the university’s preferred travel agent…
When you are working overseas and you don’t know what your pay will be from week to week because of currency fluctuations and bank transfer fees and weird finance department rules…
When you’re a long way from home…
And you’re sick…
And tired…
And lonely…
And you don’t know anybody at the conference…
And nobody knows you…
When you miss your flight…
When you miss your chance…
When you miss your wife, your husband, your lover, your kids…
When you find yourself in the middle of another stupid, pointless argument about why you are still at work…
When you find yourself in the middle of another stupid, pointless argument about who should be listed in what order on that paper…
When you don’t even know if you have enough good stuff to write that paper…
When you don’t even really want to be on that paper anymore…
When you don’t have time to write that paper…
When you don’t time to do the work…
When you don’t have time to go home…
When the money runs out…
When your patience runs out…
When your partner runs out…
When your promotion doesn’t go though…
When you don’t even get an interview…
Remember that feeling.
Just now, before you start, take a moment to admire the loveliness of your idea. It will never get any better than this.
Right at this very moment, it is perfect.
The Research Whisperer 
Genius.
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Thanks for reading, Justin! Any time you want to get something off your chest, you know where to write… 🙂
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I think I’ll keep that on my wall at my desk for the rest of my career
Cheers
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Thanks, Jessica.
Hopefully your career won’t actually be like this.
Jonathan
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an odd to academia…time to take a holiday in this case. You made me laugh!
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Thanks, Sheffield.
That is exactly what I am doing. Right now I am in the middle of rural Queensland, about as far from work as I can get. Most days, I’m out of mobile range – no phone, no Internet, no SMS. Bliss.
I like your Think Ahead stuff – brilliant!
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I was just about to reply and say that Jonathan is doing exactly that! And he beat me to it. That Jonathan (who is meant to be off-grid…)!
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hahaha I might need to go back to that and take notes 🙂
Thanks so much for helping me today! I hope it was an enjoyable research experience
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No problem, Trini.
Lovely to meet you. Good luck with the project. Hope to catch up back in Melbourne.
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Hi Jonathan, I was doing a search of my name, and this came out! I just realise that it has been more than a year since I did my data collection! hope you and your partner are great!
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Hey, thanks. I wish I was still back there. Sophie and I are having a great time. She is working at the Immigration Museum, and I’m doing a Masters (hopefully soon to be a PhD) on academics using crowdfunding to fund their research. I just got back from doing some data collection of my own in Perth.
It looks like you’ve been busy. I love the fact that the abstract for your 2015 paper is in both English and Chinese. That is genius – language barriers are so hard to break.
Also, I had a peek at the opening of your Master’s thesis. Beautifully written. I agree – “Dots still appear to dominate.”
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