The next major item (not counting the poster presentation next Thursday) in my grad career is the application of the NIH training grant due at the start of August, so while doing laundry (preparation and conclusion of any trip, it appears, will always include massive loads of laundry) I've started going through the three different sample grant applications that I was given. Well, technically 4 documents, since Wendy was kind enough to supply me with both versions of hers so I can get an idea of the type of editing that I need to perform on mine to increase my chances of award. The other copies are from a classmate (well, former classmate, since she's graduated last year) and from my thesis adviser (since the lab-funding grants are the level that we are supposed to aspire toward) and I have observed that:
1) The amount of preliminary data necessary to prove to the award committee that your experiments are feasible is roughly equivalent to the amount of data needed to generate one manuscript. This is not an exaggeration as that in one of the applications the prelim data for one of the aims was a manuscript in submission (that was later published).
2) A lot of repetition is key. I was a little skeptical at first of my PI's mantra in writing, which is "tell them, and tell them again", but in all applications the hypothesis and reasoning for each experiment were repeated, nearly word for word, at least three times in the paper (in the abstract section, the special aims section, and the experiment design section, usually). I suppose, then, that it helps to view an application as a tool to educate the committee on your project, because as we all know, repetitiveness is a common and extremely effective method of teaching. (The other method frequently employed by professors everywhere, I think, is the type where they figured if they flood you with information at regular intervals some of it might stick. Accidentally. In the sense that one cannot stand in a downpour without getting wet. But we only get one shot with the application, so regular interval is out, and most PIs frown upon them being flooded with information. Especially if they think it's extraneous information that will not be applicable to their own lab.)
3) The PI's comment about the by-gone eras of French aristocracy is terrifyingly accurate, if the page where authors of resubmitted applications (one resubmission is usually permitted per application for mine, I think) must address the concerns of reviewers is any indication. It's less of smoke and mirror and more along the lines of "I appreciate the concerns expressed by reviewer #2 and regret any confusion that may have been caused by the phrasing of statement such-and-such in aim 2 of my application...". A page full of that is enough to send my mind spinning away from my own application and wish for the time to spent on my sudden inclination to fling paint at a giant canvas with my hands, which will no doubt be satisfying messy and straightforward and give my landlady a heart attack, as I tend to leave traces of paint all over the place when I really get into the mood of things. Instead I have a giant sketchpad and pencil and can, for the time being, smudge graphite everywhere instead. I considered the benefits of writing everything in bullet form, but this blog in itself in fairly damning proof that I am not entirely composed of science and logic as I sometimes wish I could be. Not to mention I do have half a bookshelf of fiction with me and my resolve will not last five minutes of re-reading any of Bradbury's work. Or the things like The Little Prince. It makes me think wistfully of the power of words. Being a science major does not mean that I cannot appreciate them, and words do serve very importance purposes within the realm of technical writing. I am thinking, however, of the anecdote of Michelangelo's perfect circle, and a very similar ability that can be demonstrated by certain types of engineers. There is no doubt a great deal of difference between the illustrations of a master engineer and the painting of a master artist. Both involve levels of training and mastery of techniques. The key difference, I think, is that an engineer's drawings is first and foremost lined towards information, where as those of an artist are lined toward emotion. Obviously the two are not divorced from each other and aesthetically can play equally important roles, nor is an engineer's diagrams devoid of emotions any more than an artist's paintings are devoid of information. And even the name can be misleading, since people associate engineering with designing while artists with art and art and design are by no means separate things. There's an art to science and a science to art.
It's a shame that all the passion and dreams that went into each project must be distilled into so many pages of "this is why I'm doing this" "this is what I did" and "this is the result", is all. It's a shame that with all the languages in the world scientific writing is, if you expect the writing to be accepted as having any merit, a conglomeration of logic and facts, while any hints of personality in reviews and responses must be veiled and so carefully constructed that I fantasize about Plato's philosopher king and what a mad world it will be in if the world were run by scientists (not necessarily mad, though the stories from Girl Genius is full of possibilities). It is a crying shame that, a few notable personalities and their writings aside (Feynman being one of them...he's quite a character), the bulk of writing in science is dense and dry to the level of a brick of concrete decomposing in the middle of the Sahara, about as exciting, and even for someone who's as invested in it as I am I frequently find myself yawning halfway through a research article. It doesn't take any stretch of imagination at all to imagine the reaction of the general public who are much less familiar with all the field-specific terms and shorthands.
If the general public is misinformed, the scientific community is as much at fault as any of the other parties.
I have completely forgotten what the original point I was going to make was, but a friend of mine's gotten into fixing and using antique cameras, had recently acquired a Soviet camera from the 60s, and loves it for the fact that it's easier to use than Japanese cameras from the same era and apparently gives the impression of being able to break rocks and still be useable afterwards. Not sure how much of this is an exaggeration, but the comment mostly gives me ideas for terrible puns about hardcore, Communism, and possibly the Communism being hardcore (those types of cameras are apparently fondly known as "Commie cameras") and then, you know, inappropriate giggling is inappropriate.
Right.
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