Admin

Well, I went from things moving ridiculously slow to having a giant dump truck of paperwork back up into my life.
I am applying for an international research grant, because I am a poor graduate student and I need monies for my research. This is a major undertaking for me, since I have never written a grant on this scale before.
I have also volunteered myself to help arrange travel for all of the fellows and their mentor teachers to go to the annual GK-12 meeting in DC in March. I did not realize this turned me into a cruise director. I have been fielding questions about who else is going and a 100 other inane things. It's really simple, either you want to go or you don't, right? So this is going to be an exercise in me working on my patience. Thankfully this shouldn't take more than 2 weeks to finish.
And it is decision time for a series of proposals I am reviewing. All I have to say is: if you submit your work, your resume, your anything in a professional setting, please, please, please put some effort in. Even flipping through the 30 or so proposals, I could see the difference between those who put in serious effort and those who didn't. Now this may be partially mitigated by the major snowstorm that left people stuck in airports around the country, away from their desks. I don't know. I can't say. What I can say is that I now understand why it really is worth the effort to try so hard and put your best foot forward. In two weeks, this part of my job will be done too.