Application season
It feels like I have been writing applications and proposals for two weeks straight now. Probably because I nearly have. Mostly applications for project funding, but also for exciting extras like training at a synchrotron and going to international conferences. Yes, you can laugh at me for getting excited about synchrotron training. It must be application season at the moment, that magical time of year when Santas of the funding world check their applicant lists and leave presents for some, and coal for others. At least having them all due around the same time allows for a little bit of cutting and pasting between applications...good weather for it at the moment too, nothing like a bit of rain to make you stay inside and ponder why your research is important to the university/community/environment/life as we know it. The most important one, my research proposal, is finally finished and handed in, so that’s a huge job off the to do list (I really do have a to do list on my desktop – and get pretty cranky when I get to the end of a day and can’t delete anything off it yet. Jorge Cham’s comic is a spookily accurate depiction of my desktop). Next on the list is an application for a Postgraduate Teaching Internship. I gave a lecture on research proposals to a third-year class earlier this year and no-one fell asleep, which was encouraging. I’ve also tutored privately since high school so it seems like a logical progression to try teaching at a university level. Anyway, it would be great to get some more experience and be involved in improving units.