Taken for Granted

Way back in January, some of you may remember that i was busy writing a grant proposal, amongst other things (oh, the stress!!) and it was duly submitted to the American Heart Association. Well, the time had come round and i finally heard from them - the grant had been reviewed and was awarded a 2.0 on a scale of 1.0-1.5 (with 1.0-1.5 being considered 'excellent' - so, for a first grant, i was reasonably pleased. The reviewer comments themselves were also reasonable - one noted that it seemed rather ambitious for a two year fellowship, another noted that some of the experiments i proposed were based on an assumption (although i had addressed that in one of the 'pitfalls' section). Both thought that it was well-written and ordered in a logical fashion. So I guess that's a good thing.

Alas, a week or two later, I heard that my grant was not going to secure funding this time round - a shame as it would've guaranteed my position here for the next two years at least. However, fear not because this doesn't mean that i'm going to be out of a job for the near future at least. My boss here is very happy with the work that i have done, and the work i am currently doing - and so is very happy for me to stay (given that i have two original research manuscripts in the works, this is not a huge surprise). We are planning on rewriting the grant (adding some extra results in) and submitting it for consideration next year. Of course, being on a J1 visa and not an American citizen automatically restricts funding over here (which is fair enough I guess) - so in the meantime, i am going to keep my eyes and ears open in case any other opportunities pop up. For now, though, i guess it's a case of 'watch this space'.