Good grant/Bad grant

Monday is the target date for these two grants and it can't come soon enough. I will be very excited to have these done and out of my life for now.

Grant #1 is my baby and the main project I want to pursue in my lab. I'm really excited to pursue the questions in this grant and it will be the first step of my lab's long term goals. I am the sole PI on the grant and it is getting to my favorite stage of grant writing, where everything is coming together - the budget is all set, the text is in decent shape, with only a few little sections to fill out, and the higher-ups have mostly signed off on it, meaning I won't have to run around on Monday tackling people in the halls for their signature. It's organized, together and I won't be stressing about it in the final minutes.

Grant #2 is a totally different story. #2 is a collaborative project with a Senior Colleague. It's also a really exciting project and will lead to some kick-ass data at the end of the day. The physical grant, however, is a bit of a mess. SC has been doing most of the writing, but I still have yet to see even a decent draft. The budget is a skeleton and we are scrambling to get our broader impacts section project set up. To top it off, SC isn't exactly reading all my emails very well.

Actual conversation yesterday
PLS - I have a meeting with my grant people tomorrow, so if I could get the budget on your end and a draft I can have them sign off on it here.
SC - I'll see what I can do, but I hadn't planed on meeting with the people here until Tuesday.
PLS - Um, you do realize that the deadline is the 12th, right?
SC - I thought you told me the 15th.
PLS - It was the 9th, until I decided to send it to a different program after talking with the Program Officer.
SC - Not the 15th?
PLS - No, never the 15th.
SC - Hmmm, I'm not sure I can catch everyone here to get it signed off by the end of Monday.
PLS - (Long pause)
SC - Let me see what I can do, but can you talk to the PO and find out how "hard" the deadline is?
PLS - Suuuure, no problem. (thinking - Great, I get to go to the PO and tell her we're incompetent. Excellent.)
SC - Alright, talk to you tomorrow. Oh, I'm busy until 2:00.
PLS - Right then.

Thank goodness the NSF dates are "target dates" with a little flexibility, but for eff's sake.

No animals were injured in the making of this reinactment.