You sit down with palms sweaty against the keyboard, ready to write your next grant proposal to get your Big Idea (™) funded. You are dead serious and you let your reviewers know it, as you spew forth a stream of endless facts and figures about the wonderful work you do and will do. This is how to write a grant, right? You know that your proposal is very impressive, and therefore agencies like the NIH, NSF, and DOE will clamor to fund it, right? Morgan shatters your illusions in this episode of Meta Morgan TV.

Thursdays are “Dear Morgan” days, when you get to ask questions about science and faculty careers – and Morgan answers them. Today’s question was: “What if my four year fixed term appointment is ending and won’t be renewed because of my failure to get grants, but I want to stay in science?” Morgan does some brainstorming about possible directions to take.

Recently Morgan was told that her approach to sharing her grant writing wisdom and knowledge was “guru centric.” “What?” asks Morgan? That’s crazy talk. Time to get out the tie dye t-shirts and incense sticks, and start chanting “Om” to get the big grants coming in. Maybe if we think hard enough about it, grants will fall from the sky into our laps. Yeah, right…. Morgan takes on the crazy talk. But if you want to call her the Grant Guru, that’s fine with her!

Reminder: Make sure to sign up for the “Win an iPad Contest” – I’m going to be spending $699 of my hard earned money to send one to a lucky person – so let that be you.

“Ommmm.”

http://morganonscience.com A reader wrote in saying, “How would you distinguish between the emotional reaction to your grant, versus things that could actually be wrong?” Morgan responds to the question on this episode of The Not So Boring Scientist (formerly Meta Morgan TV, a title abandoned because it was too boring!)