Holidays and More Grants

The holiday Monday was great. It's strange teaching a Monday class. My university started the semester on a Wednesday, which meant we didn't have class on that first Monday. Then, we got MLK day off, another Monday off. It's tempting to get used to long weekends. (How many weeks till Spring Break?)

The person at my university that is in charge of grants is pushing me to use the work that I just did on that grant that I turned in last week to write additional, but smaller grants. There is one that she thinks has a Feb. 1 deadline (though it's not listed on their website) that she is pushing me to submit. The problems--first I'm about to get overwhelmed with the NCA push. I'm starting to look at my dayplanner and see the time to get those papers finished dwindling away, particularly since the NCA deadline is Feb. 11, which seems really early. The second problem is that this organization is really picky with what they fund--long lists with lots of warnings if you try to submit the wrong things--and one thing they won't fund is a grad student, which is a big priority for me. Obviously, I want the grant to fund research, but I'd also like it to help my department, and one key way it could do that is through funding a grad student. Not to mention how helpful it would be for conducting the research. I'm hoping to find an alternative agency with a nearby deadline for the topic (a popular one) so we'll see.

We have a department meeting later today to discuss the financial situation. Apparently, our interim chair has gotten more information to share with us.