Grant has been submitted

Well, I submitted the fellowship application with 10 minutes to spare. I did a section wrong and had to skip class in order to re-write it. Plus, I missed one small section that unfortunately my sponsor was supposed to write. So I wrote it pretending I was her writing about me. Psst! Don't tell anyone! (No, it wasn't the reference letter.)

Anyways, if you ever decide to write a fellowship application, I have some no-brainer advice. First, talk to your university's grant office way in advance. Don't be like me, who had an inkling that I should talk to someone, but didn't bother following through on that thought until a few days beforehand. I mistakenly thought that I would only need them to provide codes and signatures. I was wrong. Second, you might actually want to get your advisor to help you with it. And it would probably be a good idea to send it to your advisor sooner than the night before it's due. Don't pretend that you can do everything without your advisor's help. Besides, the NRSA actually has a section in which you have to explain what yours and your advisor's respective contributions were to the proposal write-up. Saying you did it all yourself and didn't solicit advice or feedback from your advisor probably doesn't sound all that good.

I'm not really that close with my advisor. It shouldn't matter, except that I wonder if maybe she thinks she doesn't need to advise me. For example, she seems to get more involved with other students. She sent a previous student the articles that she had to review for publication and asked the other grad student to review it. And she sent another student her syllabus for comments and revisions. She hardly ever asks me to do anything that has educational value (I know some of you are thinking it's free labor.) I don't know, I'm glad that I'm not used as free labor, but I also wish I had opportunities to learn about everything that she does.

But, I think it might be all on me. I never really set up times to meet with her. I just randomly drop in to say hi and we catch up on what each other is doing. I don't really ask her for anything (except research assistants, I want a steady supply of RAs, muhaha). I just don't give her the chance to advise me. Perhaps I should change my tactics.......or not. Heh!