When you don’t have funding, I’ve discovered, you crave information about it. You look for unturned rocks, in case there is some funding opportunity that has been missed. You apply for as many opportunities as you can, trying to hone your ideas into something that has general appeal (at least, enough general appeal for the review panels at NSF or NIH). You figure the funding rate is low, but one of these has to be of interest, one of them will get funded.....the problem is when you are crunching out grants like that and all of a sudden you hit a lucky streak! I just found out that my work on genetic clines and using genetic data to track oceanography along the coast of Chile has been funded - that’s 3 major grants this year, and another one lurking in NIH’s inbox!

Suffice it to say, I’ll be looking for help. Maybe a technician, maybe another grad student. Maybe somebody to mow my lawn, since I’m not going to have as much time around the house for a few years it seems (one can wish; it is supposed to be 99° today!)...

beautiful nauplius drawing from Perez-Losada et al. 2009 BMC Evol. Biol.

Tags: funding, barnacles