Proposals finished & submitted

Proposals have officially taken over my life this semester, so far. Thankfully, they are now finished and submitted for review. It's a relief to have those done, but now I have to catch up on research. I have two conferences in March and need to get presentations ready for those (including doing additional analysis first!) It looks like I won't have much time to finish those papers until April when the conferences are over. That will leave me two months until public schools are out. It should be fine unless I am completely burned out by then. Even if I am, I still have to get at least two more papers submitted for review this semester.

So this non-teaching semester has not been as relaxing as I had hoped! Not that I was going to slack off or anything, but I hadn't expected to be so busy writing proposals, either. I sure hope at least one of them gets funded. Keep your fingers crossed!

Silence: the sound of a BUSY person...

Well, I thought I better not let it get to be one month since I last posted, so I'm here to give you an update of my teaching-free semester. I've been keeping myself busy with two research proposals: one for NSF, one for USDA. I also had my draft dossier and annual report due in late January (see earlier posts). The proposals are both due this month and after that I have to get ready for two conferences (both March). I had hoped to spend this semester finishing up at least one paper and preferably two or three, but it looks like that will have to wait until April. These proposals have taken up my time- I'm the PI on the NSF proposal and have made a couple trips to Dayton and Middletown to meet with people, plus preparing some other preliminary materials and surveys. The proposal is a resubmission from last year, so there isn't a lot of writing that needs to be done. I have new co-PIs and some reviewer comments to address, but it shouldn't be too bad (I have two weeks left on that one). The USDA proposal involved a lot of searching for data and preliminary checking to write my short part (I am a co-PI on this one). I was supposed to go in today for three different meetings (including one with a grad student), but my daughter is home with a stomach thing (nothing serious). I will probably reschedule everything for Monday instead. I've been going in one day per week to meet with a grad student I am advising and do other things at the office. I really can't just stay in the house every single day- I need to get out!

So that's my exciting semester so far. This is week #5 of the semester, so I still have time to accomplish some things. I feel like it will fly by, though. I'll try to keep this better updated. I've been so busy that I haven't felt justified in taking the time to write!