Reflection: Writing a Grant and Managing Feedback

I just submitted a grant proposal to NSF CRII. This is a solo grant, which means I wrote the proposal all by myself. I submitted a CRII proposal last year that wasn't accepted. However, I got a lot of good feedback on it. This year's proposal is on a completely different project. However, I was still able to use some of that feedback, which hopefully made this year's proposal stronger.

Before too much time has passed, I wanted to reflect on what I did while working on this proposal and how I could do better next time.

First, I want to celebrate that I at least got it done and submitted. While it may not feel like a victory, logically, I know that it is a victory. A lot of effort went into writing the proposal, and seeing the effort completed by submitting the proposal is a win in itself.

Second, I want to thank everyone that gave me feedback. You are all on a list of names that I plan to notify whether I got the proposal as soon as I find out.

In this reflection, I'm going to focus on how I managed the proposal's feedback during the writing process.

What happened

Attitude

I feel like I had a good attitude towards asking and receive feedback. The primary exception was when my imposter syndrome made part of my brain freak out at the very idea of asking for feedback. It usually claimed, "I didn't deserve it."

To encourage myself, I first focused on the idea that it was better to ask than not ask. Second, I reminded myself that if I got a "no" or no response it was, because people are busy and no other reason. As opposed to what my imposter syndrome wanted me to believe, which was they thought I or my work wasn't worth their time.

My strategies to ask for feedback included:

  1. Ask lots of people, regardless of how scared I was.
  2. Be explicit in:
    1. The time commitment and timeline and, if possible, give them multiple options for the time commitment and timeline
    2. How much they were reading
    3. What they were reading
    4. What feedback I was looking for
  3. Be willing to renegotiate on the timeline if I wasn't ready

#3 was primarily for those who offered a specific amount of time for me (e.g., 1 hour), and I wanted to make sure I got the most out of their time.

Perfect is the enemy of good

I spent too much time on my summary before asking for feedback. The first draft I sent out is not even close to what I actually submitted. I also spent a lot of time wordsmithing it and keeping it in 1 page rather than sending it out in its semi-messy glory for feedback.

This was a waste of my time and probably lost me valuable feedback because I waited too long before asking.

Strategy: Giant email blast asking for feedback

It's not clear to me whether this is the best strategy for every proposal. Still, it was probably the best for this one as I battled with my imposter syndrome. I emailed at least 10 people, and many responded the same day! If I hadn't done this, I'm honestly not sure I'd have been able to build up the mental fortitude to spread out my feedback requests. My imposter syndrome was beating me like a hammer at the time.

The pro to this strategy was I got a bunch of responses and got on people's calendars weeks in advance, which I think increased the volume of feedback I got overall.

The con was sometimes multiple people were giving me feedback on the same draft, which was hard to juggle and chaotic in terms of what version was being read.

Next Time

Feedback Organization and Strategy

I'm not yet sure how I will do this differently, but I do feel that there is room for improvement in what I did. I want to improve on my organization and strategy of who I asked for feedback and when I asked for feedback.

For the who, NCFDD has an excellent way of organizing a "feedback committee" into four "tiers" of people based on how ready the work is:

  1. 0-25% - Trusted friends that can give feedback on the germ of an idea.
  2. 25-50% - Past co-authors and people that already know you do good work and are willing to read something that is still a "hot mess." Usually, you have an ongoing relationship with these people.
  3. 50-75% - People that would be good to get feedback from, you want to build a greater connection with them, might review the work again later, and could suggest where to send your work.
  4. 75-100% - People that you want to impress, who would be interested in it, and potential external reviewers.

Looking at this list makes me feel like a very junior faculty that is very new to my field. Most people I can think of fall in group 3 or 4. And the people I asked for feedback from were basically in those groups, despite sending them work that was probably under 50%. Groups 1 and 2 have very few people in them, and most of these people are not conversant in my research area. However, I more see this as an acknowledgment of where I am at than a frustration or something to be depressed over. At least now, I have a roadmap to help me figure out where I want to be and how to get there.

As for when to ask for feedback, I think now that I've exercised the "asking muscle," I might be more willing and able to spread out when I ask people, rather than a single burst. Perhaps staggered so that I have a better spread of when I get feedback. But I will ask early and provide a broad timeline to increase the odds that I can fit on their schedule.

What to send

For this grant, I always sent them the current draft. However, when I send it is not necessarily when they'll read it. I usually offered them a week to get back to me after I sent it to them. Of course, that means I was also working on the proposal while I was waiting. This means I was always technically getting feedback on an older version. Though at least I could use the email I sent them to know what version of they were giving feedback on.

Halfway through writing, I partially remedied the risk of stale feedback by sending them a link to a DropBox folder. The folder had the latest version that I was willing to see the light of day. However, this had the problem that I didn't actually know what version they were giving me feedback on unless they wrote directly on the pdf.

The idea I'm currently playing with is to use a Google doc and ask for feedback there via comments. Also, I'll add a section at the top with the latest feedback request specifics and status of the text (e.g., section X is not ready for feedback).

One problem with this idea is that I write my papers in latex, so should I write normally in the Google doc and then translate it to latex later? Or perhaps just keep it in latex even in the Google doc. Almost anyone I would ask for feedback from would be able to read latex. And I could provide a link to a DropBox folder with the latest built pdf version I have if they want to see how it would look after it was built.

An advantage that probably outweighs the latex question is that this will guarantee that people will see the latest version. Moreover, there's the added bonus of seeing other people's comments, so there is less repeat effort.

~

So as you can see, my latest attempt at grant writing was, in many ways, a hot mess. I'm hoping the next time I have a writing project, it'll be much better in terms of getting and organizing my feedback. But what do you all think? Any thoughts or advice on what I could have done better? Or something I should try next time? I am definitely looking for more ideas.

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