Last year I was one of the lucky PhD-students who visited the PCDI retreat in wonderful surroundings of Heeze…trying to broaden my scope as a scientist and plan my future career, I left my hometown Groningen for a few days 'abroad'.
It seems strange, but changing my surroundings already cleared my mind and forced me to think about other things than my lab work. I was determined: these three days in Heeze were dedicated to me and my future only! Many workshops, presentations, discussions and meet-and-greets confirmed my thoughts: my future lies within the academia.
During this period I initiated the next step within my career: applying for a postdoctoral position in the USA. My blog deals with many things PhD-students and postdocs deal with; working in the academic world, career planning and issues, job interviews, working abroad, and many other subjects.
From April 2010 I will live in Philadelphia where I will work as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. In my blog I will continue to write about this new adventure and experience of working abroad as a postdoctoral fellow.
How to write a grant proposal Step III
28 July 2010
posted by Sabina
With a little help from my friends
Grant writing is a complete new discipline within science for me… I feel like I have to learn everything all over again. Although I have been writing several papers before, this is so different that I have to adapt my way of writing and thinking. Luckily, I have called for help… several of my wonderful friends are helping me by giving advice, sharing their ideas and proposals with me.
This week my PI and I decided to definitely go for the deadline application for a grant in September. This makes me very excited and I am glad we are finally going to apply. The longer I wait, the busier I will be and the more difficult it will get to write the proposal. On the other hand, this deadline is already in a few weeks, which means that I have to hurry and spend the most of my time in the lab and during my evenings working on this proposal.
One of the workshops during the PCDI retreat was dedicated to this subject. It all seemed so easy to me at that time, but now I actually have to bring this to practice and I have only few more weeks left to do this. First I have to think about the subject, write it down on less than 10 pages, try to make it attractive to the broader audience, novel, reliable, achievable….this is going to be a huge challenge I guess.
This week my PI and I decided to definitely go for the 
One of the