The most boring part of a PhD.
This was originally posted as an answer to a Quora question in October 2023
“How can I possibly convince these people that what I’m doing is important?”
Answering that question is one of the most daunting and boring parts of a PhD. But this can also be turned into an incredible expedition, and the most rewarding creative aspect of research.
Writing grants is an absolute nightmare. How can you play with words, while remaining true to the nature of your research, so a handful of people think that giving you money will change the world?
I used to find grant writing horribly boring for three main reasons.
First, Grant Writing is Scary!
When writing grants, you’re exposing the work you want to do (and the work you’ve already done) for experts to find out why YOUR work IS NOT good enough. Why YOUR WORK IS NOT worth the money. This is scary! You’re literally asking to be judged!
Second, Grant Writing is Long!
To write a good, convincing grant, you need to spend weeks, if not months working on your text! You read the literature. You interpret data. You write. You erase. And you write more. No matter how passionate you are about your work, staring at the same piece of text for weeks will lead anyone nuts.
Third, You’re Often Restricted in the Structure and Formatting of Your Text.
“Oh, so you want me to convince you that what I’m doing is worth 30K $ a year? Of course! Piece of cake!” – Until you realize that you have to do it within 2 pages, with 2.5cm margins, Times 12 font, including a progress section and a discussion about equity and diversity.
Such restrictions make you feel incaged, and the task just becomes a chore.
At the same time, over the past couple of years of my PhD, I’ve realized that writing grants is also an amazing exploration. It’s a skill that can be learned like any other. And it is all just a big game.
These are the three ways that I changed my mindset from “Ugh, not grant writing season again” to “Hell yeah! Game on.”:
Grant Writing is an Incredible Creative Exercise
It actually doesn’t take long for this to click in your mind when writing a grant. While exposing your ideas and plans, new more exciting ideas and questions start popping up! You start thinking of exciting ways to answer these questions and solve new puzzles that present themselves to you!
Of course, this happens during all of your PhD, but, when writing grants, you have a bit more time to think about these exciting innovations, and develop them a little bit further!
It is actually while writing these texts that I remember how incredibly creative science is!
Grant Writing is a Skill
Listen, I’m a big nerd. I like learning new stuff.
The moment I realized that grant writing is a skill that I didn’t currently have, I suddenly got a huge burst of motivation.
“Here’s a new thing that I can learn!”.
And what is the best way of learning something than practicing?
Grant Writing is a Game.
I’m an extremely competitive person (as most people in academia are).
Of course, getting grants is a competitive business. But competition without rules is not fun. Once you start learning the rules of the game and start really looking at it as “intentionally playing the game”, it helps decrease the boredom of the task a little bit.
Unfortunately, you can’t get rid of grant writing during your PhD. You will need to get funding somehow. But, focusing on the creative and game aspects of the task will enormously help you have more fun when working on these daunting scholarship documents.
