Back from the wilderness

What a great day. The grant is done and now I can get back to the bench after about one month of tapping away at the keyboard.

Writing a K99, which uses the same format as an R01 (or the main NIH grant) plus a wee-bit more, is quite an experience.

Putting together a scientific manuscript for a journal is easy, all the data is at hand and your task is to convey to the reader the logic of the experiments and the implications of your results. But writing a grant is ... much harder.

In the methods, you've got to plan ahead in some coherent logical way. You've got to project the pitfalls, you've got to structure your research so that if the first itty-bit of Aim1 fails experimentally, the rest of the grant doesn't go down the tubes. In addition in a K99 you've got to justify why you are taking this course of action. Why do you need 1-2 years more of postdoc-hood?

But let's get back to the science ... Within that section of the grant, you have to set up experiments so that they fit into Class A experimentation. Unfortunately I feel that Class B experiments are the most important experiments - they are the sticking-your-neck-out-wild-crazy-idea-based science that finds new stuff. Basically I wrote in my grant that I had performed two such Class B experiments and look they worked! I discovered two unexpected cellular phenomena that have (perhaps) big implications. Now give me money so that I can followup on the actual mechanisms of how these processes work. Yes the crazy idea phase is over, now I need funding for Class A experiments.

But towards the end of "the writing process" I was struck by a strange sensation. I was at times so sick of writing that I didn't even want to think about my grant, it was like last night's vomit - urgghh. But at other times I would get very excited over the science. As I would walk to work listening to Radiohead's latest album (which is the most incredible collection of songs I've heard in a while) I would start thinking of new experiments and I started to get that itch - the excitement of where my science is going. I would sit down and read what's coming up in my scientific career and really have an adrenaline rush. Yes we can! (yeah my breaks were filled with politically satirical videos supplied by Comedy Central) Wow what a great feeling.

The whole grant writing process felt like Jesus going into the dessert - y'know - being all alone with your thoughts, dealing with your future - but now I've come back from the wilderness. BTW where the hell is Harvey Keitel???