I know it’s different from what I said in the previous post, but I thought I would be able to express why I chose my summer research topic in a more coherent way if I postpone it until later. Also, I realized that this post would become too long if I put the other two stories I promised before on one post, so I have decided to break them up into two posts. Enjoy!
I thought it was an exaggeration when a friend of mine (who received an Academic Year URG around that time) told me, “Prepare to do at least five revisions.”
‘Is that really necessary?’ I thought at first. Part of it was that I was not used to revising any piece of writing more than twice; another part of it was that I had less than a month until the application deadline — I didn’t quite yet believe in myself enough at that point. Will I even be able to get through three revisions, given how hard it is to schedule meetings with people who can actually help me in revising?
Little did I know that I would end up actually writing six drafts in total before receiving the money.
Finding this flyer in my res college hallway was a huge blessing.
During the course of proposal writing, I was one of the beneficiaries of the student outreach effort from the Office of Undergraduate Research, namely the research proposal workshops held in dining halls. I would bring a printed copy of the draft, and a staff member from the office (S/O to Veronique!! And also to Megan at one of the walk-in hours towards the end) would closely go through the draft with me, focusing the feedback on the proposal organization (i.e., what elements to add, which elements to expand, and which elements to condense upon running out of the two-page space limit).
After I receive the feedback, I would go ahead and write the next draft, and this time I would bring it to Professor Riecke, who has done computational neuroscience research in my major department and would later become the faculty sponsor. He would also give me lots of feedback, but mostly focused on the content (i.e., whether a given paragraph/sentence conveys factually correct information in sufficient detail). I would then incorporate the feedback to write the next draft and bring it again to an Office of Undergraduate Research staff, and the cycle would restart.
The greatest weakness of my drafts in multiple feedback sessions in a row was on the methodology section. I kept falling short on sufficiently answering, How will I know whether or not my result so far is correct so that I can move onto the next stage in the project? There is only so much space I could fit everything in, so the background section was the major target for condensation throughout the revision process.
(For those of you not familiar with different components of a URG proposal, see here.)
Looking back, writing the methodology section was an exercise of dividing the whole project into a sequence of stages and specifying, for each stage, what output would indicate that I am ready to move onto the next.
At any event, after frantically going back and forth between the Office of Undergraduate Research staff and Prof. Riecke, I was able to complete the sixth (final) draft, which was the fifth revision, within the span of nineteen days from the day I began the first draft. Not only did my friend turn out to be exactly right, but also the people whom I had perceived to be not very approachable turned out to be so approachable and willing to help throughout the entire process of the grant proposal writing.
Finally, the thrill (read: anxiety) upon uploading the proposal on the URG application portal was really one of a kind.