Do you remember applying for scholarships?

I am so old that when I was a Master’s student I filled out my Ontario Graduate Scholarship application form by hand. I am so old that when I was applying for SSHRC doctoral fellowships I was using an IBM selectric typewriter, typing on GREEN paper, having to scrap everything and start again if I made a typo, because “neatness” was important. First impressions and all of that.

Despite glitches in the early days of online application forms the situation is now much better. Form fillable PDFs rock!

I was lucky as a student. I got those scholarships and postdoctoral fellowships. Now I’m on the other side. Now I’m not applying for scholarships but adjudicating them. Dozens and dozens of them. And for all the various competitions and councils–SSHRC, NSERC, CIHR, OGS, Vaniers, Bantings, and QEIIs. [by the way if you are not an academic this will sound like gibberish; my language has been infiltrated by acronyms]. I spend a LOT of time reading applications on my computer screen (squint, squint) trying to make sense of spreadsheets, trying to be a responsible reader of proposals in subjects and disciplines that are entirely foreign to me, and trying to do due diligence at the meetings where rankings are determined and decisions are made about which applications leave the building and which do not. Filling out application forms felt like a lot of work when I was a student. Reading and ranking them felt like a lot of work when I was on the graduate committee at the department level. Now that I’m at the university level the workload has grown enormously. It’s exhausting. Just the sheer number of application packages to read can feel overwhelming, and very tough decisions have to be made, so sometimes there’s an emotional hit as well. This work will occupy me until December, which given that it’s still October seems like a very long time.

So how do I cope? Do I moan but get on with it? Do I access my inner Calvinist and do my duty without complaint? Or do I bring to the forefront of my mind what a privilege it is to see the work that young researchers are doing? Yes, that’s it. I might not have any clue how one would use nanotechnologies to recycle and clean polluted water in Canada, but I’m glad someone is trying to do it. I don’t know what quantum computing systems really are, but I’m glad someone is going to make them more secure. I don’t have any idea how children learn to distinguish how the same adjectival phrases mean different things in different social contexts, but I think that’s worth knowing. And it may not be possible to get grades of 100% in my discipline (or any Arts/Humanities discipline) but it’s pretty impressive that someone can.

So go forth young researchers. I am proud of you! And if you get a scholarship, please remember to thank all of the people who supported you along the way. Mine’s a glass of red, by the way. Thanks.