CHRISTINA >> Hey, my name is Christina and welcome back to my vlog
Today I'm going to be
talking about a lab aspect of my life which is funding and I wanted to share
personally why I'm motivated to talk about funding. So one thing is I grew up
in a family of three that made less money than I do now as a single adult
We made about 20k and now as a graduate student I made about 30k so I really
know how to you know clip coupons, be frugal and a lot of my spending so
it's translated to me being able to support more than just myself when
emergencies come up and then also you know being able to save for retirement
and not get put behind what my colleagues in the job market directly
are in terms of savings even though it's not perfect.
The tea brewed I'm going to pour it into
these reused Kombucha bottles I have and originally when I made this blog to
talk about funding, which to clarify I think you should look at as you study
schools and then ask about as you're going through the process because
transparency is key and it's going to take up a lot of your time if you if you
have to self fund versus if someone supporting you and finding their funding
options and it will for me let me have a lot more say over my research project
which I was super pumped about so. I thought I was going to cover teaching
internal grants and external grants in this blog but there just wasn't time so
what I'm going to do instead is I'm going to talk mainly about the extra
home grant writing process which for me was an asset there's also ones for
departments of Defense and other funding sources for some different companies
have different opportunities for external grants but then in the next
vlog I want to cover teaching and looking at a teaching contract and what's those
responsibilities on top of study may look like and then I won't touch on but
I encourage everyone to research internal funding at their University. So I
received a merit and identity-based scholarship when I first came to
Michigan and that helped me fund my first year before moving on to teach my
second year and then be funded through NSF for the remaining time in my program.
So a big part of the grad school experience, applying to funding, even
presenting at conference is reading through the literature. So I have a lot
of papers to read tonight I'm gonna head to the library to work on reading
through two to three, one being a review and to being a specific subset. But
before I go to the library I'm gonna make myself some matcha pancakes and
some tea.
This is the first stop on my study excursion of reading so I've been going
through this review paper it has some really nice figures but also a lot of
text to go through and I think this spot this little hideaway is is pretty
awesome I actually had to wait awhile to to film reading here because a lot of
other people were in and out.
So this is just a quick look at some of the rest of
the room I think this is my favorite piece having touched on calligraphy in
the past. You can just see this board is nice to try things out it feels a lot
less permanent than using up my inks and paper. I have done different things here
I did character calligraphy back in the day so sometimes the more complicated
characters practicing circles on this board has has been a help to me so this
is specifically hiragana. It runs it's not perfect but it's a really low stress
if you're worried about perfectionism it fades away so they have that which is
probably my favorite spot of the room then the massage chairs as I mentioned
and a light therapy.
We are on the move again.
So we are moving spots. I finished the review paper. It was a lot
to take in I definitely need to look up some of their references to get more
specific details but I want to move to the cafe. I probably won't get a drink I
still have some of the tea I brewed but I'm almost out of pancake, um, so I think
once we get to that cafe I'll go into a bit more detail about how I first
learned of NSF how it was different and I perceived and then how to frame
decisions in the best possible light. So I step to the side I'm actually in front
of where the mood row cafe employees have lockers just to not disturb the
people who are studying. And I wanted to get back to the topic of NSF.
so when I was in high school I thought these grants it was a small rural school my
dad had no exposure to the industry and I was you know just being raised by him
with an older brother who would go on to become a welder and go through a more
Community College approach so I would say my idea of the academy was a little
bit naive. I thought they were these perfect humans who read everything who
knew so many facts before you even explain them and always check that you
had the right references that your calculations were perfect and and they
would find you know through peer review the absolute best people and they try
they try really hard and I'm not saying they don't do those things but the thing
I didn't realize until I got to Princeton and I talked to people who are
actually invited to review NSF applications is they're in perfect
humans. It might be that you have a professor that just got off a red-eye
flight from California to Washington DC for the review session. He now has 20
proposals that he has skimmed but he hasn't
writing up his summary of in front of him and he wants to sleep tonight. So the
easier you make their job of telling what your intellectual merit is and what
your broader impact is which is a two criteria little use to judge your application
the better it's gonna be for everyone he's gonna have a easy time following and you
don't assume he knows everything he's read some of the literature but there's
just way too much out there for someone to be an expert on every little niche
and so you want to define your terms you want to make sure it's really clear what
assumptions you are applying to your system where it will have real-world
application and so you have to spell it out and it's not dumbing it down you
want to talk like you're speaking to an academic someone who reads intellectual
you know reporting for a living but don't assume they know what you're
talking about just because you've read 50 papers that use the same jargon or
that made the same assumption. To highlight a couple unique things about
this grant basically you can apply it twice: once before you enter a graduate
program and once after you enter a graduate program either your first or
second year. So when I applied at Princeton my senior year I was able to
have people help me proofread it I was able to get a lot of interactions and
learn really the science part I think based on the comments I got back they
really liked my intellectual merit but my broader impact wasn't as clear and I
think that's something I learned at Michigan it was just a little bit more
about how to frame butter impact but also life experience of of things that
added to me as a character so I actually came here my first year I wasn't sure if
I was going to do grad school like I had written the thing but I'm like I want to
support my family I want to be engaged at home do I go and take a Industry
position and I decided I really wanted to pursue research because of the
curiosity I have how I think you know it'll just lead to
a better quality of life for me because I am excited about my work not every day
but most days and when I got here the first year it wasn't really easy to find
a project the project didn't start up you know I didn't come early I realized
some of the people you know came directly after graduating I came in
August and like for many reasons whether it be a difficult relationship with
collaborators that you know was sorted out but took time I did not feel ready
to apply um and I think well in hindsight I know it worked but a lot of
people put pressure to apply the first year when you're when you're young when
you you know don't have as much judgment coming from your first year as a career
because I was told if I don't publish in between my first and second year I will
probably not even be considered as a second Year. And this wasn't entirely the
case, I would have a second author paper out from an internship but I would not
have a first author paper and I would have no paper from the year of graduate
school. But, just because I had intended to switch into bio-diagnostics and then
came back to more polymer physics it didn't mean I had to you know explain
the messy interpersonal details of of why things evolved.
I can explain the takeaways - so why did I spend a year there what's the greatest
takeaway of me being in a bio-diagnostic group. It's working with clinicians, it's
being able to collaborate better with medical practitioners, knowing their
language, knowing their standards of proof, just knowing more of their norms.
And so that's what I wrote why I waited a year I wanted to do this rotation to
establish norms and I hadn't seen that going in but by the
time I left that is what I took away from it and then I moved back into pause
or physics back into what I have experienced with - yes, I diverted.
I haven't made progress but I've added additional skills. The help was over the
summer we did have preliminary data I picked up a partially started project
and then I I twisted it or expanded it into my own so it was this absorption
model that was a novel algorithm and I took it into the chemo rheology or blood
flow space applying it at the time to stent absorption and it was creating
this narrative which was a lot of reaction and me trying to be in the
right place at the right time but not knowing how it would end up and when I
tell it back to somebody instead of saying 'you know it was random chance' it
was me taking the available opportunities I was given. And it was purposeful
Okay so I read the next paper. It was mainly experimental and it had a gel
point model I have heard of I think it's chapter 5 of one of the textbooks my
professors wrote and I want to go and read that next because it was
experimental and it referenced this model I don't have as much prior knowledge
about without explaining it I am going to go back and reference that book and
then reread the paper. And I wanted to check in a final time to just cover
maybe some of the straight topics on NSF and also throughout just these
miscellaneous topics I want to show you different views of the library which
is a 24-hour library and there are students there pretty much until I got
ready to leave campus and and so I won't be talking with you in the library but
giving you a short tour. So I think some of the last things to explain is you
applied a subject area. So in undergrad I applied just to mechanical engineering
but once I got here and it was really clear that interdisciplinary nature of
my work I applied to polymer engineering and I think that helped get my paper in
the right readers' hands. So that was something to consider. Also just like the
availability of other readers whether it be your graduate student friends or
someone who's been through a review process themself and been a judge of it
it depends on your resources but yeah definitely have other eyes on it some
more hints on broader impact is also teaching I really emphasized my outreach
and working with high schoolers and elementary schoolers in STEM and then
the idea of having an undergrad assist on the project and having mentorship
through that as well so I think incorporating a teaching mindset can be
really helpful to your application. And then let's see,
I think yeah I want you to know that you belong here like regardless of your
background you can succeed as a grad student so don't sell yourself short.
It can be really uncomfortable to write something that brags about your
diversity brags about your achievements but you you do belong here you did have
unique experience, you know you're studying an important problem so go into
the application with confidence.
This is a computer and video game library which I think might be here in
part because we have such a strong music program and the making of video game
music but it's also really cool place to hang out. It has some wonky hours mainly
during work hours but this was the only place that didn't have people and just
having a collaborative space there.