Paper trails

It's been over a month since I started sending out purchase orders for my lab equipment. I still haven't seen any of the equipment (drat), but things are at least starting to move. I'm starting to get back copies of requisitions detailing what's been ordered, the final prices, and so on.

I had held off buying equipment earlier in the year, mostly because my lab wasn't finished completion, and I was worried about having no place to put purchased equipment. If I'd known this process was going to take so long, I wouldn't have waited. Ah, well. Just more advice I can give to the next people who join the Biology Department here.

Meanwhile...

I'm still working on my NSF grant proposal. Interestingly, submitting a proposal is completely paperless for the researcher. You literally cannot submit a hard copy, printed on paper, of your proposal in the mail; it has to be submitted on-line.

On the whole, I think it's great. I love living in the digital age!

Only one thing that makes me nervous. The agency is very stringent about meeting their print guidelines. A proposal can be rejected flat-out if your margins are too skinny or type is too small when they print them off. What's making me twitch a little is that I'm trying to incorporate pictures into my proposal, and graphics sometimes have a perverse sense of humour. They sometimes appear in unexpected places when printed.