Thank you, thank you

I am very new to the whole grant submission process, but can already say that there is some tension between the Sponsored Programs Office (the people who submit the grant on behalf of the individual and the University), and the individual PIs. There are deadlines, and things get stressful for everyone all at the same time.

I would like to pause and thank the SPO contact, and SPO office here at Berkeley, for helping me get my K99/R00 in order. Between the two, they found a few small errors that would have added up to a big "doh!", when I realized what I'd done:

1. Included one document twice (meaning I omitted one, similarly named, necessary document).

2. Added an older version of my mentor's statement with placeholder comments (opps!).

3. Calculated the overhead including the fringe benefits, when they should have been excluded. This one is, in my opinion, much more minor to the acceptance of the application, but still good to catch.

4. Not errors, so much as tidying up the way I presented the budget (I had too much detail that might have painted me into a corner if things change between now and the possible funding date).

Those four items took me the better part of the night to complete but I think hope everything is ready to go now. 

In other news, the revisions of the last manuscript from my thesis work should also be submitted by Friday (or else we pass a deadline, and it will be considered a new submission). This will be the fourth time out to review, so let's hope we addressed everything properly. I really think we did. This is another case, actually, where I should send out acknowledgments and thanks. The comments from the reviewers really helped make the manuscript much better. So, thank you anonymous reviewers.