I finally submitted the NSF GRFP today! What a great relief. At the beginning of this week, I almost gave up and did not intend to submit it at all because I did not want to submit something bad. I reasoned with myself that I already invested so much time into it, as did my professors who helped me, so it would be shameful if I did not submit. I’m glad that I committed to completing the research and personal statements. Even if I did not receive the award, I am curious to read the reviewers’ feedback.
Despite making a schedule for myself, school and other priorities delayed my timeline. At the start of October, I scheduled a meeting with a different professor/advisor each week. Every week, I dreaded meeting them because I thought they would disparage my work because I thought it was not anywhere near the quality I had seen in previous winners’ proposal. The meetings always went much better than I anticipated. The professors gave constructive criticism which slowly clarified my own thinking.
I was stumped on my research statement for a long time. In my initial meeting with my PI, she told me it was a good start, but it needed to be more specific and attainable, since I would be the sole investigator on my project. I struggled to extend upon others’ work and consider possible research questions that haven’t been asked or answered. In my meetings with other professors, they suggested possible approaches to my research topic. I realized that I was not able to concretely describe the methodology to conduct the experiment yet, but their suggestions helped me piece my research goals together.
My personal statement began as a amalgam of previous personal statements that I wrote. In the first review, the main criticism was that it sounded like my resume in paragraph form. To improve it, I wove more personal anecdotes which showed what I did, what I learned, and how that contributed to my future goals or interests. In the second review, the criticism focused on my opening paragraph. I read others’ personal statements, where I noticed that people romanticized their research interest, citing their lifelong interest in XYZ or a enlightening moment when they decided to pursue their path. I was not comfortable writing like this because it was not my personality and it was not how I saw my life. This was the most difficult part to write because it required me to reflect on my motivations and goals. In the end, I wrote about how my interest in the environment led me to research. I realized that my limited chemistry knowledge would hinder my progress as a researcher, so I turned chemistry, where I learned about the underlying reasons for why things work. The process of connecting these mechanisms to the natural world motivated me to continue research.
This writing process showed me how I still have high expectations for myself. While it is good to hold myself to a high standard, I brought on additional and unnecessary stress to myself. I got frustrated when I could not think of the right phrasing or realized when I got pulled into a rabbit hole while searching the literature. Over time, I slowly let go of the expectation that I had to produce an amazing proposal on my first try. Not many undergrads take on the NSF GRFP, so I am proud of myself for trying, especially when I almost wanted to quit. Overall, I am satisfied with the quality of my final product.
This has been one of most stressful endeavors of my undergrad career. The rest of the semester, including graduate school applications and finals, seems much less daunting. Awards will be announced in April 2019, so I, along with the other 12,000 GRFP applicants, will have to wait for the results. While it would be exciting to be awarded the GRFP or honorable mention, I know that my worth as a person and scientist is much more than the results of one grant proposal.
