Well..the most recent thing is a grant proposal. I'm only starting my second year so being on proposals is good in theory. Except this proposal was really really really bad. (If I was reviewing it I would not have read past the first two horribly written pages.)
The problem is that it was a great opportunity (the program) and two veteran professors writing. So I kind of look like an upstart jerk by saying "Gee, this proposal would be better if you rewrote it. Oh and by the way your facts are three years out of date. Here is the latest relevant report." I could maybe have helped rewrite it except that I didn't get to see it until two weeks before the deadline. So I been agonizing over how to say "I don't want to do this" for a week and dodging email and phone calls. I feel like a "naughty puppy" (in the words of Chartreuse Circe). Like I will get in trouble.
But I wrote the post because it is a broader problem for me personally and professionally. I think the underlying problem is not that I am trying to please so much that I am trying not to disappoint. Also, I am not politically savvy and often under- or overestimate the outcomes of small actions. In this context, saying NO seems monumentally bad for some reason.
Maybe I need some of that superhero underwear endowed with special NO powers.
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Posted by Sulphur Siren to academicsecret at 8/22/2006 07:15:52 PM
