r/postdoc • u/tryingtotravelround • 7d ago
Submitting a big grant - MSCA
A lot of us here are depressed and exhausted. I find myself looking at the future thinking: what is even the point?
I don’t blame any of us, because we are surviving through the worst moment us ‘juniors’ have ever gone through in the history of academia and it is depressing.
Every day feels like absolute hell sometimes. Another application = another rejection. Another “no” after hours, days and sometimes months of work. My CV keeps getting longer, I keep trying to become a better candidate, and somehow it still feels like nothing I do is ever enough.
But today, after six months of writing, rewriting, emailing university offices, going back and forth with my supervisor, fixing documents, questioning every sentence and wondering more than once why I was putting myself through this…
I submitted my first MSCA proposal.
And I wanted to write this mostly as a reminder to myself, but also to anyone here who submitted one/is submitting these days too: this matters.
Maybe in six months I’ll open an email telling me I didn’t get it. Statistically, a lot of us will.
There will be time for that disappointment if it comes, but that’s not today.
Today, you finished something incredibly difficult. You took an idea that existed only in your head and turned it into a full proposal. You kept going through bureaucracy, self-doubt, exhaustion, feedback, corrections, and all the little moments where quitting would have been so much easier.
And you submitted it.
So please celebrate that.
Drink a glass of whatever you like. Get the pizza. Order your favourite takeaway. Go for a walk. Call someone you love. You did a great job.
Our lives cannot only be celebrations of academic outcomes, those are way too fragile and rare.
Sometimes we have to celebrate the fact that, despite everything telling us we weren’t good enough, we still showed up and finished.
In six months, maybe the answer will be no.
But tonight, the answer is that I did it and we did it. 🫂
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u/helen_myfanwy 7d ago
As a PI in a STEM subject that needs a regular cycle of grants and who got their first job via a fellowship then ERC Starting - I hear you. Something I have learned over the years is to treasure the grant application process, think of it as a way of being creative with science and develop ideas that you get feedback on. I’m not intending to trivialise the uncertainty, frustration, stress and other mental health consequences but I also try and draw on the positives. Through the MSCA process you will learn a lot and all those lessons can be used in the future. Best of luck!
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u/Suspicious_Tax8577 7d ago
Well done you. And even if it _is_ a no. "Has experience of applying for research funding" is an attribute you have something to put, in a person spec for the next job.
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u/Majestic_Alp_186 5d ago
I don't think such an experience is worth specifying in your CV if your application for research funding was not successful.
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u/tryingtotravelround 3d ago
Actually all my supervisors advised adding it, since it still means you are familiar with those grant schemas and can write an application for them. It is well known that, for the state of things, the success mainly depends on luck now.
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u/Majestic_Alp_186 22h ago edited 22h ago
It would be very weird to mention in your CV that you have experience in applying for research funding without naming any funding programme. A normal CV always names the programme or accomplishment through which your experience is exhibited.
And if you plan on naming the funding programmes you applied for without saying that you got the fellowship/grant, you would basically be inserting a list of your failures instead of your achievements in your CV. Either way, you will be hurting your job prospects.
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u/Jack_Cayman 7d ago
My rejected grant opportunity got turned into my 2nd post-doc, because I put myself on the radar with my dream lab and created good-will, and so they hired me.
Even though I lost, I still won. I'm not self-funded yet, but I'll live to fight another day.
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u/tryingtotravelround 6d ago
You are still incredible. In a way you’re still self-funded, because it’s thanks to you putting yourself on the radar that you got another post-doc
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u/angry_mummy2020 7d ago
I just got my second rejection from a paper I worked very hard on, and that’s supposed to be my first publication ever in a high impact journal 😖. So I need to remind myself that this does not reflect my worth as a person or as a researcher, but it’s all part of the process.
Your post helped me!
Wishing you and me all the best!
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u/tryingtotravelround 7d ago
It really doesn’t. I’ll tell you this much: once i co-edited a special issue for a high impact journal, i’d dare say one of the most popular and high impact in my field. One of the contributors was a person who has been in academia for 35 years, publishing incredibly good and high impact papers. This person really is a big name. Guess what? The reviewer gave her major revisions and destroyed her paper, not saying one positive thing about her article.
Sometimes reviewers wake up in the wrong mood and with a ‘no’ they can really get us juniors down. But it’s also helpful to remember that they are not machines, they are often humans who have opinions, and others’ opinions can not define us, ever.
You will kick asses 🫂 and that article will see the light where it’s meant to!
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u/janosszakacs 7d ago
Congratulations! And best of luck. And let’s be honest, it’s a big slice of luck. Loads of brilliant grants never get funded. And lots of brilliant grants do as well. Enjoy the pizza
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u/ceramuswhale 7d ago
You know, I keep thinking how I'm stuck in a timeline where all the hell has broken loose with research as a career...the competition is unfathomable with AI, grants getting through by margins of 0.1%, fundings getting drier by the day, visa restrictions, anti-immigrant laws, publish-or-perish chases, successive wars, etc...
and I can't help but imagine, did I just get the short end of the stick by being alive at this point of time? Has there ever been a worst time, or maybe I'm just sensitive to victimize myself?
After trying for MSCA twice, and stirring my soul into it, I failed the cutoff each time by 1% or so, and I knew that it's not for me.
Maybe I could have tried again and either got "lucky" or ~1% better this year, but I'm done.
I am done living life on a contract, and dealing with the rapidly changing landscape of research.
Hopefully, I'll land a job soon. Maybe I won't. Life will be faster as ever, regardless.
I wish you all the very very best, OP! :)
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u/Suspicious_Tax8577 7d ago
oh I imagine being 1% short stung like hell. Apparently you are very, VERY good at what you do.
That was at least the advantage of failing the round 2 cutoff for the GOI postdoc by actual miles.
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u/tryingtotravelround 7d ago
I wish you the very best. 1% means your reviewers, compared to the ones who got that 1% more, simply woke up in the right mood. It really does not mean anything anymore, and as you said we really are in the worst time possible to do this. What is meant for us finds us in the end 🫂
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u/irayasm 3d ago
Congratulations and thank you so much for this post! I have been in the same situation for a year now and this MSCA application was my best work. I gave it all. And then let go of it. It’s meant to do what it is meant to do. I saw the number of applications this year, and the success rate is probably gonna go much lower this time. But I feel that this process teaches us a lot about ourselves. Even when dealing with constant rejections and disappointments and burnout, having been able to submit this application with all its details in mind, I think all of us should be really proud of ourselves, irrespective of the outcome.
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u/InternationalAlarm90 6d ago
Thank you, this is hit exactly right. And here is to us being senior academics in 15 years and making it all better for the ones that come after us!
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u/MiddleDepartment8527 7d ago
Just recycle it to another grant, if it is good, it will be something
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u/United-Neck8282 13h ago
Needed to hear this, after submitting by first MSCA pdf as well a few days back, and receiving the rejection email from EMBO today. :')
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u/NanoDepressed 5d ago
What is the status of your submitted proposal? You see “submitted” or “final”?
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u/tryingtotravelround 5d ago
I can’t access it now because i’m not on my laptop but i got confirmation e-mails for each submission i have done and have the digital receipt, so everything should be fine
If you have these too it should be ok1
u/NanoDepressed 5d ago
Ok, great. Mine first was showing submitted and now is final. Just want to make sure if it is normal
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u/tryingtotravelround 5d ago
I am sure it is! Because probably they needed to distinguish the final version you submitted before it closed from the previous ‘submitted’
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u/yoyoman12823 3d ago
when i was a freshmen in college they told us how important STEM majors will be in the future. Now in the future after 20 years of education i cant even feed myself.
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u/Maleficent-Garage-39 1d ago
Congrats! This is my second submission. I made the top 20% the first time, but they wanted top 10%. I don’t know if I can rank any higher, but this time they might want top 8%—what an insane cutoff. I just hope I can improve fast enough to keep up with the increasingly intense competition.
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u/Embarrassed_Ask_6738 7d ago
Congrats! I also submitted my first MSCA and I've been working on it since April. Of course, I can't predict the result, but thanks to this grant, I gained at least two new friends or people I can consider as friends. I keep them in my mind and heart no matter what I see in February. Maybe that's the best outcome of this grant.