Fighting through failure

This month in the fight for funding we spent many, many hours on a very complex grant application for the medical research council, only to discover we could not submit the application which had to be peer reviewed by the University. Although this is a rookie error we are students and new to this whole malarky, also perhaps a little too ambitious for our boots hence the disastrous outcome. So it was after all a slightly mahoosive hiccup and we are clearly not getting the MRC grant, but on the other hand, we always knew it was incredibly unlikely. However in the spirit of the team, failure was always going to be part of the course, if it wasn't this wouldn't warrant the effort. I also think the documents we have come up with are pretty strong and can only be built upon. We have also learnt some lessons from this. Firstly, I think in the process of the application we have really argued the justification for this project. This research needs to happen whether through us or someone else. Next, we are going to need more help, we need to ensure that we are academically up to scratch and we do need more advice, lastly we cannot keep leaving things to the last minute! So we need to get rolling on the need application!

A message from the team 'dictator' as John is now christened followed on our group facebook page...

"Team, I know this has been a big knock back and I know that I personally, in the initial aftermath, was pretty down. But I am also so proud of every single one of us. We produced an amazing piece of work and everyone I spoke to seemed amazed that we had produced what we had with little to no guidance. I have been even more impressed with the immensely mature attitude all of you have taken this news with. What we have done will not go in vain, we can now use it for any future application without worry.I'm so proud of all of you and I look forward to the next application."

Ever the wise owl, Emma compared our efforts to us wandering into a nuclear power station, and when people asked us if we should be using that uranium we responded with 'our supervisor said it was ok' ...