“I am a world leader, directing an excellent team of – ” 

“Outstanding is better; it corresponds to a score of 5, while excellent is only a 4.” 

“Oh yes, I forgot. So, I’m a world leader, directing an outstanding team…”

Does this sound like a slightly ridiculous conversation? I hope so 🙂

It is a realistic one during Australian grant writing times though.* Researchers tell each other that they have to write to the scoring criteria, which involves a lot of self-congratulatory language (also, I learned that ‘outstanding’ really is more excellent than ‘excellent’, but that’s another issue).

So what I’m about to write would be shocking on a grant proposal: I lost momentum on something. 

Last year, I did a series of semi-weekly micro-podcasts on our research.

It was fun but I lost momentum in the tumult of submitting grant proposals and moving universities.

Now I’m starting again, without any promises regarding regularity 🙂

Here you go:

• Part 9   on ‘rejoinders’ and the fear of re-traumatizing children 

Adding the previous ones for completeness:

• Part 8   on working & learning in Jordan
• Part 7    on the World Science Forum
• Part 6    on the UN Sustainable Development Goals
• Part 5    on that other embarrassment story
• Part 4    on translation of research into practice
• Part 3    on a rollercoaster week
• Part 2    on the Ear for Recovery study
• Part 1    on the study on Domestic Homicides

Next time, I’ll be back with a blogpost: we have just published a paper on children’s perspectives on life after parental intimate partner homicide. The young people had some important insights to share, which I’ll try and summarize.

For now, have a good weekend.

* I’m sure this happens in some other countries as well, but probably not everywhere as strongly.