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Actually, a little advice-seeking with a splash of venting...
I am a 3rd year doctoral student in a research-based psych program. I just got off the phone with my advisor, who has decided that we should push back my NIH F31 revision AGAIN to April (I submitted it originally last April) rather than the upcoming December deadline. She has decided that I should probably rewrite the whole significance section with heavy input from two co-sponsors and that would be too difficult to complete by one week from now. Her recommendation makes sense, but I've been asking her about this since September and she just decided that now (there's the venting part...).
In response, I mentioned that there is a required training period of 2 years or you incur a payback obligation, and that since it wouldn't go into effect until next year that means I wouldn't be able to graduate until May 2015, which (and I said this in nicer words) is way longer than I need to complete everything in the training plan (or much longer than the requirements of my program for that matter since I came in with a master's and therefore didn't have to do a thesis)--as it's all planned out now, I could graduate by May 2014, December 2014 at the latest. But she insisted that she can come up with plenty of things for me to do during that time (all outside of my actual requirements to graduate, of course), and I don't quite know that an F31 on my CV is worth an extra year in grad school, ya know? So now I'm questioning resubmitting at all... ugh.
Those of you that have F31's: how long did it take you to get the funding? Did you think it was worth it? Did you have to add additional time to your training program because of the F31?
I am interested in an academic research career and will graduate with about 7 or 8 publications, most of which first author, and some solid research and training experiences in my field (cardiovascular health disparities). Clearly having an F31 on my CV will still be helpful when applying for jobs, but is it worth extra training time, missed time working on my diss, etc.? What about other funding opportunities for students that don't require as long of a time commitment?
Any input would be appreciated!
I am a 3rd year doctoral student in a research-based psych program. I just got off the phone with my advisor, who has decided that we should push back my NIH F31 revision AGAIN to April (I submitted it originally last April) rather than the upcoming December deadline. She has decided that I should probably rewrite the whole significance section with heavy input from two co-sponsors and that would be too difficult to complete by one week from now. Her recommendation makes sense, but I've been asking her about this since September and she just decided that now (there's the venting part...).
In response, I mentioned that there is a required training period of 2 years or you incur a payback obligation, and that since it wouldn't go into effect until next year that means I wouldn't be able to graduate until May 2015, which (and I said this in nicer words) is way longer than I need to complete everything in the training plan (or much longer than the requirements of my program for that matter since I came in with a master's and therefore didn't have to do a thesis)--as it's all planned out now, I could graduate by May 2014, December 2014 at the latest. But she insisted that she can come up with plenty of things for me to do during that time (all outside of my actual requirements to graduate, of course), and I don't quite know that an F31 on my CV is worth an extra year in grad school, ya know? So now I'm questioning resubmitting at all... ugh.
Those of you that have F31's: how long did it take you to get the funding? Did you think it was worth it? Did you have to add additional time to your training program because of the F31?
I am interested in an academic research career and will graduate with about 7 or 8 publications, most of which first author, and some solid research and training experiences in my field (cardiovascular health disparities). Clearly having an F31 on my CV will still be helpful when applying for jobs, but is it worth extra training time, missed time working on my diss, etc.? What about other funding opportunities for students that don't require as long of a time commitment?
Any input would be appreciated!
Most of our students are fairly productive in the expected time to graduation. They have several pubs, etc. I agree that there may be a *few* of these who have stuck around due to not wanting to leave the nest quite yet or other reasons. But I believe most of them are relatively anxious re: obtaining internship, postdocs, & other research positions afterward, so they stick around to bolster their CVs even more and to "get a few more pubs" (I'm obviously oversimplifying here).
