Panel Matters

Coffee break.

Day two of the panel work. Locked in a room again, looking at proposals. Yesterday we deliberated over who passed to the next stage, and who did not – a painful process at times. Today there’s a final part of the process to be performed. We are writing feedback to each applicant to give a little guidance on their proposals for the future. This is an important service to perform, as you can imagine by simply putting yourself in the shoes of the person applying for the grant. In a room full of international people, all with some pride in their wordsmithing abilities, jointly crafting sentences that reflect the salient points of the panel’s deliberations is often an amusing task. Last time I did this (earlier this year) I learned a good algorithm for getting right the use of “that” vs “which” – useful when writing with eight hour jetlag. I probably should have known it before. In addition, I’ve learned several arcane uses of hyphens, “however”, and other modifiers, but I’m sure I’ll forget those.

The coffee is a bit weak. Not a good thing.

Well, better carry on.

-cvj