Damn.

I just heard back from the National Cancer Institute's Program Officer for the grant I submitted in April. My score was a 303. The pay line (above which grants are funded) is 225. So, no money.

The Program Officer gave me some notes over the phone, and contact information for someone who can give me more detailed suggestions. In a few weeks, I should get my pink sheets, which will point out all the project's flaws in exquisite detail.

I still think it's an awfully good project. Damn it.

Resubmission deadlines are August 20 and December 20. I probably won't make August 20, because the resubmission has to include a thorough response to the pink sheets, and they may not even arrive before August 20.

If I had gotten this grant, I would have been pretty much assured a faculty position at the Institute. Now that's very uncertain. It's extremely likely that we're getting another, much larger grant on which my boss is the Principal Investigator - the score for that one was 150, which is ridiculously high - so it's not as if my salary support will vanish completely. But I really wanted this grant, my own grant.

Most people get turned down for their first NIH grant. It doesn't mean I'm no good.

But I really wanted this.

*Could* this day *possibly* get ANY worse?

Someone from administration was just down here.

They're planning to move two other people in to share my office.

They've been planning this for a month. The move would have to happen in less than a week. This is the first that it's been mentioned to either me or my boss.

They do not feel that it's the Institute's responsibility to provide storage for the several filing cabinets' worth of data that would be misplaced or to figure out where we'll put the people we're about to hire when the grant money comes in.

This. Is. FUCKING. Ridiculous.