Completing A Fellowship Application After Your Car Breaks Down

Most of you have felt – or will experience feeling – overwhelmed by the amount of work that can be required to complete a fellowship application. Depending on the funding organization, you might need to provide personal statements, research narratives, and several letters of support, not to mention revising your curriculum vitae and locating another set of transcripts. As a diligent graduate student who realizes the opportunity fellowships can offer, both monetarily and for academic goals, you have no doubt worked backwards to establish a timeline for accomplishing all the tasks an application requires.

But what happens if life gets in the way? How do you handle the surprises and challenges of everyday life that disrupt your well-planned timeline? 

Let’s say you planned to work in the library all day on Saturday to complete a rough draft of your research narrative. The required ten pages are a little daunting, but a rough draft seems an achievable goal. In two days, you hope to have your advisor review it before moving forward.

Unfortunately, your car breaks down on the way to campus. After waiting a long time for a tow, and then a ride from a friend, you watch those plans to be super productive for the day evaporate. In the next few days, you need to carve out time from your classes and assistantship work to deal with the repair shop, find alternate transportation options, and address financial aspects of your automotive woes.

You’re now several days behind the self-imposed fellowship deadline, and there are only so many hours in the day! Crises bring stress. Stress can lead to procrastination and inertia. It’s tempting to let the inertia take over and just sleep for a few days.

How do you get back on track? In addition to following some wellness tips, you might need to reshuffle your tasks in order to complete the fellowship application.  The following suggestions will help:

1. Take a moment to acknowledge that setbacks are normal. You are going to be okay. 
2. Set aside time to write, preferably every day. More time is better, but recognize that even writing for 30 minutes is an accomplishment. Try to ensure you have few distractions. Pick a time and place where you know that you can be productive. 
3. If you are overwhelmed with the volume of material needed, pick one element and dig in. You probably have a stack of reference books and papers on your desk. Work on the bare bones of your reference list; fill in the basic source material and leave the specific page references for later. As the reference list can be an onerous task, getting a chunk of it done will give you a sense of accomplishment and save time later.
4. Just write – do not edit as you go. It is more effective to get the ideas down on paper first, then eliminate elements if they are not needed or if they do not fit in the word limit. 
5. Ask for help. If possible, rely on family and friends to help with mundane tasks while you are focused on writing. Can they walk the dog? Pick up food? Run out for more printer ink? Visit the Graduate Writing Lab for additional help.  Get colleagues and friends to read your drafts, and explain your time pressures. Consider rewarding yourself with an incentive when your application is complete.

Even though your time is more compressed and your deadline sooner than expected, try to keep your eye on the goal – being awarded the fellowship. In addition completing a time-sensitive project while balancing academic requirements and other responsibilities, you are adding to your skill set for the future. Whether your path is in academia, government, or industry, you will often be called to balance all these elements, likely under abbreviated time frames. Your ability to re-focus and re-prioritize tasks and responsibilities now will enable you to shift gears more smoothly when unforeseen circumstances arise down the road.