At an end?

Finally, after a few false starts and hiccoughs, my ESRC form is now with the LSE’s Government Department. I’ve done my bit, having bullied and cajoled referees and college registrars to get their sections completed, finally handing it over with a sense of exhaustion, yet completeness yesterday afternoon.

Oh how we laughed when we wondered what the ESRC meant by its 31 July final result deadline (I don’t get mine till October) and cried over whether we were to do it in triplicate or not – not counting my own little heart stopping moments when I imagined that a +3 application wasn’t possible at the LSE according to the ESRC’s website. Or the time when I had to weigh up whether five years of work and one year of a two-year course at Oxford constitutes a completed research training programme. Or the realisation that I have to go back to the LSE with a self-addressed postcard – the one thing I forgot…

Ultimately, who knows? As I said to the registrar yesterday, all this work and it’s possible I may not be lucky (it’s around a 30% success rate). But as she said: “If you don’t ask, you don’t get.”

And I've still got another form to get through before the end of next week...