Where we've been

*Nick in Vienna

As all you loyal readers have noticed things have been a bit quiet here on 9 months of solitude. My Dad even emailed me and asked if we're already bored living in Europe. Alas, we are not bored but have been completely absorbed is grant applications for our dissertation. "But I thought you already had grants for your dissertation?" you might ask. Well, even though, yes, we have fellowships for this year we have to start thinking about next year. It seems that the main trick to make it in academia is to know how to properly beg for money on a years basis, at least until we get tenure. So, we just applied for money from the American Council of Learned Societies to fund us from next summer 2010 to summer 2011. In another month we have an application due for the American Musicological Society, and then we're pretty much done until April and just have to wait for the money to roll in. Oh, this year we are directly competing against each other which is kind of exciting. Last year we applied for different grants because of where we have to do our research, so this is the first time we are competing. We are actually rooting for each other because at least one of us needs to get a grant so we can eat food next year, and also our dream of teaching at the same school hinges on us being a dream team.