On Applying for Funding

By Natalia Jaramillo

It is Sunday, 11 p.m. There are only a few hours left before another deadline, and there is still a long list of things to finish. Tomorrow is Monday. Again, Monday. Lately, all my days feel like Mondays.

This year, a large part of my work has not been in the field, but at my desk. Weeks have been spent preparing and submitting applications: the Berklund Graduate Scholarship, the Stillinger Expedition Fund, the SCAR Open Science Conference Travel Grant, the DeVlieg & Bleak Internship, the PEO scholarship, and a few others along the way.

Each application asks for something different. Sometimes the focus is on the project. In other cases, it shifts more toward explaining who the researcher is, what has been done, and why the work matters. That shift is not easy.

Applying for funding is not just writing. It is rewriting. The same idea is adjusted again and again, depending on who will read it. Requirements, formats, and expectations are never exactly the same. Over time, this becomes a continuous process, where applications overlap and deadlines follow one another.

It also comes with its own routines: checking requirements more than once, adjusting budgets, rewriting sections that never feel fully finished, and asking advisors for letters of recommendation — sometimes more than once — hoping not to test their patience too much.

There is a constant tension in this process. Time spent on applications is time not spent analyzing data, reading, or preparing for fieldwork. At the same time, without funding, much of that work cannot move forward. The work moves back and forth between these two sides, without a clear separation between them.

Most of the process happens in uncertainty. Applications are submitted, and then there is waiting. Weeks, sometimes months, with no clear feedback and no real sense of progress.

Rejection is part of it. Sometimes it is clear, sometimes it is not, and sometimes there is no answer. A response — or no response — can feel a bit like the Antarctic: cold, quiet, and hard to read.

But something also changes through this process. Writing proposals helps clarify ideas. Questions become more precise, methods become clearer, and the project becomes easier to explain. It also requires explaining the work to people outside the field.

In this case, it means learning how to explain a project that connects remote sensing, vegetation, and tourism in Antarctica — which does not always sound like it belongs in the same sentence. It is not an easy combination, and each application requires a different way of presenting the same work.

Over time, the process becomes cumulative. Ideas become clearer, arguments stronger, and the project more defined. Things start to make more sense.

And in the end, it comes down to the same thing: still writing, still applying, still moving forward — because the next deadline is always around the corner.