It's Done!

What's done!? Julie writing her FIRST grant proposal, that's what! Today with 7 minutes to spare before the 5 PM deadline, I submitted the equivalent of a 19 page proposal applying for $2.2 million from USDA for a Food for Education grant for Uganda. I say equivalent because it was an online submission, meaning there were lots of little boxes to cut and paste into from the report-like document that I had put together. It got a little stressful when I came across a section that wasn't in any of the directions or examples, so my boss boss Dave came through and emailed me text to cut and paste in within the last hour. Once our office manager Kevin (who usually does the proposal submitting) had checked my online entries and clicked "submit", we did high 5's all around and I did my little happy dance. And then it was over; kind of anti-climatic.

So I sent out my "thank you - we made a great team" email to the crew of 5 out in Uganda who burned the midnight oil to answer my questions (What months exactly are kids in school? How many school terms are there?...) and write significant parts of the proposal. So I can't really take all the credit for it - I was just one of many. But, the buck stopped with me, so if I failed, the proposal writing project would have failed.

So...that's been my life for the last 2.5 weeks. Too many nights at the office to finish up 12 hour days this week. I'm going home...