My California university just submitted my part of a 4 Institution proposal 50 minutes before the deadline with NSF...because we missed the University deadline last Thurs for pre-review. These kinds of projects are just too complex and time-consuming proposals for me to do myself. Getting various people to work on them requires being up against the deadline...like herding cats.

I spent 12 days almost full time before I wrote anything on this: a couple of Skype sessions, many emails, an outline, trying to figure out the science and what we would propose. Then, I wrote a bunch of text fast, some of it usable. The most difficult parts were written by others, but I edited, revised, and did most of the figures.

After all of that, our chances for funding are slim...

Chris