BioMedSciMed

Thank you... believe it or not... after all this, your comment was what finally made me cry :-) I am heartbroken. I got all excellents and 1very good, I was ranked really high and TWO of the reviewers called me a "truly remarkable applicant"... I did not get one single negative comment or suggestion for how to improve my application next year but it doesn't really matter, because there is no next year for me now. Honorable Mention is definitely not something to be ashamed about but it doesn't find me a place to go does it? wow... I know I'll be over it tomorrow but I can't believe how sad this makes me. Hopefully I'll just be mad soon and I can move on.

There also was not one single award in my field. Which is really F-ing awesome considering we all spent weeks of wasted time worrying about this and they couldn't take 5 minutes to say "the following fields will be getting the shaft..." I can try to pretend to be mature or I can be honest, so I am not even going to act like I'm not pissed about this. This was the SHITTIEST thing to do. I know they have to have had SOME idea that there would be specific fields that certainly would not see a single other award becasue they told me that the distribution would be uneven. the only thing that really makes me feel better is knowing that all of you are crazy awesome and as sad and jealous as I am, I am also really happy for those of you who got it. please don't let the fact that I am insanely disappointed about having not gotten one of my own cloud the fact that I am very, very happy for those of you who did get one. I'm going to go cry myself to sleep.

yep- this is the first time I've stayed up and waited and I have a feeling that I'm going to chuck my computer out the window if anything but a complete list of results is posted. I'm not gonna lie and say I don't even care if I get one, I definitely DEFINITELY am hoping for the best but I'm afraid I'm going to come down with some chronic illness if I spend any more time worrying about this so I just want it to be over.

blue moon; Honey Moon Summer Ale

yeah... I keep trying to convince myself that I'm still up studying but I haven't even looked at my book in like 25 minutes.

woah- my page looks really odd and the only page I can't access at the moment is the list of awardees....

mine's down.

ah-ha, ok. .... wow... it's completely ridiculous how many people are on here now!

hmmm... is my clock fast? it's not down yet...

thanks!

for those of you who may know from the past times; when the site goes down for "scheduled maintenace form 11pm to 2am" or whatever, does it typically stay down the entire time? or do they allot that window, but usually get the site up and working again in a shorter peroid of time? I ask because I have a really hellish pulmonary physiology exam tomorrow and if people can tell me now that it will for sure just be down until two- then I'll probably just go to bed. IF, on the other hand, the maintenance periods tend to not last the entire duration of the window (IE the results may pop up at a reasonable hour... ) then I may just stay up becasue the director of the GRFP told me his best bet was Tuesday so I'm thinking this is it.

has anyone been trying the "forgot password" trick, or viewing the page in HTML?

Psi_light- so sorry. Your brother would be proud no matter what :-) HM is going to sting at this point. I know it's an honor, I know PI's who still have it on their CV, I know teragrid is wicked sweet. I just need the money. WHoever asked me earilier- I don't know which disciplines are not going to be favored- But I know that the extra money is coming from specific sources with specific goals and it's not "fund grad students in general" it's "fund this area". They definitely didn't say there that there are certain areas who just won;t get anymore awards but several people have told me that the distribution will not be anything resembling "even". They also told me that my area was one of the ones that was definitely not favored. I'm one of the ones who need this to stick it out in grad school, so This week will probably be pretty bad for me. Should probably get my C.V. together. ... probably gonna go be a hostess at Red Lobster.

You're right. I'm sorry, I am just down because my time to be saved by the NSF will end on Monday and after that, I don't think all the money at the NSF would really help me.... well that's an exaggeration... but still. I was also told that the area that I'm in will definitely not be one of the fields that will be getting a lot of extra fellowships... if any. I'm sorry to be negative. Good luck to everyone!

yeah, I just talked to someone who said that it won't be until Monday, possibly Tuesday. Something set them back again. So to save a few people some time, I just wanted to share; the information I got said that it 100% for sure won't be today, it may be tomorrow but will most likely be tuesday. sucks, I know. But additionally- and not to crush everyone's hopes, (although mine have pretty much disappeared) I heard that there are not going to be very many awards, and there also is not an even distribution among disciplines. It also is not related to how many awards are given already in comparasion to how many awards were given in past years- it's just to do with the origin of the money. I have no idea which disciplines are going to be favored, but it definitely sounded like there is going to be a heavily uneven distribution. blah.

cool! What TV show is it?

total :x so, maybe an additional 350 awards? (a 17.5% chance... not too shabby I guess?)

Yeah, I asked but she said exactly what weve been told; that the number will fall within 900-1600 range, and tehy can't give an exact amount, they don't think it will be 1600, and it will probably fall somewhere in the middle of that range.

I just called the operations center- the lady was VERY nice. She said that they're still working within the "1 week" timeframe. She said they can't release any specfic information right now but when I asked if there was ANY chance it would be released today she hesititated for a long time before she said it's unlikely but not impossible- and then I asked if it's not released today, will we definitely have to wait until monday and she said that due to the big delay, they are really going to try to release it as soon as they get it. And that if that happens over the weekend, and they can get it up on fastlane, then it could be released over the weekend. I also got the impression that for whatever reason, it seems as though fastlane can't just pop the results up- they need to do something with the system. So I imagine that all of our supposition regarding the "scheduled maintenance", actually has been related to them adding info (maybe not for the GRFP, but probably for something) So anyway, there's that. For what it's worth. It could be today, but if it's not today, that doesn't necessarily mean it will be another 2 days of nothing.

ok guys- so just to be clear, what exactly are we thinking will be the first place we'll see the long-awaited news? Is it on our login page or is it the "check application status"? or do we login and check the HTML? what do we do exactly?

I also have nothing yet

I'm pretty sure the sole purpose of the GRFP operations center is to deal with our questions. The people there have told me that they're a contracted agency, they are not a part of the NSF, they do not know very much more than what we know. They are just there to answer calls & e-mails, give out information to applicants and winners. I'm about 95% sure that they have very little function beyond the administrative level. The NSF GRFP people and the other NSF people are the ones who decide winners based on scores by reviewers and based on where the money needs to go. The NSF people then pass that information along to whoever actually puts it into fastlane, and let the GRFP operation people know that the info is coming down the pipe. But as far as I can tell from what's been explained to me, the GRFP operations center people are pretty much temps.... who have had the darn bad luck to get stuck answering the phones this year. Some of them have been really nice, but some of them are just plain rude, and I suuuupose at this point I can see why. I imagine if you're working a temp job and answering the same question 4,000 times a day when you have no say over the answer, and no real knowledge of when it may be coming, I'd probably be irate too. On the same note, it you're working a temp job, chances are you've never been in this position before. Although who knows? That could be where I'll end up if I don't get this.

neuronerd; it makes you change your password perodically, no significance. At least, I don't think. Conversation I just ahd with GRFP ops center- phone: "ring"... "ring- ring" GRFP operator ; "GRFP operations?" me: "hi, yeah I'm an applican-" operator : "two weeks." me: "yeah but I saw that the budget was approved and It's been "two weeks" for about a month now and I was just wondering.." operator: "TWO... weeks." me; "I know you must be frustrated, and I know that you're probably sick of hearing us ask, but you are the closest possible link that any of us have other than the website which has been updated in format and color several times, but not content. So please, I'm begging, can you even guess? any idea?" operator: "end of next week. optomistically." It is just a guess on her part. And I know they don't really know until the end of the whole process. but wow.

I definitely have not forgotten about it.I'm just preoccupied with nursing the peptic ulcer I'm certain I've developed in the past few weeks. I feel like once this is all over I'm going to have forgotten what it feels like to not be stressed.

thanks guys. I already feel better just having vented.