Grants

I spent most of this week on the utterly soul-destroying task of writing a grant application.

Now, for those of you grant virgins out there, let me just point out that not all grant applications are the same. I, for one, don't find applying for money for my own research to be spiritually annihilating, I suppose because I get to witter on and on about ideas that I care about and it's kind of a kick to try and make some group of unknown folks care about these ideas too.  (Perhaps I ought to note that for all my wittering, I'm amazingly bad at getting said funds. Which is why I am, and will always remain, an associate rather than a full professor. Not that I mind. Really. No, no. It's just my allergies. Something in my eye. A problem with my contacts. Really.)

This week, however, I was applying for "enhancement funds" for one of the undergraduate residential colleges at LSU. Don't get me wrong: I do care about this project, as much or more than I care about my own research. I mean, frankly, I research and write about British Victorian and post-Victorian religious culture. Not exactly gonna change the world, is it? Whereas this residential college, well, it won't change the world, it won't even change LSU, and it sure as hell won't change Louisiana where we just re-elected the horrific Bobby Jindal as governor by an embarrassing landslide. . . .but it might just change the lives of a few LSU undergrads. These residential colleges are a way of somehow sneaking the harmony and elegance and coherent community of a small liberal arts college experience into the cacophony and chaos of a huge state university. I had a wonderful, life-transforming and yes, even mind-altering (without hallucinogenic drugs!) experience at my liberal arts college and I passionately want the same for my hungover, disengaged, football-addicted, parochial, and utterly lovely students. (I mean, take this final sentence from one of my upper-level student's essays: "A new period began during this time, it has come to be known as the Victorian period, named after Queen Victoria, who ruled at the time." How unbelievably, utterly lovely is that?)

So, why then, did I find the experience of writing this grant so personally and emotionally and existentially devastating? Because, dear ones, winning the grant demands that the applicant demonstrate that the project will acrrue calculable economic benefit to the state of Louisiana. And tell me, how does one quantify, how does one calculate, the economic benefit of encouraging well-rounded, globally aware, internationally engaged, intellectually vital, politically active young folks?

I'll tell you. One makes stuff up. Not out of whole cloth, mind you, but one does grab meaningless numbers and one marshalls one's skill at crafting words to make those meaningless integers appear to carry profound weight.

I hate playing this game. A good liberal arts education, which is what I had--thank you Mom and what was then the Social Security dependent's benefit (axed by Reagan but not before I'd used it for all four years) and Calvin College and Northwestern University and an impressive array of underpaid, incredibly committed professors--teaches intellectual honesty. I betrayed that education in an effort to obtain at least some of the benefits of that education for some of my students. Sigh. How perverse is that?