It May Not Be Beautiful, But I Do Value an Organized Mind

Since January, I have had on my agenda that I needed to get into a room with all my grants and programs, sit with all the paperwork and revenue, and simply map out where the year was and now where it is to go next. Yesterday, I found myself in room 108 once again (yes, this was my dissertation space for organizing and where I lived for arranging my dossier last August). This is where I went spastic on all the white boards with color dry-erase markers and organization. Colleagues who passed by to say hi asked me what I was doing and said,
"This is freaking me out. What does all this mean?"

I can only reply, "Well, our campus's grant officer understands and I'm doing this for her....well, us." We were working through local, state, and federal funding to cover actions of the past year, but also to position funding for this summer and the year to come. Every line item on a grant needs to be accounted for (receipts, payments, supplies, transportation, etc.) and there's no room for errors. Of course, state grants are granted early, but the funding never arrives until the month before final reports are due, so much of the work is charge revision and moving funds from one account to the next.

If it was my check book it would be easy. The work at the university is a checkbook shared by many across campus and these need to align with reporting to those giving grants. T's need to be dotted and my i's are definitely crossed (that was intentional).

I'm forever grateful to my grant officer, however, as we've been doing this together for 7 years and both of us are down with assistants -- the trend where workers are expected to do more and more with less and less support.

As sad as it is, I'm heading to the office again for another day of grinding, because everything I do with these accounts is for teachers and kids. The money was awarded for them and in support of best practices in school.

I keep saying that one day I want to run for office with the intention of making the whole process sane. I'm 110% appreciative of the grants when I get them, but the exchange could be smoother (especially with the State of Connecticut - it is maddening how the system works...there are no words, but we do our best with making it work). Then, of course, there's the fact that federal, state, and university accounting practices are completely different, especially as all work is coded numerically and they all have different numbers. A box of pencils can be 6532311 in one account and 9u342 in another.

It all has to match.

And that is why my mind is so ugly.