Scholarship applications. Part 2: Time is money (wersja polska poniżej)

In my previous post, I wrote about different kinds of applications for funding in the academic world and criticized the rhetoric of success present in the ‘descriptive’ type of applications. One has to admit, however, that the ‘descriptive’ type has one huge advantage over the purely ‘factual’ one: not all important information can be contained in bullet points, listed under specific categories of achievements. For instance, only in the descriptive applications, one can make the evaluator aware of the amount of work that is required to obtain results in a given discipline. If a researcher’s success is measured by sheer number of publications and the quality of a given journal, as it is often the case, then e.g. an archaeologist will be from the outset disadvantaged compared to, let’s say, a literary theorist. The former needs to commit much more time to fieldwork and travels, before he is ready to publish his results. In a longer description, he will have the opportunity to remind the evaluator of such special circumstances regarding his profession. The same is true of perfecting research skills, especially at the beginning of one’s career. If, for instance, one’s research requires extensive knowledge of a number of foreign languages, he, in terms of points earned, will stay behind his colleagues who need only Polish and English in their work. So once more the ‘time is money’ catchphrase proves to be true.

Benjamin Franklin, the author of the ‘Time is money’ phrase; artist: Joseph-Siffred Duplessis (National Portrait Gallery, Washington; available at: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:BenFranklinDuplessis.jpg)