Geez, what a crappy day. Lousy morning with the kids, then I can't find an affordable ticket to SFO in August and am kicking myself for not buying it a long time ago, and worst is that we found out our grant probably won't be funded. It's not 100% yet because our PO is still waiting on final budget numbers, but I think it's like 99% sure that it won't. Moreover it looks like none of Mentor's other two grants will be funded either. Which is hugely disappointing, and also brings up new challenges with how we're going to handle money and funding issues. We have one unfunded student, which happened due to a miscommunication. He told us in his application that he had funding from his government, which is common for people from his country. Many times we receive applications from people who have full funding from their government that pays for their tuition, stipend, etc. We stupidly assumed that was the case with him. We should have checked more carefully, because it turns out that in this student's case, his government funding is actually quite minimal and doesn't even fully cover tuition. So we were anticipating funding him on one of the grants I was totally sure Mentor would get. Now, without this grant coming through, we have no way to fund this student and it is really weighing on me. Tuition + living expenses is hugely expensive and I'm worried about how he is going to handle it.

This is the problem with relying on grants...when the funding to NSF dries up, and it becomes increasingly difficult to secure grant money, then we start running into problems because we have come to depend on grants as part of our structural way of operating.