How Easy it is to Succeed

Success in any task can sometimes be quite easy. I recall a few years ago being a reader in Washington DC for a grant project. We would read each 15 page grant and then grade them against a scoring guide. It was absolutely amazing how few of the grant applications actually followed the guidelines for what was supposed to be included. Those that simply followed the guidelines always scored right at the top.

I am teaching thermodynamics each day at 7 AM (yes that does say seven in the morning). Out of the first 12 days, the homework for four of the nights has been to create a document that "completely describes a Rankine cycle". After few days of doing this, the students created a scoring table listing the 11 categories that should be included and what would need to be included to earn a score of 2 or 4 or 6 or 8 or 10 in that category. I adjusted the table a little bit and handed it out. This document could be called the "guideline for what I need to do to get an A". On last Friday I said "next week I will collect your Rankine papers and I will score them against the scoring guide". And so I did. The average score was in the 50's out of 110. It was absolutely amazing how many people completely skipped many of the categories and did poorly on the others.

Well maybe not so totally amazing, my students exhibited the same characteristics as the university professors who submitted those grants.

All but two of the students that is. Two of them turned in documents which, AMAZINGLY, simply followed the guidelines.

TBL - The road to success in preparing written work like proposals, grants, etc. can be as simple as closely following the published guidelines.