Harder than it looks

It’s so strange that I only have four weeks left of my internship. It seems like I was just getting started, and now it’s going to be over before I know it. Where did the time in the middle go? Every week has gotten easier, as I learn the ropes of writing proposals. I’ve really come to appreciate the amount of work that goes into writing a short, simple-sounding document.

I had the opportunity to discuss this in one of my other classes. We had to share examples of our writing and talk about them. One girl brought in some grant proposals she’d written and explained that while the short paragraphs of explanations might look easy to write, they’re really more difficult than one would realize. It’s quite hard to make a point or present an argument in a short paragraph. There’s a lot of condensing and making the language simple and to the point.

Someone in the class drew a comparison between grant proposals and resumes. I think this was a good observation. Both documents should be relatively short, but they’re both trying to persuade the reader somehow- to hire an applicant or to provide funding for an organization.