Submission of HANDS – a great feeling

Five days after the submission I still suffer: I am still all too tired and I have absolutely no need to work effectively for any goal. Luckily do we have the autumm holiday and I will celebrate it by being together with my children. Henrik is on holiday too, Lars have not mailed anything since tuesday and my mailbox is as empty as it can be. It is almost scary. Only chairman Peter and Professor Per Hasle is still active.

Eventhough I still are a very tired my mind is filled with a feeling of thanksfulness to alle those people, who have helped the proposal to be qualified.
I have a feeling of being carried by a lot of people, rather than working alone.

The days before the final submission
Three weeks did I work very intense on the proposal and got approx. 20 HANDS mails pr day, Very little sleep and lots of decisions. At the same time I had to produce papers and participate in meetings.
But it was great joy too. People around me kept being entusiastic and encouraged me to continue. And the engagement of the HANDS involved never failed.

The projectplan of the proposal writing, a evolving prototype, appeared in the final stage to be a good one. All the major considerations was in place before the last two weeks. We had to focus on getting the EU-terminology right and complete the argumenations in various small subsections.

While writing I had a rhetorical discussion going on with myself. Many people involved in HANDS tells me, that I am very entusiastic and it influence them. In the EU application it is emphasised many times, that you have to be sober and formel. In writing and in the argumentation. How can I put my entusiasm in to the proposal? That discussion continued to fill my free timeslots. A week before submisssion I got the clue: the proposal has to argue for the proposal on every single sentence of the proposal. New arguments or variants but endless argue for the ideas of HANDS. Likewise when we argue for taking ethical concerns serious we do not only do so because we believe it is right, but because it is a more efficient in terms of persuasive efficiency.

Looking back on the work I wish I knew all about EU proposal writing that we do know now. The quality of the the proposal would probably be simular due to the fact, that the core idea of HANDS would have been the same. But the details of the proposal would be better and the organisation of the work would too.


But anyway:
Thank you very much!

Morten