Be realistic, extend and finish your studies.

Dear Carlos,

as both - a former MC fellow and a researcher in the German accademic system - I do recommend you to try to get an extension. There are several reasons:

1. You can not easily get more money from the grant. There is the limit of the organisation in what they have and to stay in the grant you would have to get "unused" PMs - e.g. if there is a colleague who started that late that she/he cannot use all months in the remaining project life-time. Of course this only works if it is not going beyond the project life-time. I am not sure if there is a funding limit regarding the 36 months thou.

2. Shortening your salary to spread it accross more months may be an option but your organisation will have to prove at the end that you got the full amount of money you should have gotten over the course of the project time (not more than full salary per month you were in the organisation). So your organisation has to be very carefull with that.

3. The MC research grant has the ultimate purpose to educate upcoming researchers (btw - not to get you your PhD) but there are many more motivations. One of it is to enable you to integrate into a research community - topic wise and geographically. So even though you should become an "international" researcher, you should also become embedded into the community of the cultural/regional/language-wise community. In Germany we have a quite strong kind of "corporate culture" even in science. So in optimal cases you should really become a member of the team and push it with your own topic and excellence (there is not conflict in this). They should be your starting point for your future research network. As such you should also come to a situation where it is a natural idea for the institution to keep you for a longer time. Not only because of CC but also because there was a huge investment into your position and if you stay longer they benefit longer from that. So I consider an extension to your position - if there is money - as the superior option. Yet - I am of course aware that money may be missing, or the chemistry is off so that this line is maybe hard to motivate.

Finally I can say - don't worry about the money if you can live and have to stay a bit more for a limited time to finish - it's worth it. Full positions are in many fields in Germany not the regular case. So it should not deminish your value if you get a lower salary for a while. Many many institutions offer to finish the PhD as an external student - so this is also an option if staying is a problem (money, visa, other obligations).

Do you have any other worries/motivations that you would like to stay on the MC grant?

With best wishes and cheers,

Christian!