I had been considering moving to a different “system” for my office sitting time. I considered several options, including an exercise ball and an under desk stationary bike. I didn’t consider a standing desk because I always get back pain if I stand in one place for a prolonged period of time.

At a conference this Spring a colleague told me that the best thing she has done is replace her chair with an exercise ball, and that she lost 5 inches off her waist as a result. I ordered an exercise ball as soon as I returned. Here are my thoughts.

I didn’t lose 5 inches off my waist. Or even one inch. But I am still happy with the decision.

I did a fair bit of homework. I read the following articles on the possible benefits (or lack thereof) of using an exercise ball as a desk chair. 
Lifehacker
NY Times
Women's Day

Around the same time that I replaced my chair, our university sent around a message saying that they would not pay for alternative work stations and that if you wanted to use an exercise ball, you needed approval from your supervisor. I hadn’t considered asking the department to pay for it, and I do recognize that if I fall off, I’m not going to sue the university for damages.

I read about how to pick the right size. I’m short, but I did go up a size from what I would use for actual exercise, and I’m happy I did.

I bought this burst resistant ball. The pump was easy to use (not fancy!), and it was reasonably priced.

I bought it in black. Thus, some people walking by didn’t even notice the change, and sometimes I would talk to a colleague for a minute or more before s/he noticed that I was sitting on a ball. It has sparked conversation with colleagues, but never in a bad way.

I like it.  Most of the time I find it really comfortable. I do pilates regularly, so that may help me know how to sit properly on the ball. Occasionally I start to feel lower back pain from sitting on it, particularly days where I have few meetings and thus am at my desk all day, but when I do, I switch back to my chair that day and the pain goes away within an hour. Most days I have one or more meetings so I either go elsewhere to meet or move from my desk/ball to my table/chair for the meeting and have no issues.

I’m a fidgety, hard-to-stay-still person. I think the ball helps center me in some way.

The biggest change I’ve noticed is that I don’t get tired in the afternoons. I used to find that in the 3:00 – 4:00 range I would get very sleepy at my desk. That almost never happens since the switch (and I’m not sleeping more, and in fact, on days that I work at home, I do get tired in the afternoons). I think the fact that my body is constantly engaging in micro-movements to stay balanced helps ward off sleepiness.

Because I generally like balance balls, I can play with how I sit. I often like to sit with my legs crossed and only one foot on the ground to increase the challenge. I’ve wobbled here and there but never felt like I was going to fall off.

Every once in a while, I close my door and bounce. Or more often (but still relatively rare), close my door, and lie back and stretch over the ball.

It’s a small change. I am really not losing weight or noticing a difference in my body size as a result. But I’m happy with the change, and am glad to have made it.

“The post I replaced my office chair with an exercise ball first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 22, 2014.”

I became an assistant professor about a month before my 30th birthday. On my first day teaching (a large gen ed class), I was standing at the front of the room somewhat nervous. A student approached me, and I had a moment of excitement – my first official question from a student as a professor! Then the question: “Do you know if he is going to give us the syllabus?” I couldn’t even process the question and asked her to repeat it. When I finally realized what she was asking, I lamely replied “I’M the professor!” and she slithered away.

A week later, at an event for first year honors students, one of my colleagues introduced herself to me, assuming I was a… first year honors student.

Before age 40, I always looked young. I have always been short (no improvement post-40). As a child and teenager everyone assumed I was much younger than my age. In grad school everyone assumed I was an undergrad. I was carded well into my 30’s, and occasionally after 40 in really poor lighting.

So, this recent post about women who look young in academia definitely hit home. She makes a number of excellent points about gender role expectations, how youth is – and isn’t – valued, and issues of status and expectations. I won’t repeat those issues here. What I want to share here are my experiences with this issue, and how I have addressed it.  

The experiences didn’t stop at my first couple of weeks as assistant professor. They continued, both in my teaching and research life. At conferences when I presented, people would ask me “Who do you work with?”

As an instructor, I had difficulty getting students to treat me with respect. Students would call me “Eva” and call male assistant professor colleagues “Professor X.”  I would receive very informal emails. Students would sometimes interrupt my lectures to make jokes (some of which were inappropriate). I also would get comments in my student evaluations that made it clear students perceived me as young. The one I will never forget: “She expected us to call her Dr., and that’s ridiculous. Dr. is a title you earn, you don’t just get to be called it.” Somehow my 6 years in a doctoral program were wiped away by a student who thought I was too young to be a Dr.

I was (mostly) able to turn it around, especially on the teaching front. Here are some of the things I did, some of which overlap with the advice in the post I linked to above:

• I stopped putting my first name on the syllabus. Viewing it here, it seems bratty, but it worked when I wrote the following on my syllabus:

Professor:                           Dr. E. Lefkowitz                                

Pronunciation:                  DOK-ter LEF-coe-wits

• I also wrote it on the board the first day, and made a couple of jokes about how not to pronounce it (not Lef-cow-ski; not Lewinsky [it was a long time ago]). Students got the point. Now that I’m older, I don’t care if students call me Eva. But when I was in my early 30’s it mattered, and it felt as though the use of Eva was part of a pattern rather than a word choice.
• I started signing my emails “Dr. L.” I didn’t mind being called Dr. L if they had trouble pronouncing my last name.
• More generally, I made it very clear in the syllabus what my expectations were for student behavior in the classroom.
• I wore my glasses on teaching days. And usually pulled my hair back into a rather severe ponytail.  These two things, while perhaps not exactly aging me, did give me a more librarian look, which helped.
• I also started wearing rather conservative suits or slacks and sweaters on teaching days. I was careful not to wear anything tight, short, or basically, very fashionable.  I always wore heels, usually giving myself a minimum of 2 inches.
• I dressed similarly for conferences, always trying to look very professional and relatively conservative. If I had a poster, I added “Ph.D.” to my name. If I gave a talk, I did the same in my slides. I made sure in my presentations to thank my students and colleagues at the start. And if someone I met at a conference asked me whom I worked with, I would say, “I work with a number of graduate students in our program – do you know some of them?”

I’m sure there are other things I did, but it’s been almost a decade since I felt like it was really an issue, so I don’t remember everything I did.

With time (and wrinkles), my work self has evolved closer to “me” and less of a persona of “female professor.”  Students can call me by my first name if they choose. I’m a bit more relaxed and casual in the classroom. I have moved away from the librarian look, rarely wear my glasses or my hair back, and wear the clothes I want, though I almost never wear jeans or casual clothing to the office.

Would it be better if we lived in a world where we didn’t have to think about these things? Sure. But was my teaching and professional life easier after I made these changes? Absolutely. 

“The post Strategies for young looking academics first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 6, 2014.”

My amazing student Emily taught me these simple tricks, and they have saved minutes from my life every week.

If you want to attach a document in gmail, you don’t have to click on the attachment icon, find your file in the right directory, and choose it. Instead, click on the document in an open folder in Windows Explorer and drag it into your email. Viola! This trick saved me tons of time because I have often searched for a document in Explorer, and THEN went through gmail to find the same file.

And now Emily has taught me that you can do the reverse – you can roll over an attachment in gmail, click and hold, and then drag it into a folder on your computer.

Love learning things from my students.

“The post Gmail trick #1: Attaching & downloading documents first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 4, 2014.”