I check email a lot – more than I should I am sure. I have colleagues who are skilled at limiting their email checking – only before noon. Only after noon. Never after 9:00 PM. Not on weekends. I fail on all of these accounts, even when I try. In the past, I never, across 365.25 days a year, took a break from email for more than a few hours.
 
What I have done for the past 20+ years, though, is use my vacation message. When I went out of town, whether for work or for a conference (oops, I meant work or vacation), I put my vacation message on. I love that satisfying moment of setting it up. I find the vacation message very liberating, because I can choose whether to reply to someone – they know I am away and so it lowers the expectation of an immediate response. I particularly love that at UConn, if someone emails me from within UConn using their UConn account in Outlook, once they start the email they can see I have a vacation message, and they are, I believe, less likely to send their message. But even when I was at Penn State, I would often, while away, receive messages and then a follow up, never mind, I see you’re away, and I figured it out. Basically, I love the moment I set that vacation message and the corresponding decreasing sense of responsibility to swiftly respond to each message.
 
In the past though, I always continued to check email across every break, even if my vacation message was on. I often didn’t reply, but sometimes I did if it seemed important, or quick. But more critically, if it was an annoying email, or about a problem, even if I didn’t reply, it was in my head. I would be thinking about it, or feeling an increase in stress levels, because that message existed.
 
The summer after my first year as department head, my husband and I took a 4-night vacation to Bermuda to celebrate our 15-year anniversary. It was our first real trip without the kids since they were born. And after much deliberating and stressing about it, I decided not only to turn on the vacation message, but also not to check my work email. I still checked my Gmail account, and so people in the office knew if it was an emergency they could contact me. My vacation message explained I wouldn’t be checking email, and whom to contact instead. I moved my work email icon on my phone off of the first screen so it wasn’t always in front of me. And, for about 5 days, I never checked my work email. Seriously, would you want to be checking work email while here?:

Guess what? Everyone survived. Nothing came up that couldn’t wait. And, when I returned I felt a lot more rested and ready to tackle the email and work in general.
 
Last summer our family went to Spain for about a week, and I did the same thing. Again, nothing went terribly wrong, no one ever had to contact me there, and I dealt with everything when I returned. Can’t really tell in the photo, but I was rather relaxed:

And most recently, for about 9 days in June, my family was in the UK, and I put up this vacation message:

Thank you for your message. I am out of the office and will be doing my best to recharge before returning to the office on June 26th. During this time, I will be using all of my will power not to check my email. If this is an emergency, please contact one of the following:

[DETAILS]

Otherwise, I will certainly respond to you as soon as I can when I return.

In the past, I have used variants of this message, with lines such as “I hope that you also find times to disconnect and recharge this summer.” This trip was a bit longer, but again, nothing burned down in my absence. And, with jet lag, I was up at 5:00 AM my first morning back and had sorted through all of the email by about 7:00 AM, even though of course I didn’t respond to everything in 2 hours. Instead of checking email, I was taking time to really appreciate the scenery, like at this moment after climbing 212 stairs in Bath Abbey (thank goodness for all of my stairs walking at work):

If you haven’t ever really, truly disconnected from your email, I highly recommend you find a time to do so this summer. Let me know if you find it as freeing as I do. 
  
“The joy of the vacation message first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 2, 2019.”

Somewhere in my house, I have my new year’s resolutions from probably 1984, when I was in high school. I wrote them on a piece of paper and taped them behind a wall clock in my bedroom so no one else would see them. If I had to guess what it said, I would guess, “lose weight” and “be kinder to people.” Okay, I am going to try to find it.

Look at that – I was correct about the year. I had appearance concerns, but not weight. I had a version of be kinder (forgive the spelling error). And we can all laugh that teenaged Eva wanted to be more organized. How organized was she? At the end of the year, she gave herself checks and X’s for her prior year’s resolutions (3 out of 5 ain’t bad, but it’s no A).
 
I know there’s a body of research on New Year’s resolutions, and I know generally people are really bad at keeping them. My track record isn’t good. I have done the general (lose weight a common one). The specific (pack lunches to work or cook and freeze meals for family – works through January). The “realistic” (eat more vegetables). The important (be more patient with children). My former workout buddy and I used to lament the gym crowds in January and find relief in March when we didn’t have to wait for our cardio machines anymore, so I know I’m not the only one with trouble sticking to it.
 
I’ve noticed for the past couple of years that some friends have gone with one-word intention for the new year rather than a resolution. And apparently (I just looked) it’s now a thing on Twitter, too #OneWord2019). Some people are even having their classes do it. So I decided I would try it this year. My daughter and I thought maybe others would want to try it, too, so we set up a board for others to join us on New Year’s Eve, even including a bowl of inspirational words if people felt limited.

(Yes, someone did write Pokémon. I promise he’s under 10).
 
It took me a while to settle on my own word. I juggled some like joy and shine. But I have a fair bit of joy, I just don’t always notice it when it’s there. So I played with appreciate, but it didn’t stick. I cycled through some like peace, reflect, and Zen. But who is kidding who, I’m never going to be Zen or fully at peace. They didn’t feel realistic or sit well with me. And then it came to me, and stuck all day.
 
PAUSE.
 
I think that’s my word. It reminds me a bit of what we teach kids in socioemotional learning (SEL). Take a moment. Breathe. Pause. Then respond. When my kids were in kindergarten they had an SEL curriculum where they learned to turtle – take a moment and physically turtle instead of immediately reacting. For a while when the kids were little, if I felt overwhelmed as a parent, I would physically turtle to remind them of the technique and the fact that we have strategies other than yelling to deal with emotions.
 
I’m not going to turtle in a faculty meeting (though I did once in front of my 350-student class, but only as a demonstration). But I can work to take a moment before reacting. And I can do the same thing with my family members. Pause in the moment before reacting.
 
And I think of it more generally, too. Pause before deciding the best thing in this moment is to go on Facebook or to check my work email in the middle of watching a movie with the kids. Pause to listen to the kids’ story (even if it’s about what happened while playing Minecraft) instead of staring into space. Appreciate the quiet moments, or the loud moments, for what they are, before trying to alter them.
 
I’m not going to dramatically change my personality overnight. I’m not going to become Zen-master Eva. But if I can find more moments to pause, I think that will help. At least until February.
 
 
“One-word intention for 2019 first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on January 1, 2019.”

In my adolescent development graduate seminar I once assigned a paper for our identity unit on narrative analysis of turning points (McLean & Pratt, 2006). The authors followed high school students, and about six years later asked them to “write about an important transition or change with respect to their understanding of themselves.” McLean and Pratt consider this event a turning point, and coded the narratives in terms of meaning-making from this turning point, ranging from no meaning expressed to describing an insight from the event. 
 
Discussing this article in the seminar made me realize that at least so far (and it’s been a much longer so far than six years post-high school), I cannot really identify turning points in my life, particularly in the career realm. My How-I-got-here narrative is much more serendipity and process of elimination than Aha! moments or turning points. I’m okay with that path at this point, and actually, I think it’s important to share that path with others. Sharing my own journey to this point with high school students, college students, and grad students can help them to understand that we do not all choose our career based on a critical, life altering moment in childhood, or our lifelong passion since we pretended to be doctors as toddlers. Some of us almost fall into our career path, and that’s okay.
 
I went to college without a major. My father wanted me to be an engineer, so I went to a liberal arts university that did not have an engineering program. My first semester, I took all general education courses – humanities, history, economics, and psychology. I eliminated, three of them, so my second semester I took sociology, political science, fine arts, and another psychology course. For four semesters, I took three courses and a psychology course, until we were required to declare a major, and I declared psychology. So essentially I chose my major through process of elimination.
 
Close to graduation, I decided that I wanted a job in market research, where I could use my research and psychology skills. I spent 2 ½ months the summer after I graduated traveling back and forth to the Brandeis Career Services Center to print my resume and cover letters on fancy paper and apply for market research and marketing jobs. And as time went on, a bunch of other jobs. One of those jobs was as an administrative assistant on a research project at Simmons College School of Social Work. The PI called me to say that the project would soon have a research assistant position available, and that my record seemed more suited for such a position. And so I began a two-year position as a research assistant on a project studying adolescent mental health. My initial reasoning was that I would use the research skills I gained in the job to then be more marketable for market research positions.
 
I really can’t think of a turning point during that first year, but I enjoyed the position, and at some point decided that I wanted to continue in psych research and eventually become a professor. I knew I didn’t want to be a clinician, even though some of the topics that interested me often overlapped with clinical psych faculty’s research programs. So I decided to apply to developmental and social psych programs. I guess that’s the closest I’ve had to a turning point. I actually had trouble writing my grad school application statement because it felt as though there should be a description of a turning point, and I really didn’t have one. I applied to 13 programs, was admitted to five, relatively easily narrowed it down to two, and ended up choosing UCLA over Virginia based on several small factors, mostly from ruling out some things about Virginia.
 
In grad school I had some interest in parent-adolescent relationships, and ended up working with Marian Sigman on a project on parent-child conversations about emotionally charged topics, including sexuality. That’s essentially how I ended up having a career studying sexuality during adolescence and the transition to adulthood – because my interest in parent-adolescent relationships led me to a project that included communication about sex.
 
My large, pre-tenure NIH-funded study on gender roles and sexual behavior? Early in my faculty career, NIH had an RFA on Gender and HIV Risk and I thought, I could pull together a proposal on that. I did, with help of awesome collaborators and students, and it was funded on the first try. My move to UConn and position as department head? Someone emailed me and asked me to apply, and… I did. And here I am. There was (I assure you) no lifelong dream to become a chair or move up the administrative ladder.
 
It is not only my career that has led to serendipity in my life. Take my bridesmaids, given that bridesmaids often represent our closest friends from all periods of life (if, like me, you get married after 30). In addition to my sisters (serendipity in the extreme?), I met my best friend in college because she moved to my dorm floor the second week of classes; we met in the bathroom when I was watering some birthday flowers. I met my best friend in grad school (and long term conference buddy) because we worked in the same lab. And I met my best friend as a faculty member at Penn State at an event scheduled by the New Faculty Club in my first months there, where the youngest people in the room found each other. In fact, many people I met that night continue to be my close friends, even though I have moved away. And, I met my husband when, during my first year as faculty, he interviewed for a position in the same department and a few months later, became my colleague.
 
You may be wondering why I am sharing all of these life details. I am kind of wondering the same thing, honestly. But I think the reason is that a prevailing narrative in our society around career development is to “find what you’re passionate about.” Or, “tell me what inspired you to be a professor” or “when did you know you wanted to be a professor?” (I get asked these latter two frequently by students who are interviewing me as part of a First Year Seminar course requirement). For me, though, there wasn’t a turning point or a lifelong passion. Do I love doing research on adolescent sexuality development? Absolutely. Do I like my job as HDFS department head at UConn? More days than not. Do I think I have the most amazing friends? Can’t imagine life without them. Am I passionate about many of the things in my life? Definitely. But my journey to this point was often serendipitous, and I want others to know that there is nothing wrong with that.
 
“Career serendipity first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 27, 2018.”

It was a small moment – in August, in a blog post about reading for grad classes, I mentioned the importance of taking an hourly break for your body. I mentioned that I’m very bad at remembering to take breaks. And I mentioned that I’ve worked with people who set their timer to go off every hour as a reminder to stand up and walk around the building. Finally, I stated, “I will now do the same for myself, so I can practice what I preach. Done.”
 
And I did. For the past month plus (editor’s note: I’m writing this message in early October), just about every day that I’ve been in the office I set an hourly timer that reminds me to get up and walk around. My office is on the first floor, which also decreases my daily movement (though my car is parked ½ mile from my office, so that helps a bit). Now every hour, the timer goes off, I stand up, go up 2 flights of stairs, across the 3rd floor hallway, and then down the other stairs.
 
It isn’t about getting serious exercise. I recognize that 1 ½ minutes around the building is not going to improve my lung capacity, strengthen my heart, build muscle tone, or result in weight loss. But I believe it’s good for me in several other ways. On days that I have a lot of meetings, many of them happen in my office (I have a small table in here) and so I could go many hours without leaving this room. On rare days that I don’t have many meetings, I can end up at my desk without moving for an extended time. So it’s good for my 50-year-old body that I move my joints around every once in a while. It’s good for my 50-year-old eyes that I stop staring at my computer once in a while. And it’s good for my cluttered brain to pull away from whatever is on that computer screen for a couple of minutes every hour. I think it also makes me less likely to get sleepy in the afternoon.
 
Here is what September, the first full month I tried it, looks like compared to prior months:

You could interpret this in a few different ways: (a) It’s not that big a difference, only adding about 4-5 flights a day; it’s a huge difference, almost doubling her monthly flights climbed; (c) she sure doesn’t walk many stairs. I choose to interpret it as, on average, I’ve increased 4-5 flights a day, which works out to 120-150 a month, and I call that a win.
 
Another telling image is to think about not averages, but day-to-day variation. So, here is each day in the month of September:

You can see here that I have a cyclical pattern, walking many more stairs during the week than on weekends (perhaps I need an hourly timer at home, too?) and also, many fewer on Thursdays, which are often my work from home days.
 
Finally, you can look at what happens on a relatively normal (on the higher than average end) day:

You can see that most of the stair walking is from 10:00 (after I teach) until about 5:30 (when I leave the office most days), though at home there is also bedtime and… bedtime, sometimes all in the same day. Also note that I often don’t carry my phone around when I’m home so I probably miss a couple of flights of stairs at home.
 
Are there negatives to this new strategy? Not really. I sometimes forget to turn it off before a meeting and it goes off, loudly. In the beginning, I would get questioning looks from my colleagues who know my office is on the 1st floor and weren’t used to seeing me much in the stairway. But look – I’m already the crazy lady who sits on an exercise ball instead of an office chair, so I can handle the puzzled looks. And it gives me more opportunities to bump into my colleagues during the day, which I like. Plus, people are getting used to it and so now, more often than not, someone in the stairwell will say, “oh, are you on your stair walk?” Perhaps I will start a trend and we will all go up and down the stairs together hourly. But even if not, I’m happy to have incorporated this one, very small, very easy modification to my daily routine to improve my overall wellbeing.
 
“Small steps: Walking the stairs once an hour first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 8, 2018.”

How Zumba made me a better teacher
 
Karen Kelsky describes how Zumba is an amazing release for her. In Karen’s words, “Dance has given me back to myself.  It’s endorphin-pumping fun, it’s exercise, it keeps me fit, it lifts my depression, and opens up my heart.”
 
Spoiler alert: This post is not about how much I love Zumba. Or how it lifts my depression or serves as a release for me. Instead, it’s about how my ineptitude at Zumba helped me understand my students better.

Before I describe my ineptitude at Zumba, however, it’s important to note that I completely agree with Karen that everyone should find their own thing whether it’s “running, or art, or music, or yoga, or knitting, or walking, or meditation or a hundred other possibilities.” For me, right now, it’s yoga and barre class, and reading/listening to fiction, and Rubik’s cubes.  
 
I have always been a straight A student. How often do I say this? Do I sound like the annoying brainy girl at the desk next to you in math class? I know I say it a lot, but I think it explains aspects of my personality. I don’t think I’m unique here – I know a lot of people in academia can relate. So many PhD students and faculty have similar experiences/personalities. It’s a trait I carry with me into my job. Years ago when I was put in charge of an assessment plan for our department’s undergraduate program, and the previously submitted version received marks of “acceptable,” I immediately launched a 3-pronged approach to assessment to bring us up to “exemplary.” When I do my IRB online quizzes I tend to get 100% on each module (and if I don’t, I’m annoyed). When my son mastered solving the Rubik’s cube, I had to learn how to solve it. And then he mastered the 4X4, and subsequently, so did I. We figured out the 5X5 together.
 
So, I am generally highly motivated to do well, and I generally feel as though if someone teaches me something, I can learn it. But then I took Zumba. I mostly could learn the steps and follow along. But, what I couldn’t do, is look good doing them. I would watch the instructor – who was excellent – and I would try to do the same moves, and they were… not excellent. If you look at the videos in Karen Kelsky’s post – I looked nothing like her. I looked like an uncoordinated 40-something woman trying to do Zumba. Or just like brainy 15-year-old Eva trying to stand in a circle at the school dance with her friends and awkwardly move to the music. Most strikingly, there was an upper body move (which, after much googling, I’ve discovered is called the Reggaeton pump) that looked very cool on the instructor, and very ridiculous on me. No matter how I tried, I could not master that move, even though I felt I was mimicking the instructor.
 
During a Zumba class, I had an a-ha moment. I have had meetings with students, where I am trying to explain a concept to them, that seems very straightforward and clear to me. Negative reinforcement comes to mind. And of course, I believe my explanation is very straightforward and clear. It often seemed like they were working hard in the course, but they still couldn’t do well on the exam, or clearly explain concepts in their paper. And finally, I realized what they must feel like when I try to explain a concept to them. They just couldn’t get it, no matter how much I explained it or how straightforward it seemed to me. Like me and Zumba.
 
It reminds me of Gardner’s theory of multiple intelligences. I know it’s controversial. I know that many researchers have demonstrated that different domains of intelligence are highly correlated, and believe that there is an underlying IQ driving these domains. I don’t dispute those claims. And yet, I also don’t dispute that most of us are not equally talented in every possible domain. That is, even if ability in these domains is generally correlated and linked to an underlying factor, we still may have differential ability across domains. There is no way that everyone is equally talented in every domain. And, we may be more teachable in one area than in another.
 
This realization, this personal realization, definitely helped increase my compassion for students struggling with a concept. Sometimes faculty attribute students’ inability to comprehend to lack of effort. But we as instructors must also recognize that inability to comprehend doesn’t always indicate lack of effort. Sometimes, things that come easy to some of us take enormous effort for others.
 
“How Zumba helped made me a better teacher first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on November 1, 2018.”

A couple of years ago I wrote about whether you should do a post doc or not before looking for a more permanent job. Today I wanted to describe the different types of post docs that exist.
 
Let me start with a giant disclaimer, and one that I end up repeating a lot when we discuss these options in my professional development graduate seminar. If you are an international student looking for a post doc in the United States, your options are relatively limited, as you won’t be able to do an individual or institutional post doc funded by NIH (or a number of other governmental agencies). You cannot, unfortunately, be as picky in this situation. I always feel the need in class to say “I’m sorry” to international students as I discuss options more generally. Though since it’s not my fault, maybe I shouldn’t apologize…
 
So, I would say at least in my discipline, there are five different types of post docs (I started with four but added a fifth as I was writing):
 
1. Institutional training grants. This category includes T31’s from National Institutes of Health, which are relatively common in my discipline. There are several advantages to institutional post docs. You do not have to plan for them a year in advance – you can apply on a regular application cycle (often late fall or early spring for a fall start date). They usually come with protected time for writing/getting your own research done. And, they usually come with a fair bit of professional development training – activities such as support for writing papers, support for writing and submitting grants, and support for going on the job market. When the PI’s apply to renew the T32, they usually have to report on the current status of all of their alumni, which makes the team of mentors highly invested in their post docs’ success.
 
2. Individual training grants. For these training grants, you apply to do a specific research project with a training program, and if you get funded, receive a stipend as well as some research funds to carry out the project. Generally, doing such a post doc involves a relatively involved application, and you have to identify a mentor before applying, often a year or more in advance. An obvious advantage of this type of post doc is that you’ve identified your own project and training – so, if you want additional skills in neuroscience/statistics/prevention/whatever, you can identify a specific team of mentors, training site, and research project to carry out that project. The disadvantage is that you have to apply so early, that you often have to identify the site and mentors up to two years in advance to be able to write the application so far in advance with the training team. In addition to F32 applications through NIH, some other common ones related to our discipline include:
NSF SBE Postdoctoral Fellowship
Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship
AAUW’s American Fellowship
Fulbright (International project)
Ford Foundation Fellowship Program
 
3. Individual fellowships outside of academia: I do not know of as many of these, but they would include things like the SRCD social policy fellows program, where you go to Washington DC and use developmental science to inform public policy in the congressional or executive branch. These are great for individuals who want to either find work outside of a university setting, or are interested in more translational research and want to get a sense of how to make an impact with that research.
 
4. Post doc position on specific research grant. Sometimes, faculty advertise for a postdoctoral position where they pay a full time PhD to work on a specific research grant. One advantage of such a position is it is generally an option for international scholars – that is, there aren’t the same citizenship restrictions. Another option is that if there is a specific researcher you want to work with, and if he has funding, it provides an opportunity to do so. The disadvantage is that, because you are paid off of a specific grant, you will be working on that grant and may have less freedom to work on other projects or to publish your work from earlier grad school projects. A lot depends on the PI you work for. In some cases, the PI really wants a project manager and you may end up doing a lot of participant recruitment, organization, running participants, and/or data management. In other cases, the PI really may need someone to analyze and write up data, so you may actually have an opportunity to build your CV and get publications out. It’s really important to get a very clear sense of what the PI will expect from you before you accept this type of position.
 
5. Teaching post doc. Some universities now have teaching post doc positions. These often require that you teach a certain number of courses for 1-2 years. Sometimes they also include dedicated time for your own research writing. For students who want a career as faculty at a smaller liberal arts college, but who are graduating without much teaching experience, such a post doc can be a good experience. However, you often also have to have a decent publication record to get the job. It’s rare that top liberal arts colleges will hire faculty without a publication record, even if they have a strong teaching record. So, think about your goals, and your record, as you decide what you need during this period before going on the academic job market.
 
I haven’t even discussed all of the personal situations that might limit your options, particularly in terms of geographic mobility and partner issues. Basically, there is no one right type of postdoctoral position. It’s important to figure out both what your career goals are, what your constraints are, and what each specific post doc option looks like, and then find the best fit for you.
 
“What type of post doc should you do? first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 9, 2018.”

I recently described my Supermom/A Student syndrome. That’s a characteristic I have always had. That is, I’ve always felt the need to do the hardest/additional work if offered. Extra credit? Check. Take the harder level class? Check. Join the Honors Society? Check.
 
I have one child who takes after me in this respect. Do music practice every day because you are supposed to? Check. Do extra credit for elementary school classes? Check. Pick the hardest of three options for the 4th grade math project? Check. Do the PA reading challenge and read every book on the K – 3 and the 3 – 6 grade lists because you’re in 3rd grade? Check, and must be first in the school to finish. This past year, this child participated in the National History Day Competition because, in the child’s words, “It was clear from the teachers’ presentation about it that it’s what the smart kids do.” The same kid, in kindergarten, was in a study where they had to push a button to earn some kind of food reward. The kid wouldn’t stop pushing the button and finally had to be cut off due to time constraints [oh look, I found the published paper].
 
The other child, while also smart and creative and motivated in many ways (parent requirement to add this disclaimer here), doesn’t have the same inclination. This child often chose not to do extra credit – for this child, homework involves more breaks to read and stare off into space, so who has time for extra credit? This child only read the books on the PA reading challenge that were in the fantasy category – the child only wanted to read books of interest to the child. Music practice happens, sometimes, with prodding/reminders.
 
It’s my parenting inclination to try to push this child to do every extra thing. No you can’t play Wii if you haven’t done the extra credit assignment (“But Mama, I did all my homework…”). Why wouldn’t you try the National History Day Competition? “Because it just didn’t sound like fun to me and my friend.”
 
And so one day, in fourth grade, I noticed in this child’s homework planner something about bringing in a bean dish for extra credit. The child never raised it again. I asked about it a couple of times, and the child didn’t bite. Finally, I said okay, I’d let it drop. But somehow I couldn’t, so the morning of the sharing beans activity in school (honestly, it was a couple of years ago and I can’t remember the actual lesson plan), I ended up, without prompting, roasting chickpeas before school (an easy recipe that didn’t require a trip to the store). The child was grateful I had done it, but also would have been completely fine if I had not.
 
It’s taken me some time as a parent to recognize that sometimes it’s not my job as a parent to push my children to do things they are not motivated to do, or more specifically, to push my nature on my child. Yes, I should make sure that my child finishes homework – but perhaps extra credit homework should rely on intrinsic motivation and not parental nagging. Honestly, this particular child sometimes doesn’t finish all of the regular homework, and sometimes, that’s okay too.
 
I find it easy to parent the child who is similar to me, at least around issues of school and achievement. It’s more trying to parent the other child because the choices made aren’t always the ones I would make. It’s easy to want to push that child to make the choices I would make. But I’ve definitely worked on not pushing daily music practice if that’s going to make the child miserable or want to quit playing an instrument, or to let the child decide about extra credit work without my forcing the issue.
 
I think parenting this specific child has provided helpful life lessons to me. First, as an advisor -- I don’t always have to push each student to do every possible thing if the student isn’t motivated to do so, but instead, should support the student’s decisions, within reason. And also, for myself, I’ve learned a bit more that I don’t have to say yes to everything just because it’s one more thing I COULD do or because everyone else is doing it. I try to say no to more things at times, so that I am saying yes to the things that are important to me or that I’m passionate about, and so I can do the things that I say yes to better.
 
I think this lesson is important for graduate students as well. There are certain things that graduate students HAVE to do – there are required course and graduate milestones, there’s your dissertation. But beyond that, you don’t have to say yes to things just because someone thinks you should. Instead, you should be strategic about what you want to do. Let’s say you are being pushed to teach a class, because most students do so during their graduate career. If your career goal is to become a faculty member, then it may make sense to do so. But if your career goal has nothing to do with teaching, perhaps teaching isn’t the best use of your time. You do not have to go to every conference that your advisor goes to just because that’s what’s done. The list goes on… think about what is important for your career, and what is valuable to you, and focus on those decisions.
 
Yesterday I bumped into a former colleague who had been invited to be an associate editor. She said that her current colleagues were all telling her that it’s a great opportunity and it is great for her CV, and that she should do it. It seemed pretty obvious in talking to her that she wasn’t motivated to do it –that it wasn’t a task that interests her. I think the message she was receiving was that it would be helpful for going up for full professor. Yes, it’s important to get service to the profession in order to get promoted to full professor. But there are many pathways to get there, and being an associate editor is only one. For some people, editing tasks are really unpleasant, and I wouldn’t recommend someone take on that role unless they are excited about it. Which is what I told her. Don’t just say yes to something because you might be good at it – pick the things that you WANT to do.
 
I still have to fight the Straight A Student tendencies in myself, frequently. Sometimes it helps to have someone remind you that doing everything you COULD do isn’t always the best path for your goals.
  
“Why I roasted chickpeas at 7:30 AM first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on August 2, 2018.”

I was a straight A (if you include A-’s) student. My last B+ was freshman year of college (that’s 9 years of straight A’s by the end of grad school). I have what I sometimes refer to as A Student Syndrome. That is, I want to be good at everything I do, and I want to do everything I think I am supposed to do. A Student syndrome led me to hurt my knee in yoga class, even though I knew it would hurt my knee. Now I tell fitness instructors on the first day that I have knee (and back) issues, so that they check in on me if they think I’m doing something I shouldn’t.
 
So, when it comes to mom-ing, I have trouble letting things go. Part of it is definitely working mom guilt. Although some people argue that most women want to stay home full time with kids, I definitely don’t have that desire. When my kids were very young, I sometimes spent weekends counting the hours until I could get back to work. I am happy to work full time (a few fewer hours would be great, though!) and I don’t think I’ve damaged my kids because of it.
 
And yet, I do at times have guilt for the things I don’t do, and that guilt can lead me into Supermom mode.  I think I have this idealization that Stay-at-home moms can be 100% engaged in their kids’ lives and do every school activity and every Pinterest-y lunchbox stuffing, birthday party planning, school-project supporting thing possible. Of course, if I truly think about it, I imagine that Stay-at-home moms have unrealistic images of what moms who work outside the home are like, too. Perhaps they picture us always in high powered business suits sitting around boardroom tables in fancy office towers having important meetings over lattes (note to Stay-at-home moms – this is SO not my life).
 
I am fortunate that I have flexibility in my job, which allows me to do some things that I couldn’t do if I had a time card type job. I got to volunteer at field day. But I do have a tendency to take those opportunities farther than needed. For instance, my kids’ middle school has two days in the Fall when you can attend classes with your kid. I have two middle schoolers, but can’t spend 2 full days at middle school. Instead, I end up spending a couple of hours each year looking at my schedule and their schedules, and figuring out how I can get to at least 1 of every category of class (and there are eight categories), and of course, equal numbers for each kid, and meeting each teacher if possible. Then I talk to other moms who just zip in and out to a couple of classes, or don’t bother going at all.
 
Adding to the guilt is that a few years ago my kids started complaining that other kids just get to hang out all summer and play videogames and go to the pool, while they have to go to camp (Build Underwater Robots and Rollercoasters Camp! Nature Camp! Cooking Camp! All kinds of awesome, expensive camps). These complaints led to our annual Mama-Camp week, which is basically a staycation. Pre-planning involves lists of everything they want to do. And so, we achieve my kids’ idealized visions of what kids who stay home all summer do, crammed into one week. Whereas as I know for a fact that kids who stay home all summer get bored, and have to do chores, and often wish they could go to cool camps like their friends whose parents work outside the home.
 
When birthday parties roll around I have a tendency to start overplanning, even as I tell myself months in advance, Don’t overplan! This tendency has led to things such as the homemade, Which Greek God is Your Parent Quiz; Snacks to correspond to each Wings of Fire dragon clan’s food preferences; Field day bingo; and the most work ever, Spy Birthday Party, which at midnight the night before had to be totally revamped to be indoors due to impending thunderstorms.
 
Logical Eva – and Eva who will listen to her head and her experience – knows that these efforts are not necessary. Basically, give kids a yard and a bag of potato chips and they are happy at a birthday party. But A Student Eva, Supermom-aspiring Eva, thinks that I must do it all, and do it all well. Last year for Pi-Day, my kid wanted to bring in a pie. Could I have bought a pie? Of course. But no, I decided to make chocolate cream pie, from scratch, even making the pudding from scratch rather than using a box. Because 5th graders really know the difference. The class ended up with 5 pies that day, and only one was homemade. Similarly, at the end of school year party, kids could bring a snack from home. I imagined the Stay-at-home moms laboring over fanciful decorated cookies, and felt guilty sending my kids in with 2 batches of homemade brownies – only to learn that every other snack was store bought, mostly Doritos.
 
Why in the world do I do this? Would my kids suffer if they showed up to school with Doritos? Would teachers or other parents think less of me? I doubt it. Logically I know it’s mostly in my head. Generally, my kids would probably rather I spend more quality time with them rather than staying up too late making something unnecessary and then too tired to be present in the moment.
 
Tell me it’s not just me, that there are other moms (parents? Do dads ever do this?) out there with similar tendencies. And if so, let’s tell each other that it’s okay to be a B-student. And it’s also okay to sometimes say no to the bake sale or send your kid to school with a bag of Doritos.              
 
“Supermom Syndrome first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 19, 2018.”

If you’re like me, you always feel behind on your to do lists. You always feel not productive enough.
 
After I accepted the position of Department Head at UConn, I was talking to a colleague who knows me pretty well – he was Professor-in-Charge (PIC) of the Undergraduate Program while I was PIC of the Graduate Program at Penn State. And leading up to that, we had been colleagues for about 15 years. His biggest advice to me was not to go into the new job/department and Eva them (he didn’t put it in those words). That is, he advised me to slow roll my tasks – spend time in the first year listening to people, making lists of things I wanted to do, and making a 5-year plan to get them done, and do only a fraction (1/5 perhaps?) of those items in Year 1. He also told me that I had accomplished more in my two years as Grad PIC than most before me had accomplished in their full 5-year terms.
 
The latter part surprised me – I told him that in fact, I was leaving many things unfinished and felt that there were so many things I wanted to accomplish as Grad PIC that were not yet done.
 
And then he explained to me the numerator/denominator problem – which, honestly, I don’t know if he made up or had learned elsewhere. But it resonated with me.
 
The idea is that we often think of our productivity based on the denominator – all of the things we want to get done, whether completed or not. But when others consider our productivity, they usually focus on the numerator – all of the things we actually have accomplished. So, if we could focus more on our own accomplishments, rather than on what we want to accomplish but haven’t yet, we would feel better about ourselves.
 
Something similar happened after my first year as department head, when my new colleagues said they were appreciative of all I had completed in my first year, whereas I honestly felt I had barely touched the tip of the iceberg. Again, numerator/denominator.
 
I think that part of the problem is the way we approach tasks. For instance, I use outlook to organize my tasks. Once I complete a task, I have the satisfaction of marking it done in Outlook. But, I don’t then get to look at it my completed tasks regularly. Instead, what I see on a daily basis is all of the tasks I have to do – tasks, for instance, where I didn’t make the deadline so I have to change the deadline to a future date, or tasks that are upcoming. Here’s mine (I’ve removed the specific items):

It may be that my google spreadsheet of other people’s work in part appeals to me because I can see all of the past work highlighted in green. So, I actually DO regularly get to see the completed part of the denominator when I look at what is upcoming.
 
I’ve thought about this issue recently in my return to blogging, because I have been trying to blog all of my research group’s published papers in the past 3 years (2016 – current). Day to day, I think about the R&R I still have to finish, the former student’s manuscript that’s in my inbox to read, or the paper idea I haven’t made much progress on.  But blogging about recently published papers has been a great reminder of all of the publications in my numerator – I feel as though I’ve written many blog posts on papers, but I’m still working on 2016 papers. A quick skimming of my CV tells me that we have 17 published or in press papers and chapters since 2016. I’m pretty satisfied with that numerator, even if there is a lot remaining in the denominator and in my inbox.
 
I am not sure the most effective way to remind ourselves of our productivity, or all of the things we HAVE accomplished recently. As I mentioned, looking at my CV recently helped me. It also helps me when I have to write an annual report to our Dean about the department’s accomplishments and what I did over the past year. But those big ticket items also fail to capture all of the day-to-day minutiae we accomplish. So, I recommend you figure out a way to remind yourself of your numerator regularly. Yes, we have to focus on the tasks to come, but it can be helpful to remind ourselves of all we have done already.
 
“The Numerator/Denominator Problem of Productivity first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on July 5, 2018.”

I started teaching in 1998 at 30 years old and with a 2 month old PhD. My first class was an introductory adolescent development class with 200 students. I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. They were not. I did not do well at engaging them in discussions. They did not do well on my exams. I tried to share my enthusiasm for research, but it rarely worked.

And at some point (10 years later, to be exact), I had been teaching for a decade. My undergraduate courses were relatively large, ranging from about 200 students in a general education course to about 60 students in an upper level advanced adolescent development course. I was around 40 years old, and I was already jaded on teaching, with decades left in my teaching career. At that point, my jaded self would go into the first day of class with almost a me-against-them mentality, waiting for them to be too demanding or too whiny or for me to disappoint them somehow. They annoyed me. I prepared for revolts. When they came up with excuses, I was intolerant and unbending. It was not a healthy way to approach teaching. In addition, it was not a good way to earn students’ respect or admiration. Looking back on it, I don’t even know that I’d now argue that my perspective was unwarranted. I had dealt with a whole lot of plagiarism, cheating, lying (e.g., I couldn’t come to campus because of a snowstorm in my home town, when a quick search demonstrated, 0 inches of snow in that town), disrespect (at the time, reading newspapers in class was the equivalent of being on one’s phone today), and generally bad attitude.

I don't think I have many turning points in my life, but my teaching turning point was when my sister, 23 years my junior, started college. She was bright eyed and bushy tailed, though I imagine she doesn't appear that way in many classes.   Sometimes one event can shake us up, and for me, Ryan starting college did it. That personal experience brought a whole new level of empathy to me as an instructor. Ryan was someone I knew and loved and respected. But she was also some who, I am sure, sometimes skipped class or handed in assignments late. She was, in many respects, a normal 18-year-old trying to figure out who she was, and to figure out the balance of using her transition to adulthood to learn things in the classroom while also having a social life, making friends, and sleeping among other things.
 
Suddenly, my students weren’t a room full of young people out to game the system or get away with things.  They were real people, with human faults just like the rest of us. I went in wanting to figure out how to inspire them. I wanted to teach them things they could use beyond my exams. I wanted to connect to them. I think as faculty we feel as though students don’t see us as real people. But, the same is often true in reverse. It’s easy for us to forget that students are real people too, just lots of them at once, each with their own competing demands for their time and attention. Just like us, they have competing demands, whether those demands are things we might think of as “worthy” like caring for a sick parent or working three jobs to pay for college, or not-so-worthy, like staying out too late partying or oversleeping. But whatever the reason, they are human.
 
That semester, when my sister started college, I walked into the classroom with a whole new attitude. I didn’t walk in feeling it was me-against-them. I went in thinking about how they are each unique people with their own strengths and weaknesses and quirks. And I went in thinking about how they were people whose parents and siblings and other family members love them for the people they are. It completely flipped my attitude, and as a result, I believe, made me a better teacher. Even when a student emailed me about missing class, I tried to remember they were human, and sometimes humans oversleep. It doesn’t mean I automatically let the student make up the missed assignment, but I did try to have more empathy and compassion in my response.

I still ask questions and sometimes am met with blank replies. I joke about how I need my water bottle for awkward silences. Once I jumped on a table and threatened to stay there until someone answered my question, reminding them how clumsy I am and that my life was in their hands. I still get frustrated at times, when they do worse on a quiz than I think they should, or when someone emails me the day before an assignment asking me basic questions that are answered in the assignment guidelines. I had a student who failed my class the prior semester because she never came (not even to the exams). I emailed her at the start of the next semester expressing my concern, and she came to most classes and earned a solid B. I know that another semester I had a student who wanted to miss the class on abuse in relationships because she didn't think she can handle it. Sometimes students miss classes due to health problems. One semester another student's grandmother died -- really died -- and given that she had lived with her, she had been busy with her role as executor of her estate (and debt).  
 
I sometimes see myself slipping back into my former perspective. Last semester I had 290 students in an intro, general education course. There was a lot of management of excuses and missed assignments, and by the end of the semester, I probably had less compassion than I should have. It helps me to remind myself that any of those students could be my sister – someone who really does want to learn in college, who genuinely is a “good” person (whatever that means), but just like any human, trips up at times along the way. So on the first day of class this Fall semester, I’ll try to walk in and feel love for all of these students, and hope I maintain some form of general positive will through the semester.
 
“How I Became a Better Teacher When my Sister Started College first appeared on Eva Lefkowitz’s blog on June 28, 2018.”