How Prof. Tim Essington Works

Tim Essington, Professor

Department/program: School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences
Research focus: Marine Biology and Conservation

Tim Essington is a marine biologist whose research focuses on fisheries policy tools and fisheries management. In a recent feature article by the Whole U, Essington explained how comedy improv helped him learn to embrace mistakes. Now, he teaches an improv course for students in the environmental studies department, aimed at helping them communicate their research.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Positively

How do you manage your to-dos?

I am completely reliant on Todoist. I keep multiple to-do lists going, one for short term (daily), another for medium term (weekly +) and then another for long term (quarterly). Most importantly, I never use my email as a de facto to do list. All emails are either assigned to the ToDoist app, responded to, or deleted immediately.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

R, iCalendar, Chrome, Adobe Acrobat, MS Office, Matlab, Todoist

Where do you most often work?

On campus, in my office.

How do you manage your time?

I schedule time for everything. If it doesn’t go on my calendar, I won’t do it. I try to get blocks of dedicated time for particular activities, keeping in mind that my mind is usually mush between 2 and 4 p.m. but is much sharper from 8—11 a.m.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

Saying “no” to interesting opportunities.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in academia?

Scheduling time to do things that are important, and delegating tasks as much as possible. Like most people, I find the challenge lies in seeing the forest beyond the trees.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

I am very good at trying to reduce the amount of North Italian white wines in the world.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

The Sellout by Paul Beatty

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

Oh gosh, I laugh all the time. I perform at a local comedy improv theater, so every practice and every show I’m surrounded by very funny people. I’ve noticed that ever since I started doing this, I see the funny in everyday life much more clearly.

How do you recharge?

Exercise, work-free days with my spouse, and learning new things.

What’s your sleep routine like?

Rigid!

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Say what you do and do what you say.

Who’s your support system?

My amazing spouse. She’s simply amazing.

What pitfall do you consistently see students falling into?

Worrying that they aren’t doing “enough” and being overly critical of their own work.

What do your most successful students do?

They take ownership and leadership over their research, take risks and have a decent work/life balance.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

Did you enjoy this series? Check back Wednesdays during the Spring quarter for the latest mid-week motivation! While you wait, you can read more in this series, nominate a student or professor to be featured, or answer the questions yourself! (Students should answer the questions via this form; faculty should use this form. If you prefer to answer the questions over email, drop us a line at gradnews@uw.edu).

Work-Life Balance? For Real?

The aspiration of “work-life balance” is often recommended in our everyday lives, but this approach can be met with a sense of dread rather than a sense of hope. Really though, when the demands of work and life seem to be unending, how can we possibly keep it all in “balance”? This can feel so true, especially if the popular analogy to life balance–that of tipping scales–feels all together inaccurate. In actuality, most of us have more than one set of “scales” in our lives (e.g. graduate school, additional jobs on or off campus, family and community commitments, self-care, etc.), and they can often feel like they are in competition with each another. Below are some possible ways to rethink how we might approach working towards work-life integration rather than “balance.”

Integration. Some have talked about “work-life integration.” The idea is that a life worth living is better served if your passions and life commitments are incorporated or expressed in your daily work. This is not to say that we don’t have obligations that we just plain have to do. But this perspective does however allow us to ask ourselves, “During any given work week, do I have opportunities to feed my passions and core commitments in some way?”

Separation. That said, sometimes what refuels you is practicing setting clear boundaries between work and play or being able to volunteer with community groups or organizations that have nothing to do with graduate school work or a job. These are important projects too and—as David Whyte would say—are still integrated in that you are stoking your own fires in service to your work and your engagement in your life.

Reflection. How do you spend your days? Your weeks? Are you happy with your personal mix of commitments and activities? Is the mix serving you and contributing to your ability to be your best self –whether at work or at home with friends and family? Many of us need to do a mental “check-in” on these questions every few months or so, and when necessary, adjust the mix. The aspiration of “work-life balance” is often recommended in our everyday lives, but this approach can be met with a sense of dread rather than a sense of hope. Really though, when the demands of work and life seem to be unending, how can we possibly keep it all in “balance”? This can feel so true, especially if the popular analogy to life balance–that of tipping scales–feels all together inaccurate. In actuality, most of us have more than one set of “scales” in our lives (e.g. graduate school, additional jobs on or off campus, family and community commitments, self-care, etc.), and they can often feel like they are in competition with each another. Below are some possible ways to rethink how we might approach working towards work-life integration rather than “balance.”

We hope that these strategies for work-life integration are useful to you. Also, please let us know if you have other tips or strategies, and we’ll share them out!

Best,

Kelly, Jaye, and Ziyan

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professor Carolyn Allen’s class of first year doctoral students in English, who inspired this reflection.

Additional Resources

Work-Life Balance Vs. Work-Life Integration, Is There Really a Difference?, Rachel Ritlop
Work Life Integration: The New Norm, Dan Schawbel
Work/Life Integration, Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley

We hope that these strategies for work-life integration are useful to you. Also, please let us know if you have other tips or strategies, and we’ll share them out!

Best,

Kelly, Jaye, and Ziyan

Acknowledgements

Thanks to Professor Carolyn Allen’s class of first year doctoral students in English, who inspired this reflection.

Additional Resources

Work-Life Balance Vs. Work-Life Integration, Is There Really a Difference?, Rachel Ritlop
Work Life Integration: The New Norm, Dan Schawbel
Work/Life Integration, Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley

How Laura Koehn Works

Laura Koehn, Ph.D. Student, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences

Neighborhood: Fremont
Area of study, as you would tell your advisor: Fisheries management
Area of study, as you would tell your family: Marine ecology

Laura Koehn studies interactions between forage fish, predators and forage fisheries in the California Current. She is the recipient of several scholarships and grants, including a North Pacific Marine Science Organization travel award and a Pacific Seabird Group Travel award this year. In 2015, Koehn received an honorable mention for the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. As an undergraduate at the UW, she studied penguins in Argentina with Dee Boersma and The Penguin Project.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Effectively

How do you manage your to-dos?

I write to-do lists in a notebook or day planner.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

R studio, Dropbox, Excel, Gmail

Where do you most often work?

My office.

How do you manage your time?

When I have a bunch of things that need to get done, I tackle what I’m most interested in working on first, unless there is something with a nearer deadline. I also like to give myself deadlines for smaller tasks that make up a bigger task.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

I use the people around me as resources when I don’t know answers instead of endlessly Googling/searching.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in school?

Focus on small chunks of work to accomplish bigger tasks, that way you feel good about completing something sooner. Take breaks — if you really can’t focus, it’s better to take a 15 minute or so break and get some fresh air than continue to try and struggle through. Alternate between tasks you find fun and those that are mundane or hard.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

Riding the bus.

What are you currently reading? For pleasure, if possible.

The Monsters of Templeton by Lauren Groff

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

When I was cooking an egg tonight and went to flip it and dropped it off the stove.

How do you recharge?

Going for little adventures around town — trips to bookstores, new breakfast restaurants, etc.

What’s your sleep routine like?

I usually get to bed around 11 p.m. and wake up around 7:30 a.m. I get at least eight hours of sleep the majority of nights. However, my cat wakes me up a lot in the middle of the night so my sleep is interrupted, which I don’t recommend.

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Know how to communicate your science to any audience.

Who’s your support system?

My boyfriend and the other ladies in my lab. And my cat.

What do you wish you had started doing sooner in grad school?

Stating my thoughts, opinions and ideas more readily and openly at group meetings, with my advisory committee, and during collaborative projects — i.e., being more confident in my own ideas.

Stopped doing sooner?

Neglecting my health. I wish I had stopped not leaving time to exercise and take care of myself.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

From an Overworked TA

The class I am a TA for requires 12 hours of student interaction and about half a day of preparing materials. Every week. This is way more than the 20 hours/week that I am paid to do. The instructor knows this and had originally requested twice as many TAs as we have, but the department, being broke, only assigned two of us for this awful job. This particular class is known to be this way, as I have learned from talking to past sufferers. I have been TA-ing for two years now and have noticed a wild disparity in the workload for different classes. My question is: how is this fair? The department pays everyone the same amount, still how is it that some TAs get away with just 4 hours of work while others have to do upwards of 20? Since this is an issue of the department, I don’t know how to proceed. The officials in the department get very defensive when asked this. I don’t want to risk not being considered for future TA positions and am therefore not going to pursue the topic with them, but isn’t this just exploitation of us students by those in power? If the department has no money, they should figure out a better way to do this than exploit two students every  quarter (yes, this class is taught every quarter). I am at a loss here and am losing my sanity not finding time to do anything else that actually matters for my Ph.D. Please help. –Anonymous

This week’s answer is provided after consultation from the Labor Relation’s Office.

Yikes. I’m sorry this TA-ship has been such a negative experience for you. Fortunately, you have resources at your disposal to help you resolve some of these issues.

You’ve said you do not wish to pursue these issues with your department. But you should know all academic staff employees are covered under a collective bargaining agreement by UAW Local Union 4121. If you do want to file a grievance against your department, the Union will help you do that. A Union representative urges Academic Student Employees to remember that addressing workplace concerns is time-sensitive under the Union contract.

Another resource available to you is the Office of the Ombud, which provides a space for members of the UW community to voice their concerns and develop plans for addressing difficult situations. The Ombud is easily accessible, with offices on all three campuses. Students contact the Ombud to discuss a range of issues including TA appointments. They are your go-to for addressing problems with the department’s culture. They’ll advise you on your situation without starting a formal complaint or grievance, and they won’t contact your department about the matter unless you ask them to do so.

Best of luck!

Ask the Grad School Guide is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guide doesn’t know the answer, the guide will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guide is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.) Submit a question for the column →

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How Alex Bolton Works

Alex Bolton, J.D. ’16, (former) GPSS President

Department/program: Law
Neighborhood: Ballard and Orting
Area of study, as you would tell your advisor: Law
Area of study, as you would tell you family: Law, with an interest in state government and higher education

Alex Bolton, J.D. ’16, bleeds purple and gold. He earned his B.A., a M.P.A. and his J.D. from the University of Washington, and was named to the Husky 100 in 2016. Keeping with his service to the UW, he was President of the Graduate & Professional Student Senate from 2015-2016. He has worked as a legal intern for the Washington State Senate Committee Services and as a Law Clerk for the Washington State Office of the Attorney General.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Strategically.

How do you manage your to-dos?

Prioritize, delegate, write lists and use email as a de facto list.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

Email, calendar, Twitter

Where do you most often work?

I do my GPSS work at the office, and my school work at the library.

How do you manage your time?

Prioritize and review my calendar each morning.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

Being in the office and available — I think it helps avoid emails and additional meetings.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in school?

Learning how to prioritize, and often realizing that not everything is going to get done. Properly valuing sleep has helped as well to make sure that I am more productive while awake. I have flirted with the minimal sleep boundary a little too much this year.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

Listening.

What are you currently reading? For pleasure, if possible.

Astoria by John Jacob Astor and Lost Pacific Empire: A Story of Wealth, Ambition, and Survival by Thomas Jefferson

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

The Grinder.

How do you recharge?

Sleep, spending time with my girlfriend and her two daughters, traveling, hiking, Husky sports.

What’s your sleep routine like?

This year, not enough during the week. I try to get no less than six hours a night. Before this year, I shot for eight hours, and usually got seven hours.

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Nobody’s going to die if you don’t do it perfect.

Who’s your support system?

My girlfriend, best friends from undergrad and friends I have made through GPSS. Coach Petersen.

What do you wish you had started doing sooner in grad school?

Prioritizing working out (I still haven’t).

Stopped doing sooner?

I weaned off of coffee somehow and switched to tea during law school. I wish I would have done that sooner.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

Beyond “Plan B”: Crafting Your Career Journey

With today’s careers, it is more common than ever before to change directions multiple times in your life. This can happen in the course of a graduate program where perhaps the career you came looking for now looks different to you as your experiences have grown. We have an on-going theme in Core Programs of exploring diverse career trajectories. Below, we emphasize a few lessons shared by Philosophy alums at a recent panel, who are working in very diverse sectors.* Whether or not you are in a Humanities, Social Sciences, or a STEM field, these insights may be of use to you:

Beyond Hoops. We know there are many obligations and milestones to completing a graduate program. Rather than (only) thinking of these requirements as hoops to jump through, take some time to reflect upon the career skills you will gain from them over time—transferable career skills you can utilize for many jobs inside and outside of academia. For example, even when it’s not apparent to you at first, one skill set you develop when completing a thesis or dissertation are project management skills. Skills under project management can include, organization (outlining and prioritizing tasks that need to be completed), time management (setting up and meeting deadlines that are realistic), synthesizing complex ideas and details succinctly (writing up your project), and communication (meeting with advisors to state, clarify, and/or revisit your goals and expectations).

Beyond Job Titles. Instead of focusing solely on job titles during your job search, consider the kind of work you want to do and the kind of setting you would like to work within. What strengths do you have, and where are those best expressed? Recruiting expert Christian Lépolard offers these guiding questions to help you think expansively about your job search, “What is your ultimate career goal, inside and outside of your current organization? What hard skills (practical and theoretical), knowledge, and soft skills do you need to possess in order to get there? What skills do you already have and which ones do you need to acquire? What skills will this next role bring you?” Read more from Lépolard’s article. We would also add, what kinds of tasks and projects fuel your passions? What contribution do you want to make? How do you prefer to spend your time? Reflecting on these questions can help you find a range of ways you might be able to do your best work, rather than limiting yourself to certain job titles.

Beyond a “Career Path.” If we shift our thinking away from the idea of a “career path” (often imagined as linear) towards the notion of a career journey, then we open ourselves up to change, flexibility, and opportunity. Sometimes you just need to get your foot in the door at an organization or institution. Start out with a short-term internship (or in other instances, see if there are volunteer positions), as this experience will help you determine if you will enjoy working there and if the work and the workplace culture allow you to thrive. The right kind of entry-level position can open more doors quickly once you shine. It may not be a straight shot through to your dream job, but you increase your professional networks and get to showcase your talents along the way! Also, think broadly about a range of jobs that match your technical and transferable skills. Career strengths assessments such as this free one can help you do just that.

Spring can be a job search season for you, or perhaps a chance to line up more growth opportunities once summer arrives. It can also be a time to consider making a 1-1 appointment with a UW career advisor who can help give you feedback on your resume or CV. We are cheering for you – let us know how it is going!

Best,

Kelly, Jaye, and Ziyan

*Acknowledgements to panelists Summer Archarya, Dustyn Addington, Karen Emmerman, and Ann Owens from the Philosophy Branches Out event. This event was held on February 28, 2017 at UW Seattle and was co-sponsored by the UW Philosophy Department, the Simpson Center for the Humanities, and Core Programs in the Graduate School.

How Prof. Scott Freeman Works

Scott Freeman, Principal Lecturer

Department/program: Biology
Research focus: Teaching — course innovations and their impact on student learning

Scott Freeman is known on campus as a champion of active-learning strategies. A lecturer in Biology, he employs flipped-classroom learning techniques in his courses, and students are responding with higher GPAs and lower fail rates. A former UW graduate student himself, Freeman earned his Ph.D. in zoology in 1991, and after a post-doctoral fellowship at Princeton, returned to the UW as Director of Public Programs at the Burke Museum. Freeman was a recipient of the UW Distinguished Teaching Award in 2010.

Work

Give us a one-word description of how you work:

Lots.

How do you manage your to-dos?

Hand-written notes, also sticky notes on my computer start-up screen.

What are your essential apps, software or tools?

Microsoft Office Suite (standard stuff), Acrobat Professional, DropBox, Google Docs (less so).

Where do you most often work?

My office in Hitchcock Hall.

How do you manage your time?

Start work in the very early morning, when there few distractions. Be disciplined about web surfing.

What is your best time-saving shortcut?

Bike commute as exercise.

What are some of your productivity strategies you’ve honed over your years in academia?

Say no to travel (or research or service) opportunities unless they are particularly high impact. Teach the same courses over and over and make them better each time, versus many new preps.

Life

What mundane thing are you really exceptional at?

Telling Toyvo and Lena jokes.

Who are Toyvo and Lena?

Sometimes called Ole and Lena jokes, they are jokes told in a heavy Swedish accent about first-generation Scandinavians in Minneysotor. I mean Minnesota.

What are you currently reading for pleasure?

Small Wonder by Barbara Kingsolver

What’s the last thing that made you laugh?

Changes every few minutes.

How do you recharge?

Work in the woods (reforestation project); raise puppies for a service dog agency. Weekly dinners with family from the area.

What’s your sleep routine like?

In bed by 10 p.m., up by 5 a.m. or 6 a.m. Sleep until 7 a.m., or even 8 a.m. on weekends. Here you can find catalog when you can purchase peptides easily, fast shipping from US

Inspiration

What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?

Get back up, and keep going.

Who’s your support system?

My spouse, family and friends.

What pitfall do you consistently see students falling into?

Self-doubt is number one; for some, poor time management.

What do your most successful students do?

Focus. And believe in themselves and the importance of their work.

How UW Works was inspired by LifeHacker’s How I Work.

Web-based Flash Cards

The free app Anki offers the effectiveness of flash cards without the hassle.

Funding options outside your department’s TA/RA-ships

Why are most RA/TA positions open to Masters AND PhD students? Unless you’re an exceptional Masters student, it’s almost impossible to compete against PhD students for positions that are open to both, as PhD students usually have more experience/education. Why not have RA/TA positions that are only for Masters students so they can reduce the amount of student loans they have to take out and increase their experience/desirability for future employers? Masters students typically receive less funding (other than loans) than PhD students since, at least in the School of Public Health, PhD students are usually part of a research team for their dissertation. –Anonymous

December 2018: This response has been edited slightly to reflect changes in UW’s job boards and to provide more widely applicable advice.

This week’s answer is courtesy of Helene Obradovich, director, UW Graduate School Office of Fellowships and Awards

Individual academic programs determine which of their students are prioritized for funding, and what type/duration of funding. In some academic programs on campus, all Ph.D. students get guarantees of funding, but master’s students may not get any kind of commitment with admission. Other academic programs may guarantee funding to a portion of their PhD students and a portion of their master’s students. Many of these decisions rest on the amount of available funding that the department has, whether they offer coursework that requires the assistance of TAs, how much grant funding faculty have, etc. The vast number of different graduate programs in disciplines that span the academic spectrum means that departments, schools and colleges all have a different focus in their graduate student funding opportunities.

What you also seem to be asking, though, is “how do I find funding if my own department doesn’t provide opportunities for RAs or TAs?” In that case, we highly recommend that you do several different things:

Because hiring decisions are made by individual units on campus, inquire with other units to see if they hire students from outside of their department for TA or RA positions. For instance, if your undergraduate major happened to be in Biology, you might contact that department to see if they ever hire TAs from outside their own student population. If you have knowledge of a language, you could do the same with a unit that offers that language instruction on campus.
Occasionally there are administrative units that hire graduate students into SA (staff assistant) or RA positions. Centers, libraries, and other departments that don’t have a ready supply of their own graduate students will advertise those positions to the general campus population. Resources to help you in this search include the UW Jobs website (look under the “academic student employee” category), the Graduate Funding Information Services blog (GFIS, in the Library), and Handshake through the Career & Internship Center. There’s not a particular time of year that all departments are hiring ASEs, so it’s something you should to check on regularly.
I highly encourage you to check with GFIS. Not only is their blog really helpful for funding opportunities of all kinds ( you should definitely subscribe!), GFIS also helps graduate students search various funding databases for opportunities that suit their background.
Lastly, do not underestimate the power of networking. Make it known to the faculty who teach your classes that you’re interested in TA and RA opportunities. Talk to other master’s students who appear to have landed TA and RA positions and find out how they landed them. Don’t limit yourself to speaking only with people in your department!

Finally, share your concerns with your department administration and even possibly your school/college administration. While in almost all cases they are dealing with prioritizing a finite amount of available funding, they should absolutely be aware of how their decisions are affecting their students on an ongoing basis.

Ask the Grad School Guru is an advice column for all y’all graduate and professional students. Real questions from real students, answered by real people. If the guru doesn’t know the answer, the guru will seek out experts all across campus to address the issue. (Please note: The guru is not a medical doctor, therapist, lawyer or academic advisor, and all advice offered here is for informational purposes only.) Submit a question for the column →