But even with all the beauty and luxury, the heart of it stayed the same: time, intention, community. The courage to pause and ask: What do I really want from this career? What am I ready to let go of? What am I here to build?
Get a Life, PhD
Succeed in Academia and Have a Life Too
Wednesday, July 2, 2025
Why I Still Believe in Writing Retreats (and Why You Might, Too)
But even with all the beauty and luxury, the heart of it stayed the same: time, intention, community. The courage to pause and ask: What do I really want from this career? What am I ready to let go of? What am I here to build?
Sunday, February 18, 2024
Five Tips That Will Help You Thrive as an Academic Administrator
I have been in an administrative position for just over a year now. I started in January 2023. My position is unique. I am not a Dean or Provost. I direct a Center, but the role is unusual in that I am responsible for the physical building, the budget, the staff, the faculty, and the students. We have 20 staff members, 10 adjunct or visiting faculty, and about 200 students who live in the building at any given time. Our Center is akin to a very small campus.
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That's me on the left - moderating a conversation with our Provost. |
- Read books on leadership and people management. There are tons of books that offer guidance and most of the advice translates to the academy. I prefer the books that are based on empirical research over the ones that are just the insights of one successful leader.
- Block out two hours a day for “focus time.” Use that time to do tasks that require deep thinking. For me, that is sometimes my research and sometimes strategic planning. I enjoy writing and thus make time for it but my job also requires some deep thinking so I choose which of those two kinds of tasks I will focus on each day.
- Be ruthless about only working eight hours a day and not working on weekends. The tasks will fit into the time you allocate them. Try it before deciding it's impossible.
- Be ruthless about protecting time for self-care and connection with people who care about you. For me, this involves daily meditation, yoga, daily hikes with friends, and cooking and eating home-cooked food.
- Get clarity on your values and stay true to them. Only do the work if it’s meaningful to you.
Friday, September 9, 2022
How Time Blocking and Time Tracking Can Keep You on Track While Working from Home
This academic year, I am back on campus and back in the office, but our adaptation to remote life means I have more work-from-home days than I did pre-COVID. The semester is just getting started, but it looks like I will have at least 3 days a week where I can work from home.
I love working from home, at least part-time. But, I also find that I can spend the entire day in front of my screen all day without feeling like I have gotten very much done. Somehow the whole day goes by, and I still haven’t gone for a walk, cleaned my kitchen, or responded to all the emails. To address this issue, I decided to pull out my toolkit and see what tools are most useful for my work-from-home days.
Drawing from the infinite wisdom of Kerry Ann Rockquemore, Raul Pacheco-Vega, and Cal Newport, I developed a system for working from home that involves a weekly template, time blocking, and time tracking.
The first step is to develop a weekly template, which I explain in more detail in this post.
This semester, I am teaching just one class, but I have a fair number of commitments and thus have a lot of meetings. Thus, my afternoons are generally blocked off for teaching and meetings. My mornings are my prime time, so that’s when I write.
Here is my weekly template for this Fall semester.
This is just a template. I can copy and paste it into a new Excel tab and adjust it according to the time I wake up and the actual meetings and tasks I have for that day. For example, on Thursday, I woke up very early (thanks to jet lag) and had two meetings planned – one at noon and one at 3pm. Before doing my meditation, I made a plan for the day based on my commitments and aspirations (which included going for a walk and doing some virtual yoga).
I pretty much never do exactly what I say I am going to do. However, I more or less stay on track by time-tracking in 30-minute increments. On Thursday, I did write for two hours as planned, but not exactly in the time slots I had planned. When it came time to do yoga, a nap seemed more appealing. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, I had written for two hours and completed a pending review. I also responded to all the emails I needed to answer and went to my meetings.
At 4:30pm, when my last meeting was over, I felt empowered to shut down my computer and go for a swim.
If I hadn’t done the time tracking and time blocking, this kind of day – which started at 4:45am and ended at 4:30pm – could feel like a 12-hour work day. But, the data make it clear that I in fact worked for 7 and a half hours, and the rest of the time was spent napping, exercising, and taking care of my basic needs. The time tracking also made it clear that I could stop working at 4:30pm as I had a very productive day.
This system may seem a little extra to some of you. But, if you find yourself floundering while working from home or not getting the self-care you hope to get, I encourage you to try a version of this system of creating a weekly template, time blocking, and time tracking.
Friday, November 12, 2021
Three Things Your Academic Book Must Have: An Argument, a Theoretical Contribution, and a Structure
You need an Argument
Disinvestment and coercive investment in Black communities in DC have displaced and dispossessed Black residents, making gentrification through racialized reinvestment possible.
I explain all those big words in the book. But, after reading through the thread, I realized I liked the arguments that use simple language better. So I tried again:
The choice to use prisons and policing to solve the problems faced by Black communities in DC in the 20th century, instead of investing in schools, community centers, social services, health care, drug treatment, and violence prevention, is what made gentrification possible in the 21st century.
As you can see, you can disagree with this statement. And, per Helen Sword’s guidance, my argument answers my guiding question of what factors led to gentrification.
You need a theoretical framework
In addition to an argument, you need a compelling theoretical framework. The theoretical framework is where you explain how your argument is novel and how it relates to what we already know about your topic. You could have a great argument like: “Mass incarceration is the New Jim Crow,” but, Michelle Alexander already made that argument so it’s unlikely anyone would want to publish that.
An academic book does not need a literature review in the same way a dissertation does. If you don’t believe, me, pick up your favorite academic book and see how much lit review there is in the introduction. Often, it’s just a few paragraphs. It is almost never a full chapter.
The manuscript I am working on engages with three fields: housing inequality, the War on Drugs, and gentrification. Thus, I explain in the Introduction what we already know about these three areas and how my intervention is new.
The Introduction explains how Black communities, even those dominated by Black homeowners have been dispossessed; how poor, working, and middle-class Black communities across the city experienced disinvestment and then coercive investment, and how reinvestment is racialized today. As you can see, it all has to stay on the same theme – with a tight focus on the core argument.
You need a structure
Once you know what your core argument and interventions are, you need to figure out how you are building your argument throughout the book. Each chapter should contribute to your core argument.
I am doing this in my book manuscript by focusing first on disinvestment, then on coercive investment, and then on reinvestment. This is in line with my argument that disinvestment and coercive investment in Black communities in DC have displaced and dispossessed Black residents, making gentrification through racialized reinvestment possible.
I am not making the whole argument in each chapter, but instead focusing on one piece of the argument in each section, which includes two chapters.
Part I: Disinvestment
Ch 1: Disinvestment in Black DC
Ch 2: The Violence of Disinvestment
Part II: Coercive Investment
Ch 3: Crack in the Neighborhood
Ch 4: Bringing in the Feds
Part III: Reinvestment
Ch 5: Chocolate City No More
Ch 6: Racialized Reinvestment
There are other ways to build an argument. In my book Deported, I set the book up to follow a deportee’s journey, from growing up in the country of origin, to crossing the border, to growing up in the US, to getting into trouble in the US, to getting caught, to detention, and then to life after deportation. This structure allowed me to explain how global capitalism shaped each aspect of their migrant journey.
If you are having trouble envisioning how to build your argument, try using a mind map. This is where you pull out a pen and paper, write down your argument, draw a circle around it, and start drawing more lines and circles to visualize the connections you are making. This can help you see the elements of your argument and to make decisions about what chapters you need to write to build your argument.
Finally: Writing a book is an iterative process.
Don’t expect to sit down, write a book, and publish it as is. Instead, sit down, write a draft, stop, figure out what your argument is, rewrite the manuscript to fit your argument, and then revise your argument to fit your manuscript. Repeat this process until the manuscript is doing what you want it to.
Since it takes years to write a book, make sure you have a community to support you through this long process. If you don't know anyone working on a book, the Twitter thread has lots of people you could reach out to and ask if they are also looking for support.
Wednesday, February 24, 2021
How to Teach Engaging Discussion Sections as a Teaching Assistant
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Photo by M. Monk on Unsplash |
Tuesday, January 26, 2021
How to Write a Compelling TEDx Script: Revise, Get Feedback, Repeat
"If you read The Color of Law, then you know that federal policies created racial segregation. If you read The New Jim Crow, then you know that Black communities were devastated by mass incarceration. And, if you read How to Kill a City, then you know that gentrification has led to the displacement of working class and Black people from cities. Now, what you might not know is that segregration, incarceration, and gentrification are connected. My research into the neighborhood where I grew up has taught me that policies that created segregation laid the groundwork for mass incarceration, which in turn made gentrification possible."
Sunday, January 17, 2021
If You Want to Do a TEDx Talk, Start Preparing Now
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Tanya Golash-Boza delivering her TEDx talk |