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Data-driven Marketing for Theory and Practice

2022 – My year in numbers!

12/9/2022

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 Last year, I started tracking my data and wrote a blog post about it.

I primarily track two types of data: Work (e.g., hours logged on research, teaching) and health (e.g., daily workouts, calories consumed, body measurements).
 
2021 stats: In 2021, I spent 932 hours working on my top 6 research projects. I completed over 250 hours of workouts and lost over 20 lbs with a 5% drop in body fat.
 
It’s a bit soon to summarize 2022 and the December data aren’t in yet – but I wanted to take an early look at the year (minus December).
 
2022 stats: In 2022, so far, I spent 818 hours working on my top 5 projects with an additional 59 hours exploring 7-8 new ideas of which only 2 have continued and stuck with me. Killed 5 new project ideas this year! Taught at least twice as many classes as 2021.

Of course, all this is based on the projects and hours I am able to track subject to some measurement error. Many "new ideas" never make it to this set. ​So these numbers should be interpreted as lower bounds. 
 
My key trends @ work:


  1. Expanding the pie: My total tracked hours of work in 2022 (minus December)  were 30% more (!!!) compared to 2021. I am amazed that I could continue putting in the hours towards research given that my work commitment to my teaching doubled in the 2022 calendar year; I taught 3 courses in the Spring (one carry-forward from 2021) and 2 in the Fall (with Spring 2023 off teaching) + a 4-week iMBA course!
  2. Exploitation-exploration trade-off: I spent more time on fewer research projects (still too many IMO). I also more actively used a “walk away” strategy; I was more deliberate about walking away from projects early on. I used two main criteria: Is this a project I want to work on for the next 3-5 years i.e., does it align with my research interests? Is this likely to be impactful i.e., does it have a clear contribution?
 
My key trends with fitness:

With fitness, my main goal this year was maintenance. I continued to keep the 20lbs I lost in 2021 off and maintained my 250 or so workouts with lots of long runs/cardio in the first half of the year and transitioning to mostly strength workouts in the second half. 
 
Overall – what a year it’s been!

​More details below for those who love to see the data as much as I do.


(1) Expanding the pie: 30% more hours in 2022

2022 vs. 2021 data!

Logged more hours in the summer this year compared with 2021. Thanks to Thanksgiving, the month of November in both years was pretty good for home/family time. 
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(2) Exploitation-exploration trade-off

Invested primarily in my 5 main projects in the early part of the year with over 60% time on just 2 of them. Both are now (re)submitted. Fingers crossed!
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Tried out new ideas and teams more in the second half of the year. I am pretty sure I didn't track my time on these ideas properly but spent about 59 hours as a lower bound:
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What's in a Number?
​Key “qualitative” milestones @ work this year

Hours worked is a limited measure; it mostly reflects the work that went in and my priorities. More hours do not always translate to more outcomes, but they do signal to me that I am enjoying the process and using my time well. The outcomes are always mixed -- and often beyond our control. This is a humbling realization. 

Research progress: For me, this year started with a major setback. I submitted a major revision in January that turned into a third round rejection for a paper I have spent at least 1,000+ hours since I started tracking in 2021 (and several more during my PhD). The summer was also challenging, as several projects moved slower that I'd have liked. However, the year is ending on a high note. The summer projects I did push forward are now submitted. I also received a conditional acceptance on a paper with a relatively large team, where I am not a lead author, but one that still feels great as a nice closure to years of teamwork! I also pushed forward a solo-authored paper this year, which is now a working draft (yay!) and no longer on the back-burner. Finally, I submitted my first ever NSF grant proposal as a co-PI with a team from education and computer science. 

Teaching highlights: I have been a proponent of MOOCs for a decade. This year, thanks to the Gies College, I was able to teach in the online space. I started teaching in our online iMBA program and also offer
 a MOOC version of marketing analytics. I filmed about 1-2 hours of content in the summer to introduce causal analysis in this course after I took it over from the previous instructor. Lots of additional changes and revamp is in the works. Excited to teach a course with over 17,000 learners. 

This year, I also took on an undergrad course on marketing strategy, in addition to my marketing analytics course for MS students. I love our undergrads. We had fun with the Markstrat simulation -- and it was as much a learning curve for me as it was for them! If you want to learn more about how you can use Markstrat, watch my "teaching webinar" on this link (starting at about 17:30 minutes).

Finally, my marketing analytics class that had once struggled with enrollments exceeded 50 students this fall!


Other stuff:
This was also the year of conferences for me. Since the pandemic subsided, I was excited to get back into the in-person conference mode. I gave invited talks at Wisconsin School of Business (twice this year!) and Cornell, and also attended conferences at Emory, Duke, Texas A&M, UChicago, and the University of Tennessee! All of this in addition to a few amazing weeks in the summer at the University of Toronto. Grateful to have a great community! 

I also presented my work widely within the Illinois community and presented my research at the Grainer College of Engineering, at the Center for Social and Behavioral Studies, and at the Gies 5th anniversary celebration. 

Workout summaries!

When I am not working, you can pretty much always find me at the gym. I stayed consistent this year with my 5-6 am workouts.

​I completed at least 200 workouts in Jan-Oct 2022. I started the year focusing on running -- and was able to get to 9 miles on the treadmill before I terribly injured my foot and had to go into physical therapy. I transitioned to other types of workouts in the second half of the year, including spinning/cycle classes and yoga. I kept up with OTF (i.e., Orange theory) for the community aspect, but plan to discontinue to focus more on my upper-lower splits. 
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I was also consistent with tracking my food. This was particularly challenging during my travels, but I recently hit a "550 days of food logging" milestone so I plan to stick to it. My calorie goals through the year varied between 1600-2000 calories depending on my goals in different phases. I did't see much difference based on my calorie consumption on different workout days this year either. 
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I started with a maintenance goal for my body composition and ended this year close to where I started! This is a big win given my running injury in March, getting COVID in June, and traveling non-stop for conferences. I hope I can ramp up my fitness goals and balance work-life a bit better next year. Sometimes, less is more!

Last year, I got suggestions to track sleep and heart rate. With my Apple watch, this is much easier now. It tells me I sleep around 7 hours and have a resting heart rate of 50 bpm. Should have more data on this next year. 
What kind of data do you track? 

How I collected these data
 
Research project data: I use a mobile/web tool called Toggl that allows me to set up various buckets of projects I work on. All I have to do is hit play when I begin working on a project and pause when I stop. Most of the times, I do remember to track it. If I forget to stop it, Toggl sends me an timely email nudge to go in and pause it, so I guess with some accuracy what time I stopped working. For the most part, I can correctly see where my time is going with some margin of error, of course.
 
Fitness data: I use a combination of apps to track my fitness journey, including MyFitnessPal for nutrition, the Orangetheory app and heart rate monitor for OTF workouts, and my own filming skills (iphone camera, really) to keep track of non-OTF strength workouts.
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Awarded the Emerging Scholar honor by the Retail & Pricing SIG at the summer ama, 2022

8/22/2022

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TUNE IN: Listen to My podcast interview on the future of higher ed and Student Engagement

8/11/2022

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This Simple Nudge Can Get Students More Engaged in Online Courses

6/29/2022

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The pandemic taught many of us that online learning is possible. What is less clear is how to do it effectively. In my op-ed for EdSurge, I discuss findings from my recent research on engagement in online learning platforms.
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June 2022 in Toronto: Taking an "Ultra-mini sabbatical" (UMS) as a junior faculty

6/24/2022

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This post describes my recent research visit to the University of Toronto in June 2022. It's meant to serve as a potential guide for other junior faculty interested to plan a research visit (i.e., an ultra mini sabbatical, or ums). I cover topics, such as how I started thinking about ums, how I planned it, what helped me get the most out of it and how you can still have fun while working and traveling.


​I recently discovered that many junior faculty and students have found my blog and informal musings about academic life in #marketing useful. How did I discover this? At the virtual Marketing Science conference, I “ran into” (at the Gather Town virtual simulation) at least three PhD students from three different schools who said that they had read my blog (and my papers – whoa!) and that it helped them decide to pursue their PhD. One even said that I MUST continue writing these posts.
 
In the spirit of believing that maybe I do have something useful to say, this post is dedicated to a recent experience I had: a short research visit to another university, i.e., University of Toronto, over the summer. I think of this visit as an ultra-mini sabbatical or ums, just like the filler word umm, symbolizing a pause, although a deliberate one.
 
For those of you who don’t know me, I’m currently finishing my second year as an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This means that a fair bit of my dissertation research is wrapping up (hopefully) and that I’m on the cusp of something exciting i.e., developing new papers and crafting my research identity. All of this, while teaching three different courses including an online MBA course and MOOC on Applying Data Analytics in Marketing, mentoring PhD and Masters' students, and serving my profession, department, and school in various ways.

So, what was I doing in Toronto? What prompted my visit? What were the pros and cons, and how did I make the most of it?
 
Origin of my ums
 
I first started thinking about ums when I saw a Twitter post by another assistant professor of marketing, saying he was going to spend some time in Italy visiting another school. Some universities have a structure and a more formal process for visiting scholars but for most, if you know someone there, perhaps a senior mentor, it could be worth exploring informally if the visit makes sense.
 
The purpose of these visits can vary greatly depending on what you want out of them.  You can meet and learn about various faculty in the department, get feedback on your papers, start new collaborations, and work on existing projects if you already have co-authors at that school. Since a full sabbatical is often not feasible or recommended for junior faculty, a mini sabbatical is a potential path that gives you more time compared with a typical 2-day visit for a research seminar but is shorter than a one-year commitment.  
 
I wanted to visit the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto for various reasons. First, I had visited them for a job talk during my academic job market year. They had seen my job market paper during my campus visit. In fact, the feedback I had received during my presentation and meetings there had already been super helpful on my earlier drafts. This is also the paper I’m currently revising and one that could benefit from immediate feedback before I sent it back to the journal. Second, they’d been very warm and receptive during my last visit, and I had since been in touch with several of the faculty there. One of their former PhD students is also my very good colleague and friend at the U of I and I also know her co-authors well. Third, I have overlapping research interests, both in methods and topics, with multiple faculty members in their marketing group. When I wrote to them exploring a potential visit, I also learned that most faculty I’d want to meet with was around in the summer. Finally, my cousin had serendipitously just moved from New Delhi to Toronto in May. So, I could also get to see her.
 
Planning the ums
 
The two big considerations for planning the ums are the visit timing and budget.
 
The timing is important for both strategic and tactical reasons.

Strategically, it makes sense to visit when you have projects at various stages in your pipeline. Depending on the faculty or PhD student you are meeting and the amount of time you have with them, it could help to have some advanced papers waiting revision, new working papers that are not yet submitted and a few new ideas you may be on the verge of starting or may have collected data for.

Tactically, my visit was ideal during the summer. At least in 2022, summer is the only time I don’t teach (since I’ve borrowed my future Spring ‘23 teaching into Fall ‘22). This is also a summer when the global pandemic has subsided, and people are more available to meet in person. Depending on the school and department, it might also make sense to visit during your non-teaching semester if more faculty members are around at that time and/or you want to attend their regular seminar series, etc. Paperwork, such as getting a work permit in another country, may also influence the timing of visit. Finally, the timing should also make sense personally, especially if you have children and may have to visit with family. I have two dogs and a cat, and my husband was more than happy to watch them. His work is also only a five-minute commute from our home, so he could walk them during his lunch hours.
 
The budget for the visit is another important consideration, particularly when visiting a major (and expensive!) city. Most schools can support accommodation and travel for a few days if you are giving a talk but will not be able to support longer stays. They might be able to offer an office or working space, access to the building, and Internet credentials. One way to fund an ums is to set aside some of your own research and travel/conference funds. You can also combine the trip with a conference in that area or close to the airport you’re flying from, if you don’t live near an airport. I was going to drive from Champaign to Chicago to present at the Advances with Field Experiments conference, so I planned my visit right after that. Chicago is also the nearest airport for me to fly to Toronto, so I flew from there directly.

​Another suggestion for keeping the visit affordable is to explore accommodation options on campus. I was able to stay at New College Residence at one sixth the cost of a hotel. Living close to the campus you’re visiting also allows you more flexibility (and less Ubers!). If you’re a gym-fanatic like me, there are also always free gym trials or short-term memberships available. Finally, if your accommodation provides a kitchen, consider traveling with basic cooking equipment. I packed a small pan with me and pretty much made myself an egg-white omlette every morning for breakfast. This is also healthier option, especially since you’ll likely end up getting several meals outside for lunch meetings, etc.
 
During the ums
 
I have a bunch of advice for what to do during the ums.
 
First, make sure everyone (at least anyone you plan to meet) in the department knows you are visiting. You can do this by sending the faculty an email a week or more before you go. In my case, I had been in touch with at least two of the senior faculty there since April for my June visit. I was sharing my office with a junior faculty, who’d herself reached out to me a week before to let me know about being officemates. I’d also emailed most of the other faculty individually a week before the visit. In general, 90% of them said they’d be around and would love to meet. Instead of formally setting up doodle or something (who wants to deal with this super formally during a summer visit?! Of course, you can if that’s what you prefer), I started maintaining a google doc with my own itinerary and booking meeting times at my end. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t double-booked, that I didn’t miss any meetings, and that I was tracking meeting-related conversations across all possible conversation channels (e.g., two PhD students reached out to me on Twitter and Facebook to set up coffee chats).
 
Second, make sure you plan ahead of the meetings. While ums is not a campus visit and you don’t need to read everyone’s entire set of research papers, it helps to know what they are doing and what their recent research projects are about. Why? In my experience and conversations, this helped me select the right projects from my pipeline to talk about and the right questions to ask. I learned, for example, that someone I was meeting for lunch had recently published a paper on giving incentives for COVID vaccines. While I don’t have a COVID-related project, I have a new project on financial- and non-financial incentives for going to the gym. It ended up being a meaningful conversation and he gave me several ideas for potential new experimental designs as well as literature to consult.
 
Third, build in some deliberate pauses or gaps between meetings. If I had a meeting at 2pm, I’d not schedule my next one until 4pm. I don’t think I did this on purpose so much, but it worked great because sometimes we ended up going for a long-ish walk to talk, and I didn’t need to rush anyone for my next meeting. This is the kind of rush you’d typically experience in a 2-day research talk visit. In some of my longer meetings, the first half hour or so could be dedicated to a specific project or a warm-up conversation, so the real topics of connection or possibility of a collaboration would not even come up until much later. Having less time-pressured meetings was a great benefit of a longer visit!
 
Fourth, don’t hesitate to reach out to someone and meet multiple times. There are no rules. Again, unlike a 2-day seminar visit, you can find opportunities for continuing your conversation.  I met with a junior colleague who is at the same career stage as me once for a quick chat in the office, then for dinner (it happened to be my birthday that week, so we celebrated!), and then again over brunch. It wasn’t until the third conversation that we even explored any ideas about potentially working together. Similarly, a senior faculty member gave me some excellent feedback for my job market paper, so I was able to circle back and meet with him the following week to share what I was finding based on the analysis he had recommended and get detailed feedback on my overall research portfolio. In another case, a senior faculty member wanted to meet a second time to discuss my marketing analytics syllabus in detail. The opportunities for multiple meetings can be rich and rewarding for everyone.
 
Finally, don’t overplan. LOTS of work and conversations can happen serendipitously. During my visit, I learned that someone else in quantitative marketing was also visiting Toronto. I’d talked to him virtually before. I reached out to him and was able to meet in person for a great conversation! Stuff Zoom can’t do justice to :)
 
Work-life balance in ums
 
Last but not the least, an important goal of ums is to reset. It can allow you to step out of your comfort zone and routine, and to try something different. Travel gives you a chance to step away from the structure of your daily life. Make sure to enjoy it. During the weekend and some of the evenings, for example, I explore Toronto Islands, the Little Italy food festival, and dinner with my cousin.
 
Cheers to a dream summer, and to many of you, hopefully exploring your own ums after reading this!
 

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incentives to work out: Evidence from field experiments

6/8/2022

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VQMS seminar: Recording available

12/31/2021

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2021: My year in numbers

12/31/2021

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Where did 2021 go? I know exactly where.
 
If you know me or anything about me, you know that I love data. I track my workouts. I track my daily calorie intake and macros, and most importantly, I track the time I spend on various research projects.
 
As 2021 comes to an end, I wanted to share some of the tracked data from my life. My hope is that this will be a useful sneak peek for current and future tenure-track assistant professors. Perhaps this may even be useful for those wanting to pursuing a goal in 2022, especially a fitness-related goal.
 
Snapshot of what I did this year
 
My biggest commitment in 2021 was my research projects. I spent 932 hours on my top 6 research projects this year!
 
While I explored opportunities for new projects, it turned out that I spent 60% of my time on projects that continued from last year. Last year, in July-December 2020, I had already spent 610 hours advancing 3 of the top 6 research projects this year in terms of time commitment. In 2021, one of these continuing projects on online learning platforms was accepted for publication at the Journal of Marketing Research. Two were rejected in advanced rounds, and subsequently received an opportunity to revise at other journals (note to self: never give up).
 
Interestingly, the research that I spent most time on took up about 37% of my effort this year. It has recently resulted in its first complete draft (coming soon). It also happens to be a paper about the privacy implications of tracking granular mobility data.
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Now onto the tracked data from my other big commitment of 2021 -- health and fitness. I completed over 250 hours of workouts this year!

My breakdown from the last 6 months shows that I spent 117 hours spent working out between July-December. Of these, more than 50 hours were at Orangetheory fitness,
 a popular group fitness class comprising treadmill, rowing and strength training intervals. In addition, I spent about 58 hours doing heavier weightlifting, with 60% lower body training. I have been going to group fitness classes for more than 10 years but this year, for the first time, I stepped under the barbell, going from body weight squats to over 160lbs barbell back squats in just a few months. 
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Since I also track my calorie consumption, what surprised me most was that I wasn’t eating any differently on my cardio vs. strength days, or upper vs. lower body days. The box plot below shows that I consumed very similar amount of total calories irrespective of the kind of workout I had that day. I'm curious to see how this split varies by macros, since I do make an effort to consume more carbs on lower body/heavier lifting days and keep carbs low on other days.
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Results? Overall, it was quite rewarding to see that I started this year at 160lbs and closed it just under 140lbs with a 7% drop in body fat (between June and November).
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Did tracking everything cause me to be more productive or get more in shape? I’ll leave that question for a future paper once I can figure out an identification strategy. For now, enjoying the descriptives and looking forward to continuing the tracking trajectory in 2022!
 
How I collected these data
 
Time spent on research projects: I use a mobile/web tool called Toggl that allows me to set up various categories of projects I work on. All I have to do is hit play when I begin working on a project and pause when I stop. Most of the times, I do remember to track it. If I forget to stop it, Toggl sends me a timely email nudge to go in and pause it, so I guess with some accuracy what time I stopped working. For the most part, I can correctly see where my time is going with some margin of error, of course.
 
Fitness data: I use a combination of apps to track my fitness journey, including MyFitnessPal for nutrition, the Orangetheory app and heart rate monitor for OTF workouts, and my own filming skills (iphone camera, really) to keep track of non-OTF strength workouts.
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SUMMER 2021: reflections on my first year as an assistant professor

6/23/2021

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On June 16, 2021, I completed my first year at the Gies College of Business. It is hard to bucket this year’s “life lessons” into logical themes but I will try my best to make this relevant for other junior faculty and PhD students.
 
When I asked a few new assistant professors how their work and life changed when they went on from their PhD to their jobs, here are a few things they said:
  • “Nothing changed. I still feel like a PhD student.”
  • “Life gets a lot busier, but it’s better overall. You make more money.”
  • “More meetings!”
 
My perspective and mindset, like with most things, was quite different on this topic.
 
The major changes I noticed were: (a) New institution: I was now part of a whole new university system, a new business school, new department (duh!), (b) More resources: I had a lot more resources for my research and needed to learn the skills to best use them, and (c) Citizen Unnati: I was a citizen of my department in a bigger way and had a responsibility towards colleagues and also students who were either taking courses or working with me.
 
Here is how these not-so-groundbreaking observations helped me in my first year as an assistant professor:
 
(a) New institution
  • Getting to know the community instead of working in my own silo: In addition to my own department, I met several great people engaged in quantitative research in other disciplines including Accountancy, Finance, Communications, and even Astronomy! From these informal conversations, I learned about what is out there to be learned, i.e., learning what you don’t know you don’t know. I was introduced to tools for scalable computing (e.g., DASK), how to write good grant proposals (people are usually willing to share their proposal if you ask), and just what’s going on in other disciplines that overlaps with my work. I also made good friends in the process :)
  • Learning about what’s happening in my school and on campus: Being part of a new institution, in any capacity, gives you the opportunity to learn about its strategic goals and vision, partners, alumni, etc. and how it may translate into opportunities and/or collaborations. Online learning, one of my research interests, is also a priority for our business school. Initiating conversations with the eLearning team has taught me more about the current sets of challenges universities face, resulting in new research ideas.
 
(b) More resources
  • Investing research budgets well and working with students: I haven’t found a lot of advice on this but most junior faculty I have talked to do not seem to be using most of their research funds. Those engaged in behavioral studies typically use their funds to pay the subjects in their experiments. What worked for me was to recruit Research Assistants, e.g., from our MS in Information Management programs. This can be tricky because not everyone works at your level of expectation of pace or skill. I learned this over the course of the year but what worked for me was to (a) assign only one research project to any student (so they develop some understanding and depth, and get relatively more invested in it and in the final outcomes of the research) instead of giving a bunch of cross-project tasks, (b) have weekly check-ins even if a 15-minute call, (c) set up the scope of tasks as far in advance as possible; I usually kept a running excel spreadsheet listing Tasks 1…N in each row, with corresponding datasets and codes they need to run/write and output. I even specified how I wanted the output files named, and finally (d) help them help me – when they got stuck, I asked for immediate communication so they didn’t feel defeated, and I could jump in and write or explain a line of code or get them the information they needed. Overall, my philosophy with RAs is not how much work I can get them to do for me, but how can I make this project exciting for them that they feel invested, motivated to create value, learn something through it (at least for that semester), and perhaps even consider a PhD in future. I’m usually super patient with the learning curve, but my biggest asks are effective and timely communication and organized files!
  • Applying to relevant grants: As a PhD student, I did not foresee how useful grant writing skills could be. Unlike the sciences, business schools don’t typically train you to raise your own funds for your research. So, it really never came up. However, at Gies, I started noticing several relevant grant opportunities in our weekly mailers. In my very first year, I applied for at least 9 grants and received 3. Two small grants under $5,000 and thanks to an anonymous donor at the Gies college, one large grant of $32,000. These opportunities were unthinkable as a PhD student. I also received feedback on some of my grant proposals that were rejected, helping me understand what the proposals wanted “more of” – granted, these grant proposals take time, energy and effort, and often talking to multiple stakeholders or attending webinars before you can turn them in. I personally found it to be a nice new challenge and didn’t mind the rejections if I learned something from them.
  • Always be learning: On the topic of learning, it’s been hard to find as much time for my own online courses (e.g., online certificates on Coursera) as I did during the PhD days. So that might be one area to capitalize on as much as you can, while still a student. On the bright side, several virtual workshops were offered this year to allow me to spend a dedicated 1-2 days on learning new stuff. Finding informal mentorship has been another way to continue learning both from faculty members at Gies and beyond.
 
(c) Citizen Unnati
  • Showing up: I don’t know who said this, but 90% of success is just showing up! There are a ton of department/school meetings and events all year, and zoom fatigue sets in and time is always limited. Showing up for as many as possible, and engaging, or when you can’t go, sending the host a quick note makes all the difference. Since my first year was mostly a zoom-year, I always engaged in private chats to say hi to some of my colleagues (and sometimes those ended up in 1:1 coffee meetups).
  • Speaking up: At least when asked :-) I was recently invited to talk about engagement in online learning environments for our summer teaching & learning academy for faculty. Accepting these opportunities, welcoming them, making yourself available, and preparing for them is just being a good citizen IMO. Last semester, I volunteered to speak with our PhD students on “defining your research agenda” – which was probably my favorite conversation of the year. Again, there are time trade-offs, and everyone is busy, but doing a few of these is nice!
  • Serving students: My teaching strategies from my online marketing analytics course in Spring ’21 probably deserves its own separate post. Teaching an undergraduate class when I was a PhD student was very different from teaching now. During my PhD, I had to teach only once and the course I was teaching was already being taught by 6 other faculty so there was less scope to innovate. This year, I prepared a new course from scratch using materials from my own research and developing new marketing analytics exercises in R programming. I had a small class size, so I could try new ways of engaging students and get them to also learn from each other and learn by doing. For example, I noticed no one was showing up for office hours so I invited students for optional 1:1 check-ins during the semester (once online and once in-person) in addition to the office hours. These conversations covered not just course-related questions but any support they needed outside of course work. This was the highlight of my semester (and sounded like, theirs too!). Several of these student conversations were memorable. One student asked me, “How do you deal with rejections and failures, and not let them beat you down?” I said, the honest answer is failure perhaps never gets easier, but you learn to focus more on the good stuff. I reminded them they are young and have their whole life to try things, fail at some, and get good at others. Another said, “Everyone else seems to have their act together and be sure of what they want” – and I remembered the 21-year-old me juggling two jobs (journalism and teaching) and trying to get my Masters’. All I could tell her was, “You just have to start somewhere and give it your best shot. No one knows any better.”  At the end of the semester, I was pleased to get notes from the students that said they valued my “advice as a new professor and young professional, and the real-world applications” and even though I was originally nervous about my first-time teaching at Gies, I cannot wait for the next time!
 
Overall, my first year as a junior faculty pushed me to reframe my role, learn new skills, get to know amazing people at my school, and influence students in addition to focusing on my own research as I did during my PhD years. How was your experience?

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Discussing trends in e-commerce with @NEWSGazette

1/19/2021

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