Reflections From Across an Intensely Yellow Faux-Velvet Chair

This tops the tea palace, easily

Since May 2023, I’ve served as an academic and fellowship advisor in the UW Honors College—and with zero hesitation, I can say it’s the best job I’ve ever had. I say that as someone who’s been lucky with work, including a prior gig I affectionately called “the Tea Palace.” This tops it. Easily. When I think about why I love this work, the first image that flashes is a composite of students—bright, restless, curious—across from me in the intensely yellow faux-velvet chair I put in my subterranean office to stand in for a sunbeam that can’t quite find its way downstairs.

That chair has seen and heard a lot. Students come in buzzing with ideas, and we scheme together: how to turn spark into plan, plan into action, action into something that lives in the world. The conversations spill out of the office, too—at Guthrie House, after a session at a conference, or in the middle of Prexy’s when we bump into each other and have an impromptu fellowship advising session. Honors attracts humans going in innumerable directions, and my role lets me stand at the crossroads with them, sharing in their excitement and helping them form their own unique paths.

Not every meeting is filled with this kind of electric optimism. Some are heavy. Life drops unexpected obstacles into a semester—illness, finances, loss, crisis—and students end up in that yellow chair wishing their stresses were contained to only academic ones. In those moments, I’m privileged to be there and to listen. To help sort what’s urgent from what’s important. To make a path feel a little more walkable. Even in the hard conversations, I’m reminded that the heart of this work is simply showing up as a person who cares.