Research Tools for Students and Faculty: Boomerang

I was only recently introduced to Boomerang for Gmail, but it has already proven extremely useful for balancing the necessity of being prompt on emails and the rest of my graduate study. This extension for Gmail allows you to write emails and schedule them to be delivered at a later date and time in the future. The benefits and variety of uses are endless for this simple email tool, which I will list below. In addition, messages that are emailed to you can be "boomeranged" back to the top of your inbox at a later date, so it appears as a higher priority at a time that you are available to address it.

Uses as a student/faculty member:

• work late into the night but schedule messages for the next morning
• remain professional with your time stamps
• have the email be at the top of their inbox in the morning without sending it then
• schedule emails when you know people will be available
• if a professor has office hours, schedule an email to remind them the morning of that you will be stopping by
• if a professor/student only comes to campus on certain days, have an email sent on that day when you know they will be checking their work email
• stay ahead on your to-do list
• there may be a time sensitive email with a deadline (teaching assistant preferences, request for clearance to take classes, coordinating study groups, etc) that you know well in advance but it is not appropriate to be too early, so scheduling it for later (even months in the future) can take it off your plate well ahead of time
• let your email be your to-do list by scheduling emails to yourself to remember to print articles, look something up before class, or ask a question of a professor when you know you'll have some free time in your day
• be proactive and persistent for getting responses
• selecting "boomerang if I don't here back" emails allows you to be reminded of unanswered questions without doing math or remembering yourself if it has been long enough to re-send an email

My list is not by any means inclusive and if you have found any more uses, please feel free to comment! Boomerang has already been a great help to me in my graduate work and I hope that others find it useful as well!