The Philosophers' Cocoon

Advice for people who start graduate school in the midst of a pandemic

(This is a talk I am giving to the incoming graduate students at my department).

Welcome, incoming graduate students; I am so pleased you are joining us. I'm excited to see what lies ahead for you. I'm your placement director, and was asked to give a brief talk to you via Zoom, as we are still in the midst of a pandemic. 

If I had spoken to you last year, I would've talked in detail about my journey into philosophy. Everyone's experience is different, but it's often helpful to hear from a diversity of experiences, particularly if they are from people who don't fit the archetype of a philosopher, for example, someone who is (like me) from a working-class immigrant background, who is not a white man, whose philosophical interests are unconventional, etc. 

My trajectory to become a philosophy professor was unusual. When I started my second postdoc in 2013 I wondered if I would ever be able to land a tenure-track job. I turned to various mentors, informal ones and even a job market consultant, to try to learn the secret to job market success in academia. I then discovered there are many donts. Don't co-author in philosophy, certainly not with your partner if you are a woman. Don't publish in non-philosophy journals. Don't blog or do public philosophy, that is for senior people with the security of tenure. There were also many dos. Always have at least three papers under review (I did that! Now I think, wow that's exhausting!). Write the sort of paper you see appear in Mind or Philosophical Review. Hang out with important people. 

I've since learned you can't just distill success in grad school and on the job market into some formula. I know lots of people who fit all the dos and dont, and who have at the time they finish the PhD job CVs that would suffice for tenure at a research-intensive school. Yet they do not receive any offers for tenure track jobs. And I also know people who flouted the rules and did well.

So, my advice back in 2019 would have been this, and I think this advice still applies. It's important to cultivate good habits that help you be productive and to get your work out there (see here for an excellent list of tips by Liz Jackson). But also, you must do so in such a way that you can grow authentically into the person that you want to be. 

Bringing up the authentic self in the context of job market advice may seem strange, because the advice of job market consultants, advisers and many placement directors seems to be that you should not be yourself. Rather, they argue you should become a narrowly specialized candidate who is well networked and who writes papers that appear in top journals. They think you should fit your professional persona to the demands of the job market.

However, people with long-term high job satisfaction as academics tend to be people who are able to live and work authentically, to do the work they love and value, and teach and do service in line with their values. Obviously, there is a lot of work that you might not love as a professor. Examples may include grading, committees, admin (in the UK), or teaching that intro course for the nth time. Still, it strikes me that professors who are enduringly happy are people who have somehow merged their professional persona with their values, and who are doing things they delight in.

What does this mean concretely? In research, it means that you should do work that excites you. Writing a dissertation is difficult and a lot of job market failure lies in people who do not complete their PhD. You are in it for the long haul, you will be with us for at least five years, and you need enough love for the topic to be able to complete it. You must not lose your love for reading or other things you valued. Don't be tempted into the trap of "I will focus everything on being an academic and will make time for the rest of my life once I have tenure". That is counterproductive and unsustainable.

We are now in the midst of a pandemic. Among its many ramifications is a likely deep economic crisis, the extent of which we don't yet know as we're still grappling with the virus. The effects will likely be bigger and longer-lasting than the 2008 financial crisis. The philosophy job market never recovered to pre-2008 levels after the previous crash, as can be seen in this figure from IHE. We are not even countenancing the beginning of an economic recovery yet from this pandemic (after all, it isn't over), and what shape that recovery will take is hard to predict. In the light of this crisis mode that higher education undeniably is in, my advice needs to be adapted.

Reading strategies for new subject matter?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm about to start my PhD [and]...I have recently changed my area of interest and wish to write my thesis on something completely new to me. At this point, what are your reading strategies on a new subject matter? How do you make your reading list? How do you decide what to read and what not? For example, should one start with 20th-century biggies first? Or can one start directly with the seminal papers or books in the last decades? Relatedly, how do you read a philosophical work? Do you try to understand every single sentence and idea? Do you sketch the arguments in detail for every paper? or do you read closely only after you have developed your paper ideas? etc.

Good questions! One reader replied:

[L]ots of variation here, depending on areas and the kind of projects you work on. If it is a new area, try to survey the central works. I wouldn't try to understand every single sentence and idea in most works. At first you want to read around and get a sense of the field. I'd also consult faculty members in the area you're interested in to find out what works they think are the most important. This can save you a lot of time.

I do read closely sometimes before I have a paper idea (if I'm interested enough in the book/paper) - reading carefully can lead to objections which can lead to papers. But once I have a paper idea I read very selectively - e.g., only the parts of books that are relevant to my particular paper. After working out a draft, I will then do a more careful literature search to see what's out there. I definitely wouldn't advise reading "everything under the sun" - even for your dissertation - unless you work in an area with very little literature.

Another reader replied:

Some philosophers like to get a general idea of what the author is getting at while others like to read the work like they’re trying to understand a complex mathematical problem and so every word is important. There are costs and benefits to both methods.

In other words, some philosophers value accuracy more than precision. And some value both equally. Accuracy is a given since truthfulness or correctness is required in inquiry. Precision is often regarded as an option most of the time in the realm of philosophical theory. I aim for both when reading and writing philosophy.

Unfortunately, it can be very difficult to arrive at the accuracy and precision of interpretation and understanding of the text depending on the author.

For example, Kant’s prose is mentally torturous and complicated and so it has led to a lot of varied and contradicting interpretations of his work....

Both of these readers make good points. I don't think there's a single best way to enter the literature for a new subject matter. My sense is that it depends a lot on one's purpose. For example, suppose you have some particular idea (say, about the nature of free will). In that case, the thing to probably do is to start with Google and Philpapers searches--and sometimes, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy or even Wikipedia entries--to see what, if anything, has been written on that. Start there, with some recent or historical works that seem to be the closest to your own idea, and then go from there. Typically, of course, published papers you read will discuss and cite other relevant papers. So then go read those. This, in my experience, tends to be a pretty good method--at least, again, if your interest in the new subject matter is motivated by a particular idea.

How are you running your courses this fall?

Many of us, indeed probably nearly all of us who teach at a university level, will be teaching courses in new ways this fall. Although most of us had a little experience transitioning to remote/online delivery this past spring, I take it that this fall may be the first time that many of us have designed hybrid or online courses. Consequently, this fall is almost certainly going to be a real learning experience for most of us. Some of what we do may work well, some of it may not work well, and some of it may turn out to be a disaster (as is sometimes the case, in my experience, whenever one attempts radically new things).

Anyway, because most of us will be returning to the classroom soon (and much to my surprise, I've learned that some universities have already started!), I thought it might be helpful to run a thread on how readers are designing their courses. What format are you giving your course in, and how will you be running them? Why? The way I see it, the more details people choose to share, the better: it may give those of us who are still designing courses some helpful additional perspectives to go on. Allow me to start things off.

Synchronous vs. Asynchronous: which is better?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

For nearly the entire summer, I had planned on administering my fall courses (all online) asychronously. This seemed to be the most recommended option, and the asynchronous system I ended up utilizing when COVID hit ended up working out okay.

But now we're facing a new school year, with new students many of whom are going to be freshmen! I've gotten the sense, from students who have sent me emails, that many of them are looking forward to potentially synchronous online classes. This has made me seriously reconsider my plan to do an asynchronous course.

To sum it up: my classes are going to be all first-year students. I worry that an entirely asynchronous course would be unsatisfying and for many of them would deprive them of what they feel is the beginning of their college experience. Does the fact that we are entering a new semester, several months into the pandemic and the new online learning paradigm, make it any more reasonable than before to try synchronous online teaching?

I decided to skip forward to this query because it seems rather time-sensitive. At my university, we've been instructed that at least 50% of our material needs to be synchronous and involve 'face-time' with students (in-person and/or over Zoom). I don't know the full reasoning behind this, but my sense is that it may have to do with students expecting synchronous instruction, and the sense that some robust amount of synchronous instruction is conducive to student-to-student and student-to-faculty engagement. I also want to do synchronous teaching because I think it's probably better for me and my students to expect each other to be present and engaged with the course material only during the meeting hours of the course (rather than the kind of 'round the clock' availability that asynchronous learning seems conducive to).

But really, I don't know. Although we could end up moving all online, I'm scheduled to teach my courses in a hybrid online/in-classroom format--so again, I really have to do a good amount of synchronous teaching. And, like most of us, this is really my 'first time doing this', as it were, so I really don't know what tends to work best. Anyone have any insight that may help this reader decide what to do, especially for a freshman class?

Norms for initiating correspondence?

In our August "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'd love to hear people's views about the norms for initiating correspondence with other philosophers. It's a big aspect of the sociology of our profession. Yet I've never seen it discussed, and I have a sense that people have conflicting views about when it's appropriate.

Here is one special case I'd love feedback about. A prominent figure in my subfield once encouraged me (and other early career folks) to feel free to reach out and email polished drafts of my work to philosophers I am writing about in my research, and to do so prior to submitting this work to journals. Sometimes nothing will come of it (and that's fine), but the recipient might well enjoy reading and guiding new work related to their research. The reasons given were that doing so would (1) help early career people to develop relationships and, I think more importantly, (2) likely improve the quality of our drafts. I have heard from some grad students at elite programs that something like this is standard advice.

I have tried this, and sometimes received pushback from the other end. One senior philosopher whom I reach out to in this way told me they wished I hadn't done so, since now they would be unable to "blindly" referee my paper in the event that they are asked to do so. I see the force of this response.

So: I'd appreciate help figuring out the relevant norms. When is initiating correspondence like this a good idea? How should we balance peer-reviewing considerations against the benefits of open correspondence?

I think these are great questions! One reader responded:

As long as you're not sending your paper to lots of folks, I don't think there is anything wrong with sending your work to someone you discuss - but as you note, there can be a lot of variation in how or whether people respond.

I think it is especially likely to be a good strategy when the work you discuss isn't that of a super-prominent faculty member - most philosophers would be delighted to provide feedback to someone who actually discusses their work.

My own experience is that initiating correspondence tends to go best if you have some previous interaction with a person, such as meeting and talking with them at a conference. I also with agree with the above response that trying to initiate correspondence tends to work better if the person you're trying to initiate conversation with isn't super prominent (as my sense is that prominent people get so many unsolicited emails that they can get pretty perturbed by it). Finally, however else you do it, my sense is that tact matters a lot--though, of course, specifying exactly what is tactful here is difficult.

Anyway, I don't have much advice to offer beyond this--but I expect there are probably some readers out there who do. So, then: when do you think initiating correspondence is a good idea? How should one balance peer-review considerations against it? And what norms are there or tips do you have that might be helpful to share?  

How can we help you? (August 2020)

Now that it's been a month since our last "how can we help you?" thread, it's time for another one.

For those of you unfamiliar with this series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section below on anything you could use help with related to the profession. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss your query.

Please feel free to ask questions on anything (within the Cocoon's mission) that you could use help with, including but not limited to:

• Life and work in the COVID-19 era
• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Fire away - we're here to help!

Publishing fiction and the job-market?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, an Author writes:

This might be a silly question but here goes. What would you think of a philosopher publishing fiction in addition to publishing philosophy? If their work has philosophical themes - if a character was a philosophy professor, or if characters explicitly discussed philosophers' work - would you think that was evidence of un-seriousness or lack of dedication to really doing philosophy? Would you assume the work was autobiographical? Would peers or mentors or hiring committees care? I studied creative writing in college and have been working on fiction projects in my spare time on and off since then and there's one I want to publish. But if there's even a little chance it would hurt my prospects in philosophy, forget it...

I don't think this is a silly question at all. On the contrary, I think it is a great set of questions, ones that draw attention to aspects of the profession and job-market that graduate students and job-candidates should be aware of and think about. Allow me to explain.

Advice on preparing for/taking comp exams?

A reader writes in:

I'd appreciate some advice on comprehensive exams. This fall, I have to do an exam in my proposed area of study, metaphysics. The exam involves a take home portion (answer a number of questions in essay form) and an oral portion on what I've written and the other literature chosen for the exam. I'm nervous about the oral portion of the exam because I've never had to do one before. And there is quite a lot of material that I will be questioned on. It's easy enough to study material and write a paper on it over a longer period of time. But to master the material, retain it, and then respond to questions that I won't have prior knowledge of seems terrifying. Any tips or advice would be much appreciated!

It's been a very long time since I took comp exams, so I'm probably not a very good person to provide advice here. However, I expect that plenty of our readers have recent (or even current) experience preparing for or taking comp exams. So please, if you have any tips or advice, share away!

Job-market discussion thread (2020-21 season)

I know it's just the beginning of August and (sadly, but predictably) very few jobs advertisements have been posted over at PhilJobs and HigherEd Jobs. However, given that this job season is going to be unique--to say the least--and I expect there may be quite a few job-marketeers out there who already want to commiserate about how the market is already looking and how to prepare for it (including for Alt-Ac opportunities), I hereby open this job market discussion thread for the 2020-21 season.

Readers should feel free to discuss job-market matters in this post's comment section as they see fit, provided the discussion conforms to the blog's safe and supportive mission. As a rough rule of thumb, readers are expected to refrain from posting aggressive comments that can be reasonably interpreted as undermining a safe and supportive environment. As moderator, I will intervene if need be to let people know why I have elected not to approve their comments, so as to keep the discussion positive.

One other important thing. As in past years, the Cocoon will ultimately have two job-market threads this year:

1. A job-market discussion thread (the present thread): to commisserate about the market, discussing particular job ads, the market in general, questions about application materials, interviewing, alt-ac opportunities, and so on.
2. A job-market reporting thread: to post news about interviews, on-campus visits, offers, rejection notices, etc.

Because someone always asks, "Why two threads?", there are a couple of reasons for it. First, some people may want to discuss the market but not stress over daily news regarding which jobs they still do or don't have a chance for. Conversely, others may not want to discuss the market but just want news about the jobs they've applied for. Second, these threads can get very long already, so I think the best way for people to get the information they want in a well-ordered format is simply to have two threads.

A few final notes:

• Please reserve job-market news (i.e. interviews, on-campus visits, hires, etc.) for the job-market reporting thread, which I will open sometime in September.
• A 'permalink' to this thread will be on the upper right of blog's right sidebar. -->
• Because of Typepad's functionality limitations (which only permits 100 comments before starting a new comment page), readers may elect to bookmark each new page of comments (or update their previous bookmark) as each new page emerges. I recognize that is can be frustrating to scroll through page after page to get to new comments, and I think this is probably the best solution.

All that being said, this discussion thread is now open. 

When should one start trying to publish?

In our July "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

[I]s it ever too early to be trying to publish? if so, what are the downsides of trying to publish too early?

[M]ore specifically, I'm an incoming first year phd student at a top program and I have a couple of articles drafted that I want to try to get out into the world. [I]f I were still in undergrad, I'd have a trusted advisor read them and advise me, but I'm not. I don't have any relationship with people at my soon to be grad school yet, and because of the pandemic, I don't want to assume that I'll be interacting much with potential advisors this fall, or sending them independent work to read. [T]he way I see it, there wouldn't be much harm in sending off my articles to good journals and hopefully getting some helpful comments from reviewers (or, unlikely but very best case, actually getting published!) since reviews are anonymous, right? Or am I missing something?

Good questions! One reader chimed in with a negative answer:

Yes it is too early. Undergraduates should not bother publishing, unless you were told you were the next Saul Kripke. And you should not send undergrad papers to journals to get feedback. It is not that kind of service. Referees referee for free, and they do so on the understanding that a colleague - an equal - is sending in a manuscript that they have some reason to believe is a contribution to the professional literature. You are missing something.

I also think it is too early. There are two fairly obvious downsides for this reader attempting to publish their papers right now: (1) the papers might not be all that good, and (2) if they were to publish stuff that's not all that good, it could affect their long term prospects as well as their reputation among faculty in their grad program. The only potential downside to not publishing right now is that someone else will publish papers defending similar arguments before they do (which, to be clear, could be a serious downside!). Fortunately, there seems to me to be a fairly obvious solution here. Let me explain.

Listing one's dissertation committee on the CV?

In our June "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

Should junior TT faculty, who are trying to do things such as get another TT job or secure a book contract with a good academic press, list their dissertation committee members on their CV?

Karen Kelsky advises against it because by her lights it makes one seem much more like a junior scholar or maybe even a graduate student.

But, on the other hand, both search committees and academic press suffer from prestige bias. So, one might think that if one's dissertation committee is very famous, one should include them on one's CV.

Interesting question! I would have thought the obvious answer here is, "Yes", for basically the prestige-related reasons (if you have particularly well-known committee members listed on the first page, that could catch someone's eye). But Kelsky's reasoning sort of makes sense as well, and I've heard similar things from others in the profession (i.e. you want to 'look like an equal' rather than someone who sees themselves still as a 'junior' scholar).

Any readers in the know have any thoughts on this?

Ageism on the academic job-market?

In our June "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am an older graduate student (circa 40) who, in the coming years, expects to go on the academic job market. In your experience, is it true that older candidates are often looked at less favorably than younger candidates? Is there some sense that, with a younger candidate, it is more likely that "her best work is ahead of her"? To the extent that this age bias is prevalent, are there ways for older candidates to mitigate its impact? More specifically, are there particular worries about older candidates that they might be able to address in their application materials?

These are important questions. We had a discussion about ageism and grad program admissions a while back. However, to my recollection we've never had a discussion about ageism and the job-market. On the one hand, I'm tempted to say--on the basis of our grad program discussion and my own experience on search committees--that I don't think ageism (particularly against someone in their 40s) is likely to be a big issue. On the other hand, ageism in job-markets in general is (sadly) well-established. Further, it would not surprise me much if age discrimination is highly implicit, with those who engage in it not able to reliably introspect their own motives. 

Anyway, I'm curious what readers think, both about the existence of ageism in academic job-markets and about what applicants might do to mitigate its potential impact. Anyone have any experience or insights here?

Summer sounds

Apply to Phd programs this year or next?

A reader writes in:

I am an MA student in philosophy considering whether to apply for PhD programs this cycle...I have my PhD applications more or less ready to go, but I also have the opportunity to take a year off and do something else. (My advisor has told me that this particular something will look good on my CV given my area of interest, but I also don't get the sense that I would need to do this thing first in order to be competitive.)

I plan to go for the PhD basically no matter what happens in the world. What I'm unsure of is whether it makes more sense for me to apply this cycle or next cycle. I can see things going either of two ways: (1) things are really bad this cycle but it all basically bounces back by next year, or (2) things are bad this cycle but just continue to get worse for several years afterwards. If (1) holds, then I'm better off waiting a year. If (2) holds, I'm better off trying to get in now before things worsen even more. The problem is that I'm not really in any position to have an informed guess about which outcome is more likely. Are there others who are in a better epistemic position here, if only slightly? Should I apply this fall or wait a year?

This is an interesting query. Given how competitive grad admissions are, to me there's an obvious answer that gets the best of both worlds, as it were. Apply this year and see how you do. If you get into your dream program (which is really tough to do), then feel free to accept. If not, well there's always next year! However, let me offer a few more thoughts before opening things for discussion.

Tips for creating an book index?

On Twitter, MB Willard (Weber State) writes: "Is there a good How To Create an Index for Dummies guide out there?" Ah, indexes, the worst part of the book production process! I don't know of any good 'how to guides for dummies' here, but I will say that I found Palgrave's guide helpful when finishing my first book. I'll also say that I think one can make one's index one's own, as it were. Just figure out which terms you think readers are likely to want to look up, and which play an important role in the book, and go from there. My own experience is that it is pretty much that simple. It's just time-consuming!

But these are just my not-super-helpful thoughts. Any book indexers out there have any better tips or guides to recommend?