The Philosophers' Cocoon

On Taking Time off the Job Market

Over at The Smoker, an anonymous commenter writes:

I've been wondering recently whether it ever makes sense to take a year off? I'm two years out from my PhD and I just landed a lecturer job. The job, city, and university are all thoroughly okay. I don't want to do this with the rest of my career but it's not bad for the moment. I think about all the time the job search eats up and I wonder if it might not be better to just take a pass on it this year or only apply to jobs that are too good to pass up. I've got a couple of good papers under review one of which is a revise and resubmit so I think the odds my CV will be stronger next year are good. I've also got ideas for a couple more papers that seem promising and it seems to me that the time I might spend on the job search could be better spent working on those or focusing on my teaching. 

On the other hand I feel I'm starting to get old (getting into my mid 30s) and I want a TT job as soon as I can get one. Also, with the market as brutal as it is part of me says it's stupid to ever pass up chances. So what do all of you think? Anyone else having similar thoughts?

Mr. Zero then replied:

I would not take a year off. I've thought about doing that before, and it would definitely be nice to have a year where I didn't have to do all this shit for once. But it seems to me that the best approach to the job market is to apply to every job you can, so as to maximize your chances of success. If you took a year off, that's a bunch of jobs you're not applying for. 

Given that I don't have a tenure-track job yet, I may not be the best person to ask for "job market strategy" advice. I would, however, like to offer my own experience.

Once I landed my current job (a renewable non-TT Asst. Prof. job), I basically took two years off from the job market. I applied to a few jobs here and there, but since I was in a pretty stable job, I just wanted to take some time to commit myself to becoming the best researcher, teacher, and colleague I could be. Although, again, I can't vouch for it as a strategy for landing a TT job, my experience is that it was time very well spent, for a couple of reasons.

First, the job market, whatever else it is, is an incredible time-drain, not to mention an emotional one. Updating one's dossier, looking up jobs, writing cover-letters, applying for jobs, checking job wikis, doing interviews, fly-outs, etc., is a lot -- and it's a lot of time spent not getting better at research, teaching, and other stuff.

Second, I have to say that the time away from the market was useful for "finding myself" or "finding my center" (or what-have-you) as a philosopher and human being. Instead of chasing after jobs, by dedicating myself full-time to research, teaching, and other stuff -- not to mention developing a good home and social life -- I was able to figure out what kind of researcher, teacher, colleague, husband, and friend I want to be and don't want to be. And I sort of consider all of that an end in itself.  There's more to life than finding a tenure-track job, after all. Rome, as they say, wasn't built in a day. Maybe you'll get a tenure-track job, maybe you won't. The best you can do -- or so I think -- is to become the best you that you can be. And that may take some time: time away from the market, time in a VAP, or adjuncting, or whatever. It's not always easy, and like most things, it's not without risk. But it can be worth it. At least that's been my experience.

Globalization and Global Justice @ Political Philosop-her

I just wanted to draw everyone's attention to this nice discussion of Nicole Hassoun's recent book, Globalization and Global Justice, over at Meena Krishnamurthy's awesome new blog showcasing work by women in political philosophy, Political Philosop-her. The discussion is an offshoot of a symposium I recently convened at the annual MANCEPT workshop in Manchester. Check it out - and hope you enjoy!

Dealing with Uncertainty

Over at the Smoker, there is a great post up about the anxiety surrounding the job market. Mr. Zero points out that every year, he gets hopeful about a certain job opportunity only to have his hopes dashed by the long odds of securing a job. He makes the point that without this hope, he might come across as relatively uninterested in a job interview. Of course, having your hopes continually squashed with rejections seems like an unhealthy life practice. It seems that there’s a dilemma between letting these hopes go, or trying to avoid stirring them up in the first place.

As someone who is going to be applying to PhD programs this year, I can relate to his experience. When I look over the (very long, very expensive) list of places I will be applying to, I can’t help but get excited about each of the opportunities. Some places are near family, others are in very attractive places to live, and all of them have philosophers  that I would love to work with. This excitement is useful, as it gives me motivation to continuously revise my writing sample and my personal statement. It also helps me to slog through the meticulous process of sending GRE scores, transcripts, and entering in personal information for each application.

Even though the motivation is practically useful, I suspect that this process is not completely healthy. It’s stressful to look towards the future and have a giant, looming question mark. Even though I have a lot of work to occupy myself, I inevitably find myself gravitating towards these thoughts when I have a spare moment. I know that this isn’t a problem unique to philosophy or academia, but I think it’s particularly exacerbated by this intense application process. I’m hoping to get some perspective from those who have gone through this process (and the job market, etc.) before. What can one do to avoid obsessing over the possibilities? Do you have any advice for dealing with this type of uncertainty?

A Milestone

Today, a year and four months after its inception, the Philosophers Cocoon surpassed 250,000 site visits. I'd like to thank everyone -- contributors, readers, etc. -- for helping to make the Cocoon such a great success on so many different levels. I'd also like to take this opportunity to:

1. Encourage readers to become contributors (all you have to do is email me!), and
2. Encourage posts by existing contributors.

I know the school year is a busy time, but the more people who post besides me, the more vibrant and diverse discussion on the blog is likely to be!

A Different Perspective on How Well Journals Track Quality

I'd like to comment on these two interesting posts over at NewAPPS. It's generally assumed that the "top journals" in the field tend to publish the best philosophy. Yet several questions have been raised.

In the first post at NewAPPS, it is reported that Jason Stanley had some of his work rejected at a numbe of top journals, only to see it turn into a book that is now one of the most cited works in the very journals that rejected his papers. This suggests -- although some have disputed it -- that some of the very top journals in our field systematically rejected top-flight philosophical work.  Although different explanations are offered, one explanation -- which I have discussed before, and which I am not alone in thinking -- is that "top journals" these days are overly conservative, tending to publish "boring" papers.

This same hypothesis is floated in the second post at NewAPPS, where Jon Coqburn notes that some of (what he considers to be) his very best work has never been able to find a home in a good journal. Cogburn's feeling is that the explanation for this may be the following: the more non-trivial (and potentially important) a paper is, the more likely it is to be rejected, not because it should be rejected but simply because reviewers will have more objections to non-trivial work (objections may not in fact be reasons to reject, but rather good reasons to accept, as it means the work may be interesting and worthy of discussion).

Anyway, Cogburn wonders whether others have had his experience. Well, I have. One of my papers has been bouncing around at journals for years. Like Cogburn, my experience is this: I think it's some of my best work, I've had a number of people at conferences and elsewhere tell me it is important and "will" be published...and yet I can't find a home for it. Why? Time after time, I seem to get one reviewer who advocates "accept without revision" and another who advocates rejecting it because he/she has objection after objection. Alas, most of the time I feel these objections are reasons the paper should be accepted, because they are issues people might want to discuss in print! (A lot of times also, I just think the objections are bad).  In addition, I've faced the following dilemma. In the past, I actually dealt with all the objections in the paper, but the paper balooned to 60 pages long, and I had reviewers/editors rejecting it for being too long!

With all this in mind, I would like to float another reason to think that top journals might not track quality. For top journals to track quality, two things must be true:

1. They must tend to receive the highest quality work, and also
2. Reliably select it when they receive it.

Most of the discussion on NewAPPS has been on issue (2). I want to raise a question about issue (1).  

I read the book "A Beautiful Mind" this past summer, and couldn't help but be struck by a passage in which John Nash was given publishing advice by his advisor.  Nash had just come up the Nash Equilibrium, and his advisor reportedly told him to publish it immediately in the worst journal he could find.  Why?  The short answer: to avoid getting "scooped."

Let me explain why this struck me. I have gotten scooped on at least two or three occasions. On each occasion, I had a paper bouncing around for a while and someone else published roughly the same argument/idea in a top journal. Accordingly, my feeling these days is this: now that information is so widely available on the web, and more and more stuff is being published more and more quickly, it is increasingly vital to get good ideas out in print fast. So, for instance, I have a couple of papers right now that I think are super good (there, I said it!;). However, although I think they are good, I'm very wary of (repeatedly) sending them to "top places", for a couple of reasons. First, I'm in a year-to-year position, and just don't have the luxury of sitting around for years waiting for these papers to work their way through the review processes at Mind, Journal of Philosophy, and Phil Review.  Second, given my experiences getting "scooped", I'm sometimes wary of even trying (I have two papers right now, for instance, that I would be absolutely devastated should someone publish something similar before I do. This makes me want to get the stuff out immediately, even if it means a lower-ranked venue).  Third, I tend to think that because reviewers at some of these jounals seem to be so conservative (Cogburn's point), it's sometimes just not a good bet to make, especially given how long review processes can take (sending one article to several different journals can eat up years!). (Side-note: I actually still do send some of my stuff to top journals. I more or less "split it down the middle", sending maybe 50% of my stuff to top places and the other 50% to lower-ranked places, which seems rational to me, all things considered).

Now look: I certainly don't mean to pretend that because I have incentives to avoid sending things to top journals, it follows that top journals don't tend to receive "the very best work."  All I mean to suggest is that there plainly are such incentives: strong incentives for people with great philosophical ideas to send their work elsewhere, to "lesser" venues that are more likely to publish it.  

Indeed, I've even heard of some "top people" say stuff like this. For instance, I seem to recall coming across a blog post somewhere where someone -- I think it was Colin McGinn (!) -- said something like, "I don't even send stuff to journals anymore. They just reject my stuff."  And this was coming from a top name in the field.

Anyway, this is one of the main reasons I am dubious about the claim that top journals tend to publish the best work. On the one hand, the idea that they do actually doesn't sit well with my experience as a reader (most of my favorite articles in recent years seem to have come out in "lesser" places). More deeply, though, it doesn't sit well with my experience as a submitter.  There seem to me to just be too many reasons to think that there are people out there with great work who don't submit that work to the top journals.

Am I right? I wonder how many people have this experience: the experience of believing, firmly, that some of your work is awesome, but of sending it to lower-ranked places due to various professional incentives. Are there many of you out there?

(PS: apologies for the rambling quality of this post. I've been absolutely buried with work the past several days -- both teaching and research -- but I wanted to get this post out!

Conflicting Advice on Writing Samples

I've heard some conflicting advice on what people who have publications should use as their writing sample in job applications. On the one hand, I've heard the obvious:

• Your writing sample should be your best piece of work.

Seems reasonable. But what if you have publications? Here, I've heard several different things.

First, I've heard some people say your writing sample should be one of your publications, for if you send something that isn't published it (A) implies that your published work isn't all that good, and (B) there's a risk, if you send an unpublished manuscript, it isn't as good as your published work.

Second, I've heard some people say that your writing sample should not be one of your publications, as that implies that you don't have better work than your existing publications in the pipeline..

Finally, there's the issue of length. I've heard many people say that writing samples should be relatively short -- 20-25 pages, 30-or-so tops -- and that it can really annoy SCs, and make you look arrogant, if your writing sample is too long. But of course publications -- even if they are your best work -- may be substantially longer than 30 pages.

Anyway, I figured readers might find a discussion of these issues helpful -- hence this post! Any thoughts?

Questions on Updating CVs

A commenter over at this post at the Smoker asks a few questions that I thought might be worth addressing here:

How do you know what to change no [sic] your CV (in 'Teaching Experience,' 'Dissertation Abstract' (both short and long), and Research Statement) if you're going back on the market after a year or two at your first job (be it a VAP or TT)?

How do you balance looking like you're stale or just using an old dossier vs. presenting whatever strengths may be in your dissertation description, list of courses taught (they start to get very long!), etc.?

I've wondered about this myself. For instance, I still include a very short dissertation abstract on the first page of my CV -- the thought being that although I'm several years of grad school now, it still makes sense to give SC's a brief idea of what my dissertation was about. However, is this a mistake? More generally, what sorts of changes should be made to CV's and other materials to avoid a look of "staleness"? 

Reader Question on Outside Letters

A reader writes:

I have a job market question which is also about asking for help, and I don't quite remember if you've addressed this on the Cocoon (when talking about these issues more generally). 

Basically, the question is about trying to get letters of recommendation from philosophers who one has met via conferences, say, rather than via one's home institution. For instance, suppose I meet a well-regarded philosopher after his or her talk, go to the post-talk dinner/drinks, have nice philosophical conversations, etc. Is it ok to later email this person with the hopes of getting a letter (after sending along work/writing samples)? Or is this rude/over the line? I feel like it would behoove me to get letters from well-placed folks, but I really don't want to overstep any boundaries/be presumptuous, etc. Are there rules about this sort of thing? How well should one know a person before asking for a letter? (FWIW, this feels more awkward than trying to figure out rules of dating/how soon is too soon to call, etc.....)

Any thoughts?

My thoughts are these: there's absolutely nothing wrong with emailing someone after the conference saying it was great talking with them, and asking them if they might mind taking a look at a piece of your work. My experience is that if the person works really enjoyed talking with you, they'll often reciprocate. Then, if they read some of your work, if they like it, and you have a good rapport, it can be appropriate to ask them for a letter. 

Another Cover-Letter Question, and Well-Wishes

Given that the job market is starting, I just wanted to wish everyone the best of luck on the job market and ask a final question about cover-letters. In the comments section of my previous post on the subject, Rachel (a very successful job candidate) argued that cover letters should almost always be no more than one page, even for teaching-focused SLACs. However, in the comments section of an earlier post, Mark Alfano (another very successful candidate) suggested that cover letters for state teaching universities should be 1.5 pages and letters for SLACs as long as 2 pages.

What does everyone else think about this? I've revised a bunch of my cover-letters to meet Rachel's one-page requirement, but I have to say that the ones for SLACs, at least, look pretty low on information. I've heard in many places that many SLACs desire candidates to show clear familiarity with and interest in the school, program, faculty members, etc. But, I don't quite see how this can be done in one page. After a brief introduction and a survey of one's background, one page leaves barely enough room to give a bare-bones summary of one's research, teaching style, and community/campus involvement. 

Any thoughts?

A VAP's Trilemma?

Some comments on my recent post, "A VAP's Dilemma", got me thinking that perhaps VAPs/adjuncts face an even more worrisome trilemma.  

In a number of comments, Rachel suggests that it may be best for a VAP not to spend a great deal of time on teaching, as doing so will make you look like "VAP/adjunct material."  Now consider the following comment by Anon:

I seem to remember someone at the Philosophy Smoker blog claiming that their department didn't want to hire the very best. It would take me too long to track down the posts, but I believe the person was worried that the very best would end up taking jobs elsewhere and that this would make the whole search process a waste of time. That, or the person would be a flight risk, which would require putting together a new search a couple of years down the line. This might be something to keep in mind or it could be that this person's department is just an outlier.

I have to confess that I've had this worry about my own dossier. Given that I've published quite a bit of stuff, have lots of stuff under review, and my research projects are pretty ambitious, I worry sometimes that people at teaching places may look at my CV and say, "This guy clearly wants to be a researcher, and might jump ship."

Anyway, here's the trilemma:

1. If one works one's tail off to become a great teacher, one runs the risk of looking like "VAP/adjunct material."
2. If one works one's tail off to become a great researcher, one runs the risk of looking like a potential flight risk.
3. If one works one's tail off to become a great teacher and great researcher, one also looks like a potential flight risk.

My approach to building myself up as a candidate has been to work my tail off to become the absolute best teacher and researcher I can be. Yet, if Rachel is right about teaching and the point about "being a flight risk" is right, this looks like it may be a mistake. Indeed, everything looks like it may be a mistake.  Wait...what?  Yep, that's right. It looks like just about every seemingly reasonable strategy can blow up in your face.  This in turn suggests to me something that I've heard on numerous comment threads: namely, that the job market is an absolute crapshoot -- no more, no less.  Just about anything can land you a job or disqualify you from one, depending on the search committee. 

Which is why I always come back to this: I think that all I can do is try to become the absolute best teacher, researcher, and colleague I can be, be myself, and let the chips fall where they may. Indeed, I guess I want to say that's all I can do in good faith. I really do appreciate job market advice from all quarters -- but, at the end of the day, I guess I just think it's best to work my tail off, believe in what I do as a researcher, teacher, and colleague, and have faith that some search committee out there can come to believe in them too. At any rate, I guess I'm willing to run with this, come what may. But what do I know? I'm always willing to rethink things. :)

Reader Question

A reader writes:

I'm a regular reader of The Philosophers' Cocoon, and, as an assistant professor, I have found it quite helpful as a I find my way on the path towards tenure. I'm looking for some advice on a recent issue I've run into with the peer-review process. I submitted an article to a decent journal, though hardly a top journal, that is fairly pluralistic (they publish analytic, history of philosophy, and continental philosophy). My article is on a historical figure, certainly a part of the canon, but a minor figure in the eyes of many (he is never mentioned in any AOS, for instance). The article criticized a leading philosopher's commentary on an argument by the historical figure, and then presented and defended an alternative interpretation of that argument. I received comments from one reviewer that are clearly revise and resubmit comments, and the revision would be fairly straight forward. The reviewer said I was right and that the article was well-written and clear. The reviewer then presented a few questions I might consider addressing.

Now, my article was rejected, not because it lacked merit, the editor of the journal explicitly recognized its merit based on the reviewer's comments. The article was rejected because the editor was not able to find another person to review the article. The editor concluded that because another reviewer could not be found, that meant the readers of the journal would not be interested in the article's subject. I'm pretty sure that is not a good inference, and more importantly, I don't see why that warrants rejection. The editor claims that their attempts to find a reviewer were sustained and genuine, though I'm doubtful. I can think of at least 20 people capable of reviewing my article. They had the article for less than two months, and according to Andrew Cullision's page, their average is closer to 4 months. 

I am tempted to write the editor with the names of possible reviewers, and an explanation that the comments I did receive suggest a revise and resubmit, not a rejection. I am also tempted to cut my losses and move on to another journal. I need to land a few articles in the next year as tenure approaches, so such a rejection is very disappointing. It appears I'm being rejected because the editor at the journal could not properly carry out an editor's duties. Any thoughts from you or your readers?

I have to confess that I have no idea what to say about this case.  Anyone with experience have any good ideas?

A VAP's Dilemma

I've written before about what it is like to be a VAP (Visiting Assistant Professor). I've been a VAP for several years now, and in many respects it's a very good gig to have. However, one of the things that I mentioned in that previous post -- which I got to thinking about again yesterday -- is that VAPs face a certain dilemma. Actually, it's not just a dilemma for VAPs. It's also one for adjuncts. "A VAP's dilemma" just has a certain ring to it...

Anyway, the dilemma is this: as VAP or adjuct,

1. One just doesn't have adequate time for everything (teaching and research), but
2. One has to do something (teaching or research) super-well to get a TT job.

One either has to publish like a beast or demonstrate top-notch teaching abilities to have a good chance to get a TT job.  But, it seems, one must choose.  And therein lies the dilemma: how does one choose?

Let me unpack all of this a bit more.

Consider someone who has a TT job at a research university. Because research universities tend to award/deny tenure mostly on the basis of research output, a person in a TT job at a research university can afford to spend the vast proportion of their time and energy on research. This gives them the time and opportunity to become great researchers, provided they have the talent.

Now consider somone who has a TT job at a teaching-oriented university. Because teaching oriented places emphasize teaching quality and interaction with students, someone in this kind of position can devote the lion's share of their time and energy to becoming a great teacher.

Now consider a VAP or adjunct. They don't have the luxury of knowing that their future depends primarily on one thing (research) or the other (teaching). They are trying to obtain a tenure-track job. And therein lies the dilemma. Some TT jobs are research jobs, others are teaching jobs. To maximize one's chances of getting a job, the most natural thought is to become great at both. But this is near impossible. Becoming a truly great teacher is a full-time job (indeed, the more I've gone along, the more it seems to me that being a great teacher requires a lot of time!). But of course so is becoming a great researcher. Accordingly, if one tries to become great at both, one runs the real risk -- due to lack of time or resources -- of being mediocre at both. So, what should one do?

I have been facing this dilemma for the past several years, and I can attest that it's a really tough one to figure out.  I've gone back and forth repeatedly on my priorities: focusing for significant periods of time on teaching (to the exclusion of research), and for significant periods of time on research (to the exclusion of teaching). Further, I've tried my darnedest to avoid both horns of the dilemma: I've chosen to work my tail off trying to become the best I can at everything. And in one sense I think this has been a good thing. I feel good about the progress I've made as a researcher, teacher, and member of my university. Still, it is a dilemma, and I'm not sure there's a great solution to it.

Which brings me to a final set of questions: 

• Do search committees recognize the dilemma?  That is, do they recognize that people in VAP and adjunct positions face a certain set of disadvantages compared to grad student and TT faculty in virtue of the dilemma?

Grad students and TT reseach faculty, after all, get to spend something like 75% of their time on research.  VAPs and adjuncts, on the other hand, may only get to do research in their "off hours", and during the summer. And these aren't the only disadvantages. VAPs/adjuncts often have far fewer resources: for example, colleagues to read their work, travel funds, or even access to journal articles (believe it or not, my university doesn't have journal access!).  Do search committees take any of these difficulties (at least tacitly) into consideration?

• If search committees don't tend to think about the dilemma, should they think about it, and take it into consideration, more than they do?  Should they, as it were, award relatively successful VAPs/adjuncts "difficulty points" comparable to the way judges in gymnastics, diving, and figure-skating competitions judge contestants on the basis of the difficulty of their performance?

Just thought I'd throw it out there! ;) 

How to respond to a "revise & resubmit" verdict

Especially when submitting to top journals, the best one can hope for is often a "revise & resubmit" (R&R) verdict: The editors aren't willing to publish your paper, but they're willing to reconsider it if you revise it in light of the reviewers' comments.

An old post from Get a Life, PhD came across my Twitter feed this morning, in which the sociologist Tanya Golash-Boza lays out her approach to responding to R&R verdicts. The core of the approach is an Excel spreadsheet in which you track the reviewers' comments and your responses to them. (I created a blank version of her spreadsheet, which you can download here.) The spreadsheet provides a nice way to organize one's revisions and to keep track of them, which is important when it comes to writing the crucial letter explaining how your revisions address the reviewers' comments. As a bonus, her method has you rewrite the reviewers' comments in your own words, which helps if the reviewers' comments are presented in a hostile way.

Reader Question about Work Habits

A reader asks by email:

I have a specific and simple question about work habits that I thought you might like to pose on my behalf to readers. As a grad student one thing I've really struggled with is having so much time! Lacking lectures and other commitments, one has whole days free to plan as one likes. I've found that I've ended up wasting a lot of time - without structure I can find myself wasting days to procrastination, email-writing, cooking ... the list is endless! So I've determined that I'm going to write myself a structure and force myself to stick to it. My question is: how much time per day should one spend on one's research? By research I just mean reading and writing (not all the other things that go around it: hunting for papers and books, emailing colleagues with questions, etc). My opinion is that quality and intensity over quantity is generally a good plan, and that aiming for perhaps 5-6 good hours per day is better than forcing oneself to do 8-9 bad ones, but I'd like to hear what others think. Is 5 hours a day not enough? After all, friends working regular jobs regularly work 10/11 hour days. And there's always that nagging feeling, an occupational hazard I suppose, that you could be doing more, and producing better/more work.

Any comments/tips you or others might have about enforcing structure on one's work habits would also be gratefully heard and acted upon.

Here are some of my thoughts (and I'm curious to see what others think!).  I think the reader is more or less right about (A) setting a daily plan and sticking to it, (B) "quality over quantity", and (C) a 5-6 hour rule -- though I would offer the following amendment to (A): your daily plan should involve a daily requirement to draft X-number of written pages.  Let me go into a bit more depth on each of point.

On (A): In my experience, not having good daily work habits is perhaps the single biggest problem grad students run into, and perhaps the single biggest reason that some never finish the PhD. Many grad students, once they finish their coursework, begin to "slack off."  It usually begins innocently enough.  It tends to start by considering reading alone to be sufficient for a good day's work.  I've seen it happen time and again. Grad student finishes comps, grad students "reads" every day -- and, pretty soon, they haven't written a damn thing in two years, they have no dissertation prospectus, and they may never finish.  Trust me, I know. I fell into this trap myself, and made it through to the PhD by the skin of my teeth. I learned, pretty much just before it was too late, precisely the lessons you suggest: it is crucial to set a daily plan and stick to it.  Finally, for the reasons I just mentioned, it is crucial for that daily plan to involve committing to writing X numbers of draft pages of something or other. I know some have disagreed with this advice of mine before, but I've simply seen too many grad students go down precisely because they had no such daily requirement.  In order to finish the PhD and be successful beyond it, you need to write, and write a lot.  There is no better time to start than now. (Well, maybe yesterday, or the day before, etc.;)

On (B): quality trumps quantity every time (though quality does require time!). One piece of advice here: don't dilly-dally. If you're having trouble with a paper, turn to something else. The "solution" to your problem may pop into your head while you're working on that other thing. Or, alternatively, maybe you'll find out your new project is better than the old one.  Don't waste 9 months on a paper that's going nowhere. Always try to keep moving forward -- whether it's reading something new or writing something new. Don't "tread water" with papers or ideas that aren't working. 

On (C): I was once told by a professor in my grad program that 5 research hours per day is ideal, and I entirely agree.  My experience, at least, is that I have about 5 really good hours per day in me.  After that, the quality of my work takes a sharp nosedive, and all that >5 hours gives me is a headache, a bad mood, and a bad attitude the next day (when I'm exhausted from having worked so hard to such little effect the day before). As I've suggested before, one of the "secrets" I think I've discovered is that it's important to cultivate practices that maintain your day-to-day enthusiasm, and a 5-hour limit helps with this.  It's better to work 5 good hours today and then look forward to working tomorrow (finishing whatever you had left off!) than work 9 hours today and despise working tomorrow.   

Anyway, to the reader who asked, I hope you find this helpful -- and again, I'm curious to hear what others have to day!

On asking for help

This post is something of a follow-up to my recent post on Brian Leiter's discussion (and comment thread) regarding grad students and social media. As I explained in my earlier post, my experience has been that many grad students -- for one reason or another -- come to regard the discipline as a whole as a very hostile place: a place where one must always be careful to "avoid saying anything stupid." Now, I'm not entirely sure how common the meme is -- I've seen many confident grad students in my time -- nor am I sure what is responsible for it to the extent that it does exist (grad student anxiety?, professional advice?, etc.). What I do know, however, is this: (1) I have seen numerous grad students plainly affected it, (2) I was certainly affected by it, and finally, (3) the more I go along in my professional life, the more convinced I am that it is harmful. Let me explain.

Throughout most of graduate school -- and I take responsibility for this -- I was "scared to put myself out there." If I was having trouble with something, I tried to figure it out on my own. I didn't want to embarrass myself in front of people -- grad students, faculty, etc. -- who I feared might judge me. And I was by no means alone. Some grad students were confident and open. Those who weren't generally retreated into themselves -- usually, though not always, to bad results.  Why?  In my experience, grad students, for whatever reason, just tend to spread the meme, "Be careful what you say. You don't want to embarrass yourself."

My general experience -- both from personal experience but also watching others (some of whom have gone onto successful lives in academia and some of whom has not) -- is that this meme is harmful almost without fail.  Learning how to be a good philosopher, and more than that a good professional -- a person who can navigate the publishing world, job market, etc. -- takes a lot of help. And if you don't ask for it, you won't get it. You'll kick and thrash trying to keep your head above water wondering why it is so darn hard.

But, in my experience, if this is the reality you face, the real problem is you -- or, at least, that meme you've been carrying around in your head "not to embarrass yourself."  One of the things that I have found so amazing, both about my experience here at the Cocoon and in the profession more broadly, is just how many people are willing to help, if only you ask.  Over the past year and a half, I have asked people -- people at all different levels in the discipine -- for advice on countless things, from questions about what to do and not to on the job market, to publishing questions, etc.. I've asked for people if they would be willing to give me feedback on my papers.  And there have always been people there to lend a hand. And I've seen it happen to others too. You just have to ask.  And -- or so I've seen -- the results of asking for help are tremendous.  The help you do (or do not) receive from people can make all the difference in the world to your work, your dossier, your knowledge of the discipline, your ability to navigate it effectively (and comport yourself properly), and many other things besides.  

Will you sometimes embarrass yourself by making mistakes? Yes. Will some people judge you for them? Probably. But, be that as it may, my experience over the past couple of years -- the more I put that "don't embarrass yourself" meme to rest -- is, overwhelmingly, that our discipline is full of kind, supportive, helpful people who are more than willing to lend a hand; people who will care about you and care that you flourish if only you are open to fearlessly putting yourself out there and express helpful goodwill in return. Every discipline, of course, has some mean, unforgiving people. There is, unfortunately, probably nothing that can ever been done about them -- nothing, perhaps, besides not living for them, or in fear of them.  Live instead with an eye to the good-willed; those who are kind and willing to help. There are more of them than you might think.