The Philosophers' Cocoon

Reader query on a systematically-rejected paper

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Amanda writes:

Okay so most of us have experienced nasty reviews and wildly divergent reviews. However, I am dealing with a new low re papers and submission and stuff. I have this paper that plenty of senior people in the field have read and they tell me it's excellent, one of my best papers, etc. I have now submitted it to 6 journals, and not only has it been rejected every time, but rejected with criticisms of the type, "this is a completely hopeless project." I am hesitant to send it out again, because the reviews have been so bad I am worried one of my former reviewers will see it and that could hurt my reputation.

So does anybody have any experience or advice regarding what to do in situations like this? My paper is pretty controversial, so that might have something to do with it. I am fine giving up on a paper, not everything works. But I am just confused with the difference in feedback. And it really makes me wonder about our profession if professionals can't even come to remote agreement regarding whether a paper is half way decent. Of course, my colleagues could be lying to me, but that is a problem in itself. I would think they would just give me polite but critical feedback if they really didn't like it.

As fate would have it, I went through a similar case myself earlier in my career...

Reader query on high school jobs

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Kyle writes:

Does anyone out there have experience transitioning from a PhD in Philosophy and teaching at the college level to teaching at the high school level? I don't have a relevant degree (Math, English, etc.), so I'm not sure if I'd need to take more courses, get another degree, and so forth. Obviously, philosophy at a private school would be ideal but I wonder about public school options and teaching other subjects.

Amanda chimed in with a helpful comment--but do any of our readers have experience transitioning into a high school job? I think it would be great to hear from anyone who has personal experience making this kind of transition effectively (viz. the process of finding jobs, applying, interviewing, what life in those jobs is like, etc.). Is there anyone our there with experience who is willing to share? 

Reader query on tailoring cover letters

A reader writes in:

A standard piece of advice about tailoring in cover letters is to explicitly mention faculty at the school one is applying to. This seems smart and right. Here's a problem-schema I've run into several times, though: I'm looking at the University of X. Professor Y, who has been there for six years, looks to have research interests that overlap mine. But on examination, I see Prof. Y has published very *very* little in their six years at X. I conclude that Y may well not be in line for tenure. Should I mention Y in my letter or not? On one hand, it seems I shouldn't -- Y may well not be there, and tying myself to them might hurt me. On the other hand, it seems I should -- it at least demonstrates that I've looked into the faculty at X.

There are variations on this problem involving old faculty members who haven't published in a long time; faculty members who are on phased retirement; etc. Feel free to bring up variations as well as solutions. 

It's hard for me to offer determinate advice in this case, as I don't know the concrete details of the case. However, I would caution the reader and other applicants against guessing which faculty are likely to receive or not receive tenure. Allow me to explain.

Thoughts About Emotional Investment in the Philosophy Job Market

By Andrew Moon, assistant professor of philosophy at Virginia Commonwealth University.

An important practice I learned while on the job market was to manage my degree of emotional investment. If you are too emotionally invested in getting some job, and you do this for many jobs, then the job market will crush you emotionally because you'll be getting the same rote rejections that everybody but 1 out of 300-400 applicants experiences.  Better, I thought, to just not emotionally invest at all. Rejection is hard when you’ve emotionally invested yourself.

I thought this way for a small period of time.  Then a friend noted to me that if I didn’t emotionally invest at all, then I wouldn’t put in the sort of determination and energy into my applications that they deserved.  I agreed.  So, what should I do?

Well, here’s what I did. There were the "schools I wasn’t particularly thrilled about but it's better to have a job than nothing" schools and the "wow schools! but I don’t have the right pedigree or publications or abilities or whatever, so they won't accept me anyway" schools. These were all worth applying to, but I normally put less emotional investment, time, and energy into those jobs. Somewhere in the middle were the jobs I would put more emotional investment into: schools I was both excited about and also thought I had a little more of a chance at getting than the rest. In the end, I’ll admit that I’d often be surprised about where I ended up actually getting an interview, and it wouldn’t always be at the schools where I put more time and energy into the application.  Still, this strikes me as good advice.

Here’s another piece of advice that compares the job market and romantic relationships. Put only as much emotional investment into something (or someone) as it (or that person) has put into you. In romantic relationships, one errs when one is already daydreaming about a wedding when the person hasn't even said "Yes" to your request for a first date. And the first date is the first-round interview. If you haven't gotten an interview, then you haven't gotten to the first date.

Therefore, all schools, before a first round is offered, should have very little emotional investment from you. For nearly all of my schools at that stage, I expected rejection, and I honestly didn’t even read most rejection e-mails beyond merely seeing that I was rejected. Still, you should submit an application (i.e., ask the person out) and put in due effort while doing so!  But with small emotional investment. Only if you get that first-round interview should you start letting yourself emotionally invest to any serious degree (and you can raise the time and energy you devote to that school), but even then, it should be pretty low.  You can start to ramp it up more if offered a fly-out interview.

Well, those were some thoughts about what helped me when I was on the market.  Maybe they’ll help you too.  Comments, disagreements, and other tips of advice are also welcome!

Holiday book sales

This is just a quick note that OUP and Palgrave are having 50%-off holiday book sales! 

Reader query on when to set aside a project

 eIn the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Anonymous writes:

How do you work out when it is time to give up on (or at least put aside for the long term) a project that you have been working on for some considerable time?

I have been working on a paper for a couple of months now, unfortunately to the detriment of my dissertation. I've give a couple of talks on it and the feedback, while positive about the underlying idea, has been largely negative about the presentation and readiness of the paper for submission.

My dilemma is whether I should put another few weeks or months into the paper in the hopes of getting it published, or if it is time to put it on the back burner (perhaps until my dissertation is finished).

Getting a high quality publication is really important, and I still have about a year to work on the dissertation, but I feel that I might be falling for a kind of sunk costs fallacy: putting in further work now that is not productive due to fear of having wasted the last two months or so.

I'd love to hear any tips, heuristics, or other ways of judging such a situation that people have. I understand that specific advice is beyond the scope of anonymous posting here, but perhaps people have general strategies or ideas that might help me assess the situation better.

I think Guy provided a nice reply targeting the particular situation described:

As counter-intuitive as this sounds, put the project down for two months. Work on your dissertation. Then pick the paper up and see what it sounds like once you have some distance from it. In the meantime, you will have pushed your dissertation forward. I have had a few projects that I set aside for two years, and then I found I had insights and conceptual tools I did not have before.

However, Guy's advice is really narrowly targeted to the reader's situation. What about the reader's more general query regarding tips or heuristics for knowing when to side aside or give up on a project?

I think this is an important issue because in my experience mentoring a few grad students, one common problem I see is in "getting stuck" on a single project. I've seen this happen more than a few times: a person gets an revise-or-resubmit or something, and then they end up spending all of their time on the project--even when that involves spinning their wheels for months on end and letting other projects fall by the wayside. Because of the "publish or perish" nature of the job-market and tenure, my sense is that this is a really important pitfall to avoid. Which once again raises Guy's question: what are some strategies for recognizing when one should set aside or give up on a project? 

Reader query on obtaining jobs for couples

In the comments section of our newest "how can we help you?" post, Anon writes:

I'd like to see a post on couples finding a dual positions somewhere. It would be nice to see what success looks like in this arena. It's hard to know how to go about solving this problem when you have no idea what possible solutions look like. E.g. Is it possible to get 2 tt positions? If so, how? Do most resign themselves to a tt position with a permanent, but not Tt position for the other? Any instances of job-sharing? What does the negotiation process look like for these sorts of things?

When I talk to senior academics about this, they are about as clueless as well meaning non-academic friends and family:"why don't you just find positions in the same city?" Or. "Hey, there are other colleges nearby, has your wife tried applying to these?"

Great questions. I have very little clue what the answers are. I've heard (only very anecdotally) that it is rare to obtain dual TT positions--and that it's more common for one person to get a TT job and then the other person either a non-TT job at the same university or a nearby one (including nearby community colleges). However, I have no idea how accurate these anecdotes are, or how one actually goes about seeking dual positions. 

Is there anyone with experience with these matters willing to share some insight? 

Friendship and being an academic

I was on the phone with a friend of mine--not a close friend, but a good friend still. We call just a few times a year. He does not do social media; he does not like Skype. So the old fashioned phone it is. He even has a landline. He is an academic, and well-known in his field. He was also extremely fortunate to live in the same area since he was a young child. As a result, he has several close friends, friendships that span decades. They go out to the theatre or the movies. They host dinners at each others' houses. As I was talking to him about this, I noticed how I envied him. Such friendships are clearly still an ideal of human sociality. Friends, the Big Bang Theory, and other shows portray people who are well-embedded in a network of close friendships.

Moving around multiple times, it is hard to maintain close friendships. 

 Raphael, self-portrait with a friend

When discussing this topic on social media (which, for all its ills, is one of the things that allows me to keep in touch with friends) many of my academic friends mentioned similar experiences, such as "My spouse is my only close friend". 

This article was originally published in 2012, but recently republished, because "the topic is timeless." Accordingly, it becomes harder to make friends as one gets older, in ones thirties, forties, and beyond. The reasons for why are complex--being more picky, more busy. But it is sad all the same, and perhaps an under-appreciated negative aspect of the precarity of the job market. 

Given how awful the precarity of the academic job market is (see here for a recent piece that describes this in gut-wrenching detail), friendship would not seem to be high on the priority list. Yet, friends mean a support network for practical as well as emotional matters. It is a source of self-worth and dignity, as eloquently described by philosophers such as Aristotle, Confucius and Augustine. Augustine wrote about his personal friends at length, evidently a source of delight, and sometimes frustration to him. Being denied friends is thus being denied a vital, perhaps even philosophical, part of the human experience.

We can go into tips and suggestions on how to mitigate this problem. Perhaps those of us without close friends aren't trying hard enough. But given that many close friendships are forged, without much effort on our part, in our childhood and twenties, it is a result of how the academic labor market is structured. Seeing close friendships unravel is yet another price many of us have to pay.

Reader query on reentering academia after time away

An anonymous reader writes in: "I was wondering if the community had any idea how likely it would be to reenter academia after working in the private sector for a significant amount of time. I'm in my last year of my PhD and it may be possible for me to work at a company."

Good question. Not sure I have a good answer. Any thoughts?

Reader query on standing out on the market

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" post, Eugene writes,

Beyond publishing in top-20 journals and teaching a diverse range of courses, are there any non-obvious things a post doc can do to stand out in a stack of job applications for an assistant professorship?

Securing a book contract comes to mind, but I'm not sure it's worth it, since that would mean spending less time expanding one's breadth of research. Securing prestigious sources of funding? That's super risky given how competitive those things can be. More service time, e.g. organizing conferences, refereeing, etc.? I don't know how much weight is put into that sort of stuff. Public outreach comes to mind, like teaching in prisons, but again, I'm not really sure about the pay off. Doubling down on publishing in top 20 journals? That risks putting one out of contention for a lot of non-R1 jobs.

Any feedback would be appreciated.

Any past or present search committee members willing to weigh in? I expect the answers to Eugene's questions depend quite a bit on the type of institution one is applying to--but let me share my own sense based both on my years on the job-market and time on two search-committees at a teaching-focused institution...

How can we help you? (November 2017)

It has been a while since we've done one of these, and since job-candidates are in the thick of the job-market, I figure now might be a good time for one! 

For those of you unfamiliar with the series, this is a chance for you to post openly or anonymously in the comments section on anything you could use help with as an early-career philosopher. After you post your query in the comments section, I will then post new threads for readers to discuss (and hopefully help you with!) your query.

Please do feel free to post a query on anything we can help you with:

• The academic job-market
• Non-academic jobs
• Graduate school (e.g. writing a disseration, etc.)
• Research & publishing
• Teaching
• Etc.

Fire away: we're here to help!

Fire away: we're here to help!

Balance Series, Part 10: Resisting Digital Distractions

Midway through graduate school, following numerous arbitrary increases in my monthly bill, I abandoned Comcast’s cable and internet service. Afterward, I struck a deal with a friend in a neighboring apartment to use his wireless network and cover half the expense. Six months later, he moved to a different complex, and I was stuck with no cable or internet at home. But my bitter dislike and distrust of Comcast was so strong that I refused to go back to them, even if they were the only provider in my area. So for that summer and the semester that followed, I had no internet access in my apartment.

And this is where the story gets interesting – not because of what happened but because of what didn’t happen. My life did not get any worse.

Reader query on a recommendation-letter issue

An anonymous UK PhD writes in:

Its coming up to two years this February since I finished my doctorate. In that time i've applied for lots of postdocs/associate profs etc. Nearly all of these job applications required letters of reference (usually just two, sometimes three). Now, recently I asked, politely as always, for one of my references (who was the external examiner for my PhD), to once again write a reference. On the one hand I always feel slightly bad about this, since i'm asking them to do something for me which they strictly don't have to and which is a burden. On the other hand, at this stage how else is one to get references (I have sourced others but this particular individual is a 'go to' reference), and surely they should just be using pretty much the same reference each time with a few tweaks. On asking again for the reference I got quite a rude email (by academic standards), in which the ref said something to the tune of "I've never had to write so many references for anyone in my life" (and it wasn't intended as a joke, it was quite harsh in tone). Now i don't just apply for any jobs, like most people on the market I pick and choose carefully, but nonetheless apply widely within reason. I was wondering what readers at the Cocoon made of this response, and what attitude one should to take towards it. Even if the individual has had to write 30+ references (really that should mean send to an email or server 30+ reference statements which are very similar if not identical) surely its just a hazard of the profession, given the market, that if you agree to do refs for someone you will end up doing a job lot of them. Is there a point at which you should stop using a reference like this, i.e. someone external to you (so not a supervisor etc) given a certain amount of times you have used them? If so whats the cut off? Any thoughts from other early career people at the Cocoon on this would be helpful.

I'm curious to hear what other readers think, but here are some of my thoughts...

Reader query on publishing replies

A reader writes in:

Some years back you wrote a post in which you responded to Thom Brooks' publishing advice for graduate students. Here's what you said about publishing replies: 

After discussing book reviews, Brooks talks about "replies" -- 2,000-word or so responses to articles/arguments published elsewhere. I entirely agree with Brooks on the value of replies. My first two publications were replies, and they were a valuable experience in a number of ways. First, replies don't take much time to write. They don't take months of hard work to put together. All you have to do is find a problem with an argument someone has published, write up your counter-argument, and send it off. Second, and this is just my impression (but also Brooks' as well), peer-review standards are probably not quite as high with replies as with full-length articles (either that, or its just the case that good replies are easier to write!). Third, replies are a great way to gain confidence-- chances are that if you write some, you'll land one as a publication sooner or later. Finally, they are a great opportunity to get a feel for what reviewers and editors are looking for -- the thing that, in my experience, is the most important thing to get in order to publish effectively (more on this momentarily). Basically, the only down-side of replies is that journals typically only accept replies to their own articles. Although a few journals that accept replies to articles in other journals, most do not -- so, if you send your reply to the journal that published the original piece and it doesn't get accepted, you may be out of luck. Still, I don't think this should deter you -- for again, replies don't take much time, and if you churn a bunch out, chances are something will land!

Recently, I've been thinking about writing a reply, but I've had some mixed advice from others when I bring this up. One common thing I have heard is that sometimes it is better to just send off a paper that for all intents and purposes is a reply, but isn't pitched as one, as in the phrase, "A reply to Y" does not appear in the title. I thought this advice was pretty good, since we've all read papers that are basically just responding to one article or one person's view, and so essentially are replies, but are not explicitly pitched that way. But I also was thinking that, in my case, a reply might be the way to go, since I really do just want to respond to one paper in particular. 

Reader query on the stresses of a TT job

A few weeks ago in the comments section of my post on tenure requirements, a reader wrote:

How did those of you who are on the tenure track or have tenure deal with the stress of long hours (seriously long hours), teaching prep, service, and research demands - especially in the first year? I'm in my first year of a TT position and I feel like I'm both drowning and losing sight of what I love about the philosophy profession. Is this normal?

Marcus, it would be so very helpful if at some point there was a discussion about life during the first year of a TT job and this seemed like the most relevant thread...

Funnily enough, I've been trying to compose a post on this for over a week...but have been too overwhelmed with work to finish it up. While I still hope to get a post of my own up on the topic, I figured it might be helpful in the meantime for all of our tenure-track readers to weigh in. So, to our tenure-track readers, here are some questions for you:

1. Is it normal to feel like you're drowning (i.e. feel overwhelmed) in a tenure-track job? Why?
2. Do you ever feel like you're losing sight of what you love about the profession? Why?
3. If you answered affirmatively to (1) and/or (2), do you have any tips for grappling with these things?

I'm very curious to hear what you all have to say, and hope we can provide some helpful advice to our reader!

Job-market reporting thread

Seeing that the job-market discussion thread turned into an all-purpose job market discussion, I figured it might be good to have a separate thread for job-market reporting (i.e. reporting interviews, flyouts, offers, hires, and so on). This is that thread. From here on out, please visit the other thread for general job-market discussion, and use this one (if you like!) to report on job-market news only.

Note: I've placed permalinks to both threads on the right-hand side of blog.

Balance Series, Part 9: Protecting Your Hobbies

More than 5 years ago, I wrote my first post on the Cocoon. It was the first of several posts addressing issues concerning work-life balance in academia. Given that the last entry in the series was close to 2 years ago, readers might have thought it was over.

Nope. That ideal balance among the things I value still eludes me, and there’s plenty more to write about it. Fortunately, I’ve learned some things over the years that have proven valuable in pursuit of that equilibrium. I want to share one of them today, one that I wish I had better understood when I began graduate school.

Graduate students, if they are aware of their circumstances, will feel significant pressure through their graduate career to be productive and build their CV. Otherwise, their chances of faring well on the job market are slim (except perhaps for those from the highest ranked programs). This creates a strong incentive to get fully immersed in one’s work, and for those who enjoy philosophy, the temptation is even greater. You’re in graduate school, after all: what better thing to do than get sucked wholly into your studies? Isn’t that what you went to graduate school to do in the first place?

The allure of such a lifestyle can be strong, and some of the most influential philosophers get deeply wrapped up in their work. Consider Jeff McMahan’s remarks about the lifestyle of Derek Parfit:

There are many anecdotes about the ways in which Parfit simplified his life to take as little time as possible away from his work. He ate only twice a day, with almost no variation in what he had at each meal. He ate cold food only, mostly fruits and vegetables without any preparation. Even when he could have had freshly ground coffee with only a minute’s additional preparation, he drank instant coffee, often with water straight from the tap. He sometimes kept a book open on the chest-of-drawers so that he could read while putting on his socks… Wanting to preserve his mental and physical capacities, he took an hour every evening during his last decade to get vigorous exercise on a stationary bicycle, but never without reading philosophy (or occasionally physics) while furiously pedalling.

Query for search committee members: self-aggrandizement or no?

An interesting question just arose in the comments section of our job-market discussion thread.  Tenured wrote, "The killer for most people's application is their letter of application...People put very odd things in the letters. They go on and on about their research and nothing else...and often quite silly emotional things."

Having served on two search committees and mentored several job-candidates, I wholeheartedly agree. As I mentioned a while back in our Job-Market Boot Camp's entry on cover letters (see also here), my experience on both sides of the market--both as a candidate and search-committee member--has been that truly effective cover letters, teaching statements, and research statements are understated, simply laying out one's qualifications, accomplishments, teaching methods, and research as descriptively as possible, without "selling oneself" or self-aggrandizement (e.g. "I have published in the highest-ranked journals in my field", "I am a passionate teacher" etc.). I was given this advice by a job-market consultant I hired, who claimed (on the basis of serving on many search committees) that this is one of the biggest errors job-candidates make. I know several people who did much better on the market (getting permanent jobs) immediately after following this advice, and the same happened to me: I got a lot more interviews, and ultimately a tenure-track job.

'Bridging Ideal and Non-ideal Theory'

After many years of debate, this new article by Alexandru Volacu finally gets the distinction between ideal and nonideal theory (and how to do both properly) exactly right. If you do social and political philosophy, do check it out! 

Philosophers on free speech & academic freedom?

A quick query for you all: who are the best American philosophers working on free speech and academic freedom today? Thanks!