The Philosophers' Cocoon

Making a Course One's Own

When you are assigned to teach your first course as an independent instructor, the task can seem rather daunting. You’ve been a student in many undergraduate philosophy courses and probably assisted a few, but teaching one yourself feels like something entirely different.

When I began teaching independently, my default strategy was to solicit syllabi from colleagues who had taught the course before, identify which syllabus seemed like the best fit for my preferred teaching style and course goals, and then model my course accordingly. This strategy may sound perfectly reasonable, and when we’re teaching a class for the first time, it can be very helpful to see how others have done it. However, this strategy also has a significant drawback that I want to highlight. It will be easier to illustrate with a concrete example.

Reader query on revising rejected papers

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

So I was wondering if you could have a thread on revising papers that were submitted and rejected. I have a hard time with this, because lots of people give the advice to just turn in the paper again with no changes. And lots of people give the opposite advice. I think we all know that when a reviewer points out a serious problem, we should change it. But what about the majority of cases when we ourselves are skeptical about the reviewer's complaints? And for me, it is rarely the case that two reviewers mention the same problem. If they did, then it would be an easy case to go ahead and change it.

I struggle with making changes because I simply am not confident that the changes would help increase the odds of acceptance. And if they don't, then basically I wasted a lot of time that I could have been using to edit different work.

Basically, I am curious about two things. First, have people noticed a correlation between making changes to their paper and having it accepted at a decent journal? And second, do most of you cocoon readers recommend making changes to a paper, or simply just resending it unless there are obvious problems?

Good questions!

Reader query on applying for higher-ranked jobs

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

I have two related questions. First, is it possible to apply for a tenured job while once is still tenure-track oneself at a different school? (Suppose that I'm about to go up for tenure at School A, and would almost certainly get it. But School B is hiring a tenured line this year before I would go up for tenure, and I would like to apply for it if I can.)

Second, does the answer to the first question change at all if one is applying for an American job from a country with different academic ranks? For example, if one is applying from Australia as a Lecturer (which I understand is roughly equivalent to Assistant Professor in the United States), is one in basically the same boat as if one were an Assistant Professor in the United States, or is this harder if one is coming from a different country?

I'm pretty sure the answer to the first question is generally "no." I mean, of course you can apply for a tenured job while still tenure-track--but I'm pretty sure you won't be seriously considered. Am I wrong?

As to the second question (does the same thing apply for jobs in other countries with different academic ranks?), that I have no idea about. Anyone have any insight to share on this and/or the first question?

Guest-post on perceptions about different types of jobs

The following is an invited guest-post composed by Sam Duncan (Tidewater Community College):

Whether we admit it or not, we philosophers think a lot about how other philosophers view us and our academic positions. In fact, many of us often weigh this more than we should other considerations like the day to day reality of jobs and their larger impact on the world.  I worked as an adjunct and as a lecturer on a year to year appointment for many years and one of the thoughts that dogged me was that my professors and colleagues from grad school thought of me a failure. When I finally landed a full-time gig at a community college I couldn’t shake that thought that even though I liked my job, other members of the profession would view me as a failure. The reactions of some of my former professors only reinforced this. I remember writing one to tell her about the job and her reaction was basically “Well you deserve a better job but it’s a step up.”

The thing is, it’s actually a really good job by almost any objective measure. The pay is good, and my workload and stress levels are much lower than my friends working in research focused jobs. I also have a lot of autonomy in the way I do my job. In fact, not only does administration not meddle in how I do my job but they’ve been extremely supportive of my own ideas and responsive to the few concerns I’ve had as a faculty member. For instance, I wanted to offer a bioethics course here and a number of deans and other administrators did a lot of work to help me through the process and to drum up interest in the course once it was offered. This is a huge contrast to the relationship between the administration and faculty at the research focused school where I worked as a lecturer, which could only be described as acrimonious if not poisonous. And while I don’t have to do much research to keep my job, the college is extremely supportive of research. I get a pretty good travel budget and my dean is overjoyed when I present papers at conferences. So I can do research if and when I feel like it, but there’s none of the publish only to publish pressure that many faculty members feel at research focused institutions. To me at least that seems ideal. Why then would my former professors and others respond in a tone of commiseration? And why would I care?

Reader query about interviews with deans

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Curious Individual writes:

I have my first fly-out! The visit will include a meeting with a dean. But what gets discussed in such a meeting? What should I expect? How should I prepare? Any insight would be very much appreciated.

First of all, congrats - I hope you knock it out of the park! Second, great question. It's been a few years since I've interviewed with a dean, so I'm not sure I'm the best person to ask, but I'll share a few thoughts in a moment.

Before I turn to that, though--and ask you all to share your thoughts--I'd like to highlight an important issue. In response to Curious' comment, Amanda wrote:

The meeting with the dean is the easiest part of the interview. It is basically just for show. When I've had these meetings I was asked easy questions about my research, teaching, what I think of the area etc. Most schools choose who they want to hire and the dean signs off on it. (Curious if anyone has a different perspective from me. I think in Europe and the UK things might be different?)

As I mentioned in a brief rejoinder, my experience is very different than Amanda's. I had an on-campus interview at a very small SLAC whose dean (I learned from a search committee member) was not only a de facto member of the search committee, but the person whose "vote" mattered more than anyone else's. Basically, the school was so small that the dean micromanaged things and wanted to make sure new hires fit his vision of the college. In essence, if the dean wanted you, he would make that known to the search committee, and if he didn't then you were out. So, yeah, the interview with him was sort of important!

Reader query on confidence & job-market disappointments

A few days ago, Nick wrote in our job-market discussion thread:

So, I've just learned, yet another time, that I was not a finalist for a job. I'm having a hard time converting first rounds into fly-outs, and yet I've been told many times, first or second hand, explicitly or tacitly, that I interview just fine. I had one campus interview two years ago, zero last year, and so far only one coming this year. I'm starting to think this might as well be a fluke given how few of them I've had. This might be my only chance, and so I should give it all; at the same time it's hard not to despair in the face of repeated failure. How does one not let failure erode one's confidence?

I expect many other job-market candidates are in a similar boat. I know I was. A few years on the market I got no interviews. Other years I got quite a few first-round interviews, but converted few of them into fly-outs. And, on more than one occasion, on-campus interviews ended in brutal disappointment. I know all too well how hard it can be to keep going in these circumstances--and how difficult it can be to stay confident. Which is why I thought it might help Nick and other candidates to devote a new thread to the topic.

How, then, would you all answer Nick's question? I have no easy answers. But here are a few things I think may be helpful...

Teaching Intro Courses Series - Part 1: Stacey Goguen's Introduction to Ethics

by Stacey Goguen

Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), lower-division gen. ed. course: “Ethics”

The Context

I teach at a medium-sized public university (7,000-8,000 students) which caters to a racially and socio-economically diverse population of mostly Chicago-area residents, especially (a) students looking to transfer, either from more expensive nearby schools or community colleges, (b) non-traditional students who are either working part or full time or who had to take a break from completing college, and (c) first-time college students who need a fair amount of academic support and advising, often because they’re first generation college students.

Class sizes for our lower-division classes are capped at 35 students, and since my teaching load is 3/3 and I often have at least one course under 20 students, my grading load is manageable in itself, which means I can assign more writing than I could with a larger grading load. However, because a lot of my students are under constant time-crunches (mostly from working), and they don’t often have experience with writing long papers (5+ pages), I tend to assign shorter writing assignments (usually 1-2 pages, 3-4 pages max).

The Course

I have taught an introduction to ethics course (called “Ethics”) four times over the past two years. Two things I do that are unusual are that (a) the content revolves around applied ethics, though I still incorporate metaethics, and (b) the major writing assignments do not focus on building and critiquing arguments, though students do some of that, too.

Below are my course goals, and I’m going to try something unusual with them, too: breaking them into primary, secondary, and tertiary goals—because I think that will help explain how I think about this course. Primary goals are what I put on my syllabi; they are what I consider absolutely necessary for myself and my students to accomplish. Secondary goals are things I want at least some students in the course to get, especially if they are planning to be majors—but it’s not crucial for all students to meet them. Tertiary goals are ‘frosting on the cake’: it’s great if students meet them, but if not, I don’t consider it a huge problem.

Reflections on our recent grad school poll

Following our recent discussion of an undergraduate's questions regarding grad school, last week I ran an informal poll asking readers who pursued a philosophy PhD: "If you pursued a PhD in philosophy, would you do it again?" I thought it might be useful to discuss the results so far, which are as follows:

If you pursued a PhD in philosophy, would you do it again?   Selection   Votes  Definitely  28% 64  Probably  25% 56  Unsure  16% 36  Probably Not  21% 48  Definitely Not  11% 24  228 total

As one reader helpfully noted, the poll was by no means a random sample. It sampled readers of the Cocoon, a professional philosophy blog whose readers who therefore plausibly have a higher-than-average likelihood (among all those who pursued a philosophy PhD) of still being members of the academic profession. In other words, the poll seems likely to not include responses by many people who left the discipline during or after their PhD, and who might plausibly provide more negative answers. For these reasons, as well as the informal nature of the poll, it is probably a good idea to take the poll results with a healthy grain of salt. Still, I think it might be worth reflecting on the poll results, especially in relation to other known facts, such as the fact that (1) recent job-market data indicate that only around 35% of philosophy PhDs get permanent academic jobs (at least within the first three years post-PhD); and (2) humanities PhDs in non-permanent academic jobs appear significantly less satisfied with their jobs than in private or public non-academic industry jobs. 

Because the poll is plausibly skewed in a positive direction (for reasons outlined above), I think it may be helpful to informally look at the poll results as a kind of Best-Case Scenario, where this name just means something like "the most positive results one is likely to get to the poll question among early-career philosophers" (this blog's target audience).

Call for papers: Evolutionary ethics: The nuts and bolts approach

I'd like to draw Cocoon readers' attention to this call for papers of a conference I am co-organizing at Oxford Brookes University, 20-21 July 2018.

A growing body of evidence from the sciences suggests that our moral beliefs have an evolutionary basis. To explain how human morality evolved, some philosophers have called for the study of morality to be naturalized, i.e., to explain it in terms of natural causes by looking at its historical and biological origins. The present literature has focused on the link between evolution and moral realism: if our moral beliefs enhance fitness, does this mean they track moral truths? In spite of the growing empirical evidence, these discussions tend to remain high-level: the mere fact that morality is evolved is often deemed enough to decide questions in normative and meta-ethics.

This conference starts from the assumption that the details about the evolution of morality do make a difference, and asks how. We welcome philosophical papers that engage with the sciences, and empirical papers that engage with philosophical themes to naturalize ethics. We are looking for speakers from a wide range of disciplines, including but not limited to, philosophy, developmental and comparative psychology, cognitive anthropology, archaeology, evolutionary biology, and behavioral economics. We are particularly interested in papers that bridge philosophy with one or more of these disciplines.

Possible topics include, but are not limited to:

• Evolutionary debunking arguments that engage with the empirical literature
• Companions in guilt arguments
• Modeling the cultural evolution of morality 
• Gene-culture co-evolution of morality 
• Archaeological studies of cooperation and care
• Developmental psychology of morality and its philosophical implications
• The plausibility of historical ethical theories as gauged by the sciences (e.g., Mengzi’s moral sprouts theory, Adam Smith’s theory of moral sentiments)
• Experimental philosophy of morality
• Cross-cultural differences in moral systems

This event is part of the Evolution, ethics, and human origins: A deep-time perspective on human morality project

Plenary speakers: 

• Neil Levy, Oxford Centre for Neuroethics
• Penny Spikins, University of York

Scientific committee: 

• Johan De Smedt, Oxford Brookes University
• Helen De Cruz, Oxford Brookes University
• Emily Burdett, Coventry University
• Richard Rowland, Australian Catholic University  

Call for papers: 

Please place the title of your abstract in the subject line of your e-mail. Submit abstracts in one of the following formats: pdf, rtf, docx, or doc. Do not put the abstracts in the body of the e-mail, but send them as an attachment.   

Abstracts should be on average 500 words (max. 750 words, references do not count towards the word count). They should be prepared for anonymous review.

Please send your abstracts to: [email protected]      

• Deadline for submission: 1 February 2018   
• Notification by 15 March 2018   

We aim to publish papers from the conference as an edited volume. Please indicate in your email if you do not wish your paper to be considered for the volume.

Registration costs £35 and includes lunch for two days and coffee/tea. There is also an optional conference dinner. Click here to register. 

More information on the conference website here. 

Unusual Intro Courses: Call for participants for a new series

How do you teach an intro level course, such as Introduction to Philosophy? Many of us have considerable freedom in organizing our courses in the way we see fit. There are so many possible ways to approach this material that it boggles the mind. 

There has been a lot of recent discussion on Shen-yi Liao's unorthodox (at least in some respects) intro-level philosophy course, see e.g., here and in the Comments section on the Daily Nous blogpost, as well as Prof. Liao's follow-up post, here. Discussion has focused on what should be included in Intro level courses, to what extent we need to cover the classics, and how we can diversify the syllabus. 

As the Philosophers' Cocoon aims to be a forum of advice for early-career (and not-so-early career) philosophers, we are starting a new series "How do you teach Intro-level courses?" In this series, we want to showcase the many ways in which one can approach intro-level courses, in particular Introduction to Philosophy.

So we want to hear from you, reader. We want to hear about the orthodox, the unusual, the outlandish, the hyper-focused-on-one-philosopher, the thought-provoking assignments. You are free to structure your contribution however you like, but we suggest the following elements to be present:

1. The context: At what kind of place do you teach (e.g., a state university in the midwest, an elite liberal arts college)? What is the class size for this course? What is the student body like?
2. The course: Please describe briefly how you approach the course. We are in particular looking for Intro to Philosophy courses but any intro-level course (e.g., Intro to Ethics, Intro to Philosophy of Science, Intro to History of Philosophy) is welcome. Give an overview of some of the readings, topics, and assignments
3. The motivation: Why did you choose to structure your intro course this way?
4. How do students respond: What is the reaction of students? How do they engage with the materials? 

We hope this series will accomplish the following aims: 

• Give a sense of the wide diversity of ways you can teach an intro-level philosophy course
• Give new ideas to anyone who is looking for inspiration to revamp their course 

If it works out well, we might do future series on how people teach other kinds of courses (not intro-level, graduate seminars etc.) But for now, we want to focus on the intro! 

Please contact Marcus Arvan (marvan at ut.edu) or Helen De Cruz (hde-cruz at brookes.ac.uk) if you want to be featured for this series, or comment below. 

Reader query on a deceased letter-writer

A reader writes,

One of my letter writers unexpectedly passed away. I am still able to send this person's letter. I was hoping to get help with the following questions:

1) Is this something that I should indicate in my application?

2) If so, what is a respectful, appropriate way to do so?

Thanks!

Good questions - and not ones I've ever encountered before. Any thoughts?

Replying to odd interview questions

In the comments section of our job-market discussion thread, Anon writes: 'So suppose you have an interview and someone says "tell me about yourself." What, on earth, are you supposed to say in response to this question?' Maybe this wouldn't be an odd interview question in the non-academic work (I'm not sure), but it sure does seem it bit off-beat for academic jobs.

How would you all reply to a question like this? What would you consider a good answer?

More generally, what kinds of odd interview questions have you encountered, and how did you reply? Do you think your reply was a good one? Why/why not? The only oddball question I remember getting was, "Why do you think you've been on the market so long?" To the best of my recollection, my answer was something like, "It's a tough market." I think it was a good answer. ;)

Reader query on custom student evaluations

In the comments section of our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Assistant Prof Eugene writes:

Eventually, I can see myself giving the job market another go. But next time, I want to submit job applications with evaluations of my teaching that contain answers from students that search committee members might actually find illuminating, given all the well-known problems with student evals (e.g. unreliability, biased, etc.). There have to be questions that search committee members would prefer to see answered over those questions found on a typical university-approved teaching eval, such as "How would you rate this teacher's effectiveness overall?" or "Did this teacher arrive to class on time?". So, my question for Cocooners, is what are they? Imagine you're on a search committee. What kind of feedback would you like to see from an applicant's students?

While another commenter  ('With a Job') wrote (in somewhat more colorful language) that people could care less about student evals when trying to move around after your first TT job, I'm not sure this is true if one is looking to move from one teaching-focused institution to another, which Eugene confirmed he is indeed considering for reasons relating to geographical location. Although I know people who are skeptical of student evaluations in general (for what seem like good reasons), I know others who do care. As to Eugene's follow-up question, "I suppose it would be interesting to hear, then, why people think that matter at _any_ job stage. Why is there is so much emphasis placed on them when we apply for our first jobs?", I don't think it takes too much imagination to speculate on some purely pragmatic reasons for institutions to care about them.

In any case, Eugene's query raises several questions I suspect readers might be interested in hearing answers to, among them:

1. Which types of student-evaluation items do search-committee members care about? Why?
2. What kinds of alternative questions might be formulated that committee members might find insightful? Why?

Poll: would you still choose to pursue a philosophy PhD?

In light of the discussion in the comments section of our recent query by an undergraduate considering grad programs in philosophy, I thought it might be interesting to run an informal poll. Specifically, I'm curious how many of our readers who entered PhD programs in philosophy would make the same choice if they could go back in time and make the decision again.

Obviously, this is an unscientific poll and there might be significant self-selection effects, so I encourage readers (particularly those considering grad school in philosophy) to take poll results with a grain of salt. Nevertheless, I thought it might be interesting to gauge our readers' thoughts. I respectfully ask readers to answer the poll honestly, and to fill it out only once. The poll is open to those and only those who entered a PhD program in philosophy, regardless of whether they finished their program. Finally, if you would like to briefly share why you answered the poll the way you did in the comments section (in a manner consistent with the blog's Mission), please do! 

If you pursued a PhD in philosophy, would you do it again?

Definitely

 

Probably

 

Unsure

 

Probably Not

 

Definitely Not

 

 

pollcode.com free polls

Reimagining the APA's placement service?

Until relatively recently, the divisional APA meetings were the main place for academic job-candidates in philosophy to interview for jobs. The Eastern APA in particular used to be a smorgasborg of job-candidates running from interview to interview, and trying to get that all important "invite" to visit the tables of interviewing schools at the "smoker" (if you don't know what the smoker was, trust me, good for you!). Candidates also used to stand in long lines to sign up for the APA's Placement Service, which directed candidates to interview rooms and gave candidates one last chance to submit CV's to interviewing schools in the hope of getting a last-minute interview.

Anyway, ever since the advent of Skype, things have changed dramatically. These days, nearly all first-round interviews seem to occur online (I heard only one school was interviewing at this year's Eastern). In many ways, this is a good thing: it saves job-candidates--many of whom may be in financially vulnerable positions--from having to shell out thousands of dollars annually just to interview. It has also led the APA's placement service to go defunct. However, given how bad the academic job-market is, I'm wondering whether it might make sense to restart and reimagine the placement service to focus on alt-ac jobs and networking. Allow me to explain.

Two questions on pursuing, and using, philosophy outside of the academy

In the comments section of our previous post, Potential PhD writes (edited for brevity):

I've been following this thread with interest because I've just applied for a PhD, after wrestling for a couple of years with whether to do it or not. My situation is a little different than Jonathan's, as I'm in the UK and already have a Master's, so doing a PhD over here would differ in several ways from going to an American graduate school, though I'm sure there are many commonalities also. But I'm not here to ask for specific help with my situation. Instead, I want to raise a couple of more general points/questions.

Firstly, a big part of the appeal of doing a philosophy PhD for me...is that I think we need philosophy...I want to do philosophy...even if I don't become an academic. So are there ways of making a serious contribution to philosophy without becoming an academic? Can any of them make money? How helpful/necessary is a PhD in becoming a better non-academic philosopher and being taken seriously in that field, whether for money (if that's possible) or on the side while earning a living through a different career? My sense is that many academics are disdainful of non-academics commenting on their specialist area...so if keeping up with journals is necessary to doing good philosophy, then it seems it's not really possible to be a non-academic philosopher in the current climate.

Secondly...aren't there transferable skills from doing a philosophy PhD? Analysis/problem solving skills, writing skills, oral communication and presentation (from teaching and giving papers), communicating with different audiences (conveying complex ideas to both students and fellow academics), and the ability to independently complete a large project come to mind. If transferable skills aren't enough, is that because they aren't really valuable? Are there too many people with the same skills? Does a PhD in philosophy not really develop those abilities? Are philosophers not selling themselves well enough to non-academic employers? Could the content of philosophy be practically helpful in some careers? For instance, would knowledge of political philosophy be useful in a policy career?

So, to sum up this long comment, my questions are:
1. How could someone become a non-academic philosopher and make a serious contribution to the field, is it possible to make money doing it and how helpful/necessary is a PhD for that?
2. What knowledge and skills do philosophers have that are useful in other careers, how can we sell those skills to non-academic employers and is a PhD a good way of developing such skills?

All very good questions! Allow to offer up a few thoughts, and then open things up for discussion.

Undergraduate query on grad school

In the comments of our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Jonathan Lauret writes:

...I'm an undergraduate student majoring in philosophy, and I'm entering into the process of looking for what graduate schools to apply to.

I just today have been scanning through the internet for information on graduate school situations involving philosophy, and the tone is almost always very disheartening and depressing due to a number of given reasons. Most posts or blogs wrote about really rough conditions involving the application/hiring process, the amount of experience required for a very punishing and unrewarding job (typically), and the sheer rarity of any resulting enjoyable professorial position. 
I don't know what exactly I'm looking for in regards to the particular positions out there for graduates in philosophy. I do know that I love the discipline, that I hold it in value not due to some sort of desire to be famous or great or sage-like, but to get a better grasp or understanding of the world I live in. I feel as though teaching and talking to students/other people who have their own ideas and feelings on these things will bring me what I'm looking for in a profession.

I guess the question that comes from all this may be, where do these sorts of feelings fit into the grand scheme of going into graduate school and later entering the academic job market?

I think this is a great query, in part because we might be able to help Jonathan, but also because this is a kind of inquiry I expect a lot of get fairly often from undergraduates (I know I do). Indeed, I'm hoping a lot of you chime in, as perhaps this thread can function as an online compendium of different people's responses to these kinds of questions--one we might direct our undergraduates to in the future to hear different perspectives on the issue!

Time and desk-rejections

As David Velleman recently detailed here, many journals are overwhelmed with submissions. Velleman writes, "The amount of attention that can be paid to each submission, the percentage of submissions that can be refereed, and the selectivity that editors can exercise in recruiting referees—all have declined proportionately." As someone who has only been on the author side of things I realize it may be difficult to properly appreciate just how overwhelmed editors are. So, before raising a concern below, I want to emphasize that I truly appreciate all that journal editors do. Having organized the annual Cocoon Conference for several years now, I've seen how difficult it is to properly review several dozen papers once a year. I can only imagine what it is like to review several hundred full-length papers per year on a rolling basis!

How can we help you? (New Year's Edition)

I just realized it's been a couple of months since our last "how can we help you?" thread, and that starting a new one might be a good way to jump-start things around here in the new year, particularly since we're in the heart of the academic job-season. So, then, is there anything we can help you with?

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! (Quick side-note to other commenters: please don't weigh in preemptively on people's queries in the thread below. Just wait for the new thread I post on the person's query so that everyone can join the discussion!).

Fire away: we're here to help! (Quick side-note to other commenters: please don't weigh in preemptively on people's queries in the thread below. Just wait for the new thread I post on the person's query so that everyone can join the discussion!).

A New Year's Cocoon Wish

Happy new year, everyone! I hope you have all had a happy holiday season, and wish you all the best in the year to come. Now that a new calendar year is upon us, I thought I might express a personal wish for the Cocoon. Long-time readers may (or may not!) have noticed that things have slowed here a bit recently. We don't quite have the same amount of active contributors as in years past, and my own rate of posting has slowed considerably for a variety of reasons, among them a much higher workload these days, as well as some growing uncertainty about my voice as a blogger. Anyway, that's neither here nor there. My plan is to keep on keeping on with Cocoon as long as we have a good number of readers, and as long as people seem to find the site helpful.

However, on that note, I'd like to humbly express a small wish for the new year: that some of our readers consider joining us as contributors! The Cocoon's Mission, at least as I always envisioned it, was to serve as a safe-and-supportive group blog: a place where early-career members of the philosophy profession (as well as others interested in early-careerish issues) could come together to share their work and ideas, struggles and successes, and discuss ways to improve our profession, in a spirit of mutual support. While we have had greater and lesser numbers of contributors over the years, my biggest wish for the blog has always been that it might grow beyond what it is and take on a greater life of its own, spurred on by a larger, more diverse variety of voices. Perhaps this wish will never be realized quite a bit as I wish, and if so, that's okay. The longer I live, the more accustomed I've had to become with things not going quite as I wish. ;) Still, I am, for better or worse, an eternal optimist, and hope that in the new year, more of you will consider joining the blog as contributors.

So, then, do any of the following apply to you?:

• Are there things you are struggling with as an early-career philosopher, such as graduate school, the job-market, your current job, pursuing alt-ac opportunities outside of the academy?
• Are there things about the profession that you have concerns about, would like to see improved, and have ideas you think might be helpful?
• Could you use or helpfully share tips about succeeding and flourishing as a philosopher? (whatever this means to you, whether it is research, teaching, etc.)
• Are you itching for a place to share your newest work or otherwise "talk shop" in a supportive atmosphere?

If so, please do consider joining us. Because I recognize that many consider blogging publicly a risky activity, I am more than happy to have contributors blog anonymously under pseudonyms. All you have to do to become a contributor is email me at [email protected]. I hope to hear from some of you, and in any case look forward to another year here with you all!