How can we help you? (March 2023)

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

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

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

• The job-market (applying for jobs, etc.)
• Issues in the profession (including issues of social justice)
• Graduate school
• Publishing
• Teaching
• Work-life balance
• Mental health & well-being
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Ask away - we're here to help! 

Important reminder: if you submit a comment in this thread responding to someone's query, I won't post it, as this makes it difficult for me to keep track of everything in the comments section, particularly which queries I've started new threads on and which ones I have not. However, if you do post a follow-up comment, chances are good that I will post it in the new thread I start on the relevant query. So, do feel free to submit responses. Just know that they won't appear in this particular thread and might instead appear later in a new post.

Comments

[PhD student]

I'm a graduate student and I've submitted my paper to many conferences, including the graduate conference. I'm wondering if there is any chance that my ideas will be stolen and published before I publish them. I have this question because I've heard that many referees for graduate conferences are students, and I've heard that students have stolen other people's ideas from conference papers. Also, sometimes I come up with an idea and I think I've read it before, but I can't find it. But I'm not sure if it's from a draft I've read before.

[Teaching-focused grad student]

I'm a grad student at a program that mainly prepares its students for R1 jobs. I'm more interested in teaching-focused jobs. I've heard lots of advice about applying for teaching-focused jobs coming from an institution like mine - demonstrate a commitment to teaching (and there are various ways to do so, but mostly by having as much teaching experience as possible). Is this basically right? I've heard also that one of the ways in which one might demonstrate a commitment to teaching is by engaging in scholarship of teaching/learning. I suppose my specific question is how to get started in this sort of research with no background. Do I need to try to audit a course in the Education department? Are there philosophical pedagogy conferences/workshops I should keep an eye out for? Are there recommended readings or journals?

[Anxious grad student]

I am sure there are topics on this, but it never gets old: how long after the submission is it appropriate to reach out to a journal to inquire about the status of the submission? 2 months? 3 months? 6 months? Is there any difference in norms relative to journals?

[Anonymous]

Recently, I have been invited to give a fair number of teaching and research presentations recently outside of my department and I’m not sure how to list them on my CV, or whether to list them at all. They include the following types of activities:
- An article I wrote was assigned to a graduate class at another university and I came to their class session to talk with the students about the paper
- An article I wrote was assigned as part of a lecture series for Honors students at my university, and then I gave a presentation on how this paper fit into my broader research program and some takeaways about doing research, followed by Q&A focused on the paper
- For another department at my university’s research colloquium series, I presented the philosophical perspective on an area connected to my research
- Led a class session for a senior seminar in another discipline at my university (the professor and I didn’t know one another before; she reached out to me because she saw I did research on the philosophical aspects of her topic)

Currently, I have the first three listed under “Presentations.” I have enough presentations that I have sub-sections for refereed conference presentations, invited presentations, commentaries, and internal, so I put the first one under “invited” (since I was invited from outside my own university) and the other two under “internal.” I’m not convinced those are the best categories, especially since “internal” is starting to get messy; it was one thing when the only internal talks were for my department’s colloquium, but now it’s including stuff outside my department as well. So if anyone else has other heading suggestions or ways of carving it up, I’m all ears!

Relevant information: I’m pre-tenure, but far enough along that my CV is getting filled out, and I definitely don’t want to look like I’m padding. I don’t *need* any of these on my CV, but also some of them took some time to prepare, so I want to be sure I’m getting credit, as it were, for the things I’m doing. Also, I’m at a school that says it values research and teaching equally, and talks about a teacher-scholar model.

[A/B]

I am curious what the norms/conventions are for reporting your affiliation when changing jobs. For example, I currently work at institution A but am starting a new job in the fall at institution B. When writing down my affiliation—e.g., when submitting to journals or conferences, or filling out a form about how my affiliation on a conference programme—should I write down A, B, A/B (as I’ve sometimes seen), etc.?

[Dejected Grad Student]

I'm a PhD candidate working in early modern philosophy who has recently received about a dozen rejections from early modern conferences and no acceptances. Several of the CfPs were exclusively for graduate students, although others were also open to early career academics. I'm trying to figure out where I went wrong and why I've been having so much trouble getting into conferences. My main thoughts are that I'm not working on very trendy topics, that I'm not engaging with enough very recent secondary literature, or that I'm just not doing enough of a good job on the abstracts. Any suggestions for how to diagnose the issue?

[Preparing to Apply]

I'm a student preparing to apply to PhD programs in philosophy. Many programs specify that they want letters of recommendation from philosophers. My question is: for the purpose of recommendation letters, who counts as a "philosopher"?

Does "philosopher" solely supervene over individuals with PhDs in philosophy? Would individuals with PhDs in, say, Ethics or Theology qualify? Does it matter if an individual with a PhD in these philosophy-adjacent fields teaches in a philosophy department, or publishes in philosophy journals? Or is this too far into the weeds, and students should ask the faculty most acquainted with their work and research capabilities to serve as reccomenders?

[Sorgenkind]

I'm interested in how to present publications on one's CV if they were initially published online-first, but then, much later, included in an issue of the journal (and so given page numbers, an issue number, etc.). In some cases, these dates can be two or more years apart. Is it right to go with the later date of publication, or should we include an additional note giving the original date as well? I'm trying to balance giving as much information as possible with making my CV succinct and consistently formatted.

[an editor]

Sorgenkind -
when the paper is ONLY on-line first, list it as such ... in fact, note, Forthcoming, and then include the DOI.
then when it is in print you drop the initial date of acceptance (and publication on-line) and just list the print publication information. I think is pretty standard practice

[whatever]

My partner, a non-academic who has seen me suffer through the ups and downs of the market for a few years now, made what I thought to be an excellent observation this morning after we debriefed about another intense interview.

She noted that academic job interviewers (you, search committee member!) seem to expect perfection from their interviewees. She elaborated: 'In a lot of other jobs, you can slip-up in interviews, not say the perfect thing, and it's not like they won't hire you, because there is so much on the job learning, and they know that'. My immediate reaction to this was that she is absolutely right. It seems that philosophy search committee members in fact expect perfection in interviews, when that is just completely unrealistic. It also struck me that she was right to think academia does not encourage on the job learning of the sort implied by thoughts like: 'Well, they didn't show in the interview that they had that down, but that is ok, we can teach them; they'll learn'. Instead, we get: 'Well, they flubbed that question; they must be incompetent: they're out'.

Now to my questions: Are you expecting us to be perfect, because it feels that way? If so, why are you expecting perfection from us? And can you stop please? It is completely unrealistic, and just another instance of academic standards being utterly out-of-touch with how things ought humanely to go.

[New to reviewing]

Should you review a paper that you've reviewed before for another journal that you recommended rejection there? I'm not sure if it seems unfair to them that they have to be reviewed by the same reviewer that already didn't like their work the first time and maybe deserve to have someone else read the work?

[A/B-2]

I have the same question as A/B. Should I write down my future affiliation in my current submission?

[marketing 101]

I plan to go on the job market for the first time this fall. What are some tips or things that you were not advised or warned about that you wished you were? Also, thinking about the number of documents that are needed is daunting. Does anyone have a sense of how long it takes to finish a research statement, dissertation abstract, and other documents, and/or have any tips on how to write these documents?

[UK Grad Student]

What's the risk of putting the titles of one's "in progress" or "under review" papers on one's website? Sometimes I'll see a website where someone has replaced the title of their paper with something to the effect of "title redacted for review". And sometimes they'll even redact the titles of presentations on their CV (if they have a paper under review with the same title). But redacting titles of papers and presentations is a pain. So what's the risk?

Is the thought that reviewers might discover your identity and form biases? If so, are some authors more likely than others to suffer from deanonymization? Might those who study or work at prestigious institutions, or who have excellent publication records, even benefit from a positive presumption after deanonymization?

[andsoitgoes]

I've got two related questions:

1. In grad school I heard that moving from a cc to a university is basically impossible. Is that true? If not, what will making such a move require?

2. Is there a way to gauge from job listings, or by doing a bit of research, how big a role research plays at a particular teaching-focused institution? Does it vary widely? (I'd exclude SLACs here because I'm enrolled in the PSLF program.)

A bit of explanation: By the time I entered my last year of grad school, I felt confident that I wanted a career at a community college. I loved teaching and, while I love writing, I am less enthusiastic about academic writing. So I only applied to cc jobs and was lucky enough to land a job at a cc in a great city. The year that I earned tenure there I left (for a few good reasons) after taking another cc job across the country. The new job improves on the areas that were of concern at the old job, but I am deeply unhappy living here so I'm back on the job market. For the first time, I'm looking at university positions with interest because of the additional opportunities that creates. But I'm unsure whether a position at even a teaching-focused university would be a good fit for me because I don't know how big a role research plays there and whether such an institution would even consider me.

I've built up a very good CV in terms of service and teaching, but I don't know [1] how that would be valued by teaching-focused universities, [2] whether my complete lack of research since the dissertation would disqualify me even if I attempt to start publishing now, or [3] what it would look like to be in a position that has a research requirement (all the university job ads ask for a promising research agenda but I can't tell how much research is a part of each of those jobs).

I don't know if making such a move even makes sense for me, but that's in part because I actually know very little about what life would look like at a university. Whatever I can learn will help me take informed steps forward, and I figured that putting out this feeler is a good start.

[Competing with Elders]

I guess I'm looking for general advice here, as much as that is possible.

A couple times on the market I've made it to the flyout round for an Assistant Prof post only to lose out to a *much* more senior candidate. I'm happy to get the flout, and I'm also wondering if there is anything I can do to be more competitive against candidates that have much more experience than I. I'm one year out of grad school in a respectable post-doc, and I'm just not sure I can present myself in a way that compares favorably to those who have been assistant professors for 3-5 years.

Thoughts?

[First book meeting]

I have been approached by an editor who works for an academic book publisher (somewhere in the middle of ranked publishers from the blog of the guy who ranks everything) who wants to meet me at an upcoming conference we are both attending and discuss publishing the project I am working on (not dissertation project).
I was wondering two things:
1) What should I be asking/getting to know about this publisher in this meeting? I'm completely new to this process and have no clue what to even be asking this editor?
2) What are people's thoughts on middle of the road publishers? I imagine they would help my chances at a permanent job, am I wrong in that assumption?
I think this should be ok in my situation since I would like to work at a SLAC, but I'd love to know what others think?

[untalented and sad]

I am an international student (ESL) currently completing an MA degree in a well-regarded terminal program in the US. I am reaching out to you for guidance and support as I recently received rejections from all 25 PhD programs I applied to, including some of the unranked ones. I am (well, I was) confident in my abilities as an aspiring philosopher, having consistently been a top-performing student, winning awards, and presenting at prestigious conferences. That's how I got into my current MA program, or at least that's what I used to believe. As far as my professors (who are v. experienced at getting people into PhD programs) could tell, my dossier had no red flags, and I should have received multiple offers, even from top programs. And again, my writing sample, which was the product of a year's research, received thorough feedback from my professors at every step of the writing process, and was polished to a really high standard, which was again confirmed by multiple people. However, I did not attend a Leiterrific undergraduate school nor did I have any publications, which I suspect are the only two apparent things that made me less favorable. In any case, I am beginning to think that the best explanation of getting 25 independent rejections is that I simply lack whatever kind of talent I needed to have, as it seems that, contrary to what anyone I know, including myself, thought, my application was not good enough. Based on my situation, do you think that reapplying would make sense at this point? Or should I explore other paths? I welcome any feedback or suggestions that you may have.

[Tom]

I frequently come across academic articles/books that, for whatever reason, I do not have access to through my institution, even if the article/book is published with a well-known press. Aside from buying it, what do?

[amIalone?]

A question about teaching, or kind of. I approach this with seriousness. No exaggeration or snobbery involved. I have been teaching for more than 10 years including those done as TA. Teaching eval is always something like below 3/5. It's not that I do not care. I wanted to do it well so badly that I have suffered through countless sleepless nights. But the result is the same whatever approach I use or what attitude I have. I get nervous before students, but have certainly seen other nervous teachers loved by students nevertheless. On the other hand, other parts of my career are very successful. In particular, I am completely confident in giving talks etc.

I write here not so much as asking for advice (since the result never changed whatever help I received), albeit very welcome, as in seeing if I am the only one who is experiencing this. Personally I don't know anyone else:(

[Phd candidate]

As a PhD candidate, I am really puzzled by the philosophy profession. On the one hand, there is a huge and constant demand for teaching at all universities. But on the other hand, there are no permanent or stable teaching positions. Instead, I see a lot of fixed term lecturer positions (or worse, sessional instructors) that are renewable for at most two or three years.

I wonder how is this arrangement reasonable. Note that I am not saying teaching positions should be tenured. I am just saying they should at least be as stable as *administrative jobs* in universities. Not everyone will find a TT job after one or two fixed-term jobs. And many of them may simply love teaching more than doing research. What are these people gonna do? Keep looking for fixed term jobs? Or quit the profession even if they are actually good teachers?

Thank you!

[advice solicitor and maybe underpreparer]

Here's a question: can we have a thread in which recently *successful* job applicants who have gotten TT jobs describe their own application process?

In particular, I'm wondering about time spent on materials. How much time did you spend personalizing your cover letter, e.g., or preparing for the first-round interview? (I'm wondering whether I've been spending way too little time on these initial steps, myself.) Does the process that went into a successful application compare in any notable way to the many unsuccessful applications?

But really, any tips from those who have been recently--especially within the last job cycle or two--successful in landing TT jobs would be much appreciated.

[juniorfaculty]

How do folks know when they have a project that's best suited for a book format, and not, say, a series of articles? And is it risky to write a book before tenure?

[PhD student]

Hi there, I have a question about the job market. Recently on Twitter, I have seen quite a few people posting about either permanent jobs or good postdocs they have secured. However, when I then check out their CV, I am surprised to see that it doesn't align with what I have previously been told/seen about getting permanent jobs/postdocs. To give an example for each, I saw someone getting a permanent job when they had only a few publications, only one of which was a top ten (Leiter) and not top five, and the others were co-authored or lower tier journals. For the postdoc, I saw someone getting a good postdoc with actually no publications as well. At my institution I had been told that you need about three top five publications to get a permanent job, which struck me as close to impossible short of you being a generational talent. And for a postdoc I had been told at least two decent publications minimum.

So, is this a sign for optimism in that if you interview well or are good in some other ways, you can escape the "publish or die" mantra that I've so much heard about?

[Initial review]

When I submitted a paper to BJHP last Fall, the paper got rejected after receiving an initial review before being sent out for peer review. I got some helpful feedback from the initial reviewer (who isn't the editor). I wonder if there are other journals that adopt this practice of sending submissions for an initial review before the peer review.

[anonymous]

Hi. I completed my MA this past May and I'm looking at PhD programs to apply to this round in the coming Fall. I've build a small body or work through my seminar papers and research for my MA thesis. This is all work that I want to continue and I'm looking at programs where some of the philosophers who I've engaged with are working. What I'm wondering is if I should use a writing sample that directly engages with their work, or if that is generally frowned upon by PhD admissions groups. (And obviously it wouldn't be something that is highly critical of them; rather stuff that extends their work and draws connections to other philosophers).

Thanks!