How can we help you? (March 2024)

Now that it's been 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 (including in the age of A.I.)
• Work-life balance
• Mental health & well-being
• Personal struggles
• Etc.

Ask away - we're here to help! 

Finally, a quick reminder of the following NEW RULE: in the past, I have allowed people to submit follow-up comments to queries in these threads, and sometimes included those comments in new posts on this thread's queries. Given the number of comments and replies that are submitted, this has become infeasible for me to keep track of. So, please only submit queries in the thread below, not responses to queries already submitted. If you'd like to respond to a query, please wait until I actually post on the person's query myself and comment in that thread instead!

Comments

[Hermias]

Reviewers ethics. Is it OK to recommend “reject” because the author is rude? I recently reviewed a paper and recommended “reject.” However, the editor chose R&R and I got the author's revised paper and their responses to my comments. I think the paper still sucks big time, so I would re-iterate my “reject” anyway, but… I gave a lot of unvarnished-but-not-uncharitable comments on the paper. In the authors response, they make a lot of remarks that I can’t read as other than rude, e.g. “It seems that reviewer 1 has utterly failed to grasp my point… Thanks for this strange suggestion, but no…..Wow thanks a lot for this wider remark, I’ll save that topic for my next book”.

When I’m dealing with students I don’t really get upset by rudeness/tactlessness, but I still react negatively, so that they learn how is appropriate to interact with professors, etc. Is that appropriate here?, to recommend reject and leave a note along the lines of “You should remember who is doing who a favor here and be more polite, my friend.”

[R]

I taught philosophy for about three years and am now tutoring in philosophy for the first time (undergrad Intro to Ethics for mostly criminal justice majors, and Biomedical Ethics for mostly nursing majors). What tips do you have for tutoring students in ethics, particularly students who lack basic understanding of or motivation in the subject? Many thanks.

[jobs]

I'm curious about the perceptions of those on TT hiring committees vis-a-vis the following issue: Does it in any way look bad to be currently employed as full-time/non-tt teaching faculty (e.g. permanent lecturer or teaching professor)? My sense is that post-docs and VAPs are often seen as natural stepping-stones to TT positions, but what about non-tt teaching jobs like permanent lecturer or teaching professor? Does an applicant who currently holds a position like this look any better/worse when compared to someone who is a post-doc or VAP? Does it not matter? For instance, say that someone isn't too far out from their phd and is still publishing in good journals. Would it be a mark against this person if they currently hold a teaching-focused job like this? Is it correct to assume that most R1s would simply pass over someone who currently holds a job like this? What about SLACs? I feel like these teaching-focused positions are sometimes looked down on as not prestigious or fancy enough or something. As a result, they might be a liability when it comes to applying for certain jobs. Am I wrong?

[Transferee]

I’m a PhD student at a low-ranking department. Some of my professors think I’m a shoe-in for a spot in an elite program and have suggested that I transfer.

But I’ve heard horror stories about the culture at elite departments. The going wisdom seems to be that faculty at these departments are generally unavailable to students, don’t work well with others, and are myopically focused on their own research to the detriment of their pedagogical duties. As a result, these departments are socially desolate hellscapes where students are basically left to fend for themselves in isolation. (I’ve put that last part somewhat colorfully, but it captures the attitudes of some people I’ve talked to.)

I don’t really believe this going wisdom, but I don’t disbelieve it, either. And it matters quite a lot to me whether the going wisdom is true. Since my current program is a wonderfully welcoming and collaborative place, the expected utility of transferring seems moderately high at best, given the going wisdom.

I would be grateful if those of you who are at elite departments, or who studied at elite departments, shared your insights about this. If the going wisdom turns out to be false, or false of a significant number of high-ranking programs, that will make my decision much easier.

[failure]

How do you get over academic jealousy?

I applied to a wide range of Ph.D. programs this cycle. I only have offers from a few very low-ranked or unranked Ph.D. programs. The rest are rejections, so no hope of getting out of a waitlist to a better program. If I accept one of these offers, I believe, based on the comments here and elsewhere, the students' comments on APDA and elsewhere, and my experiences so far, that (1) I will have much worse job prospects both in kind and number in an already bad market, (2) I will get taken seriously much less both in the philosophy academia generally and my specialty specifically, (3) I will get read less, and (4) I will not be as respected among my peers and faculty everywhere. Equally importantly, I am hesitant to accept one of the offers I have because I strongly believe that (i) I will probably never stop feeling jealous and resentful, and that (ii) I will probably never stop believing that my feelings are apt because I have been done an injustice. Here is why.

I believe a significant number of people had better applications than me and they reasonably received better offers (By 'better' I mean the academic achievements on their CV, their fit to the program as stated on their SoP, and the strength of their writing sample). This is great. However, the problem is, I also believe that I had a better -or at least as good- application than a significant number of people who received much better offers. Of course, this problem belief may be false, and I would very much like it to be false, in order to trust how things work. But, given how things work, I will probably never know if the problem belief is false and, if so, why. Neither will do my professors, friends, and other applicants with whom I have been discussing this. I can no longer deal with the negativity this situation generates for me. Either I need to accept my failure as evidence that (a) I am a worse philosopher than I think I am, and so I should not mind being treated as such, or (b) I have been done an injustice; I am not a worse philosopher than I think I am, even though I did get much worse offers than people whose applications are not much better than me.

If (a), then I think I should quit. If I don't have enough self-knowledge or ability to understand why I fail even at the entrance to the discipline, then this is good evidence that I am simply not cut out for the highest level of academic philosophy. If (b), then I think my feelings of resentment (i-ii) are apt, and I will never be able to deal with the inferior treatment (1-4, and more) I would receive had I accepted one of the offers I currently have. Still, in this case, I think I should quit.

Applying again is an option, of course. But, if we should trust how things work, there's no point in doing that if I believe I did everything I could do this time, which I do. And, if we don't trust how things work, then, again, there's no point in "improving" my application and hope for the best.

Is there any way out of this?

[Anon]

I am curious to hear about any advice/success stories of those who left academia (due to geographic and financial constraints) and then returned. I understand it’s probably not recommended, but I’m still curious about how search committees perceive these types of candidates. Are they seen as unappealing or not serious candidates? The advice I’ve heard so far is to adjunct on the side and to continue research activities. (If this has been asked before, could you/someone provide the link to the post, please?) Thank you!

[UKer]

How many hours a day do you work? I mean real, serious, research work (reading and writing)? Even on my research days I can't do more than 4-5 hours... anything more than that my brain is mush.

Lots of scientists claim to work 80 hours a week, but of course a lot of their research is quite different. Just curious what the experience of pother philosophers is.

I'm pretty productive. Not a research star, but I got tenure at a decent place.

[sisyphus]

I stumbled across this new site on philosophy journals, which includes an new ranking: https://www.pjip.org/

Does anyone know about it, or have thoughts? Seems like it has the potential to turn into a good resource for philosophers, particularly early career folks.

[grad student]

Does anyone have advice for a graduate student writing a letter of recommendation for a professor going up for tenure/promotion to full professor?

[Midge]

I’m wondering about the requirements for getting a job in a law school.
I work and publish in an area of philosophy of law, but don’t have any law degree. I do know quite a bit about certain areas of the law and think I could in theory teach law courses on with some preparation. Do I need a law degree to apply for a job in a law school?

[Potential Job Seeker]

I am a pre-tenure TT faculty member in a regional state university in the United States. I would like to get a position at an R1, a good/elite liberal arts college, or a regional state school in a different region.

I have a colleague in my sub-specialty, who thinks highly of my work, whom I speak to from time to time about our work. We trade drafts and discuss them, and sometimes we meet up at conferences. We got our PhD's in the exact same year, from different institutions. However, this colleague is a TT faculty member in an elite research program. They might be tenured at this point.

My question: would it be advisable or not advisable to ask for a letter of recommendation from my colleague when I go on the job market?

[early career researcher]

Are there any journals for discussions of philosophy and literature (other than ... philosophy and literature)? I often enjoy papers that have some substantial discussion of literature more than standard philosophical papers, but I don't have a good sense of how much of a readership there is for such things? Or where I'd send such papers?

[reviewless]

I published a book roughly 18 months ago (September 2022). The book was published with an academic publisher, not university press (think Springer, Brill, etc). I was initially asked to give a list of potential reviewers to the editorial (or marketing?) team. I did this, even emailed every potential reviewer before hand to make sure it was ok to list them. Nothing happened so I followed up after about a year, providing other names. I've even had one or two people on journals offer to help but never follow up with me.

Is it too late at this point? Any advice on how I might resolve this? It seems like having a published review would be quite useful, but perhaps I'm wrong. I was given basically no guidance and have obviously failed. Shame the publisher doesn't seem to have tried that hard.

[Hiring statistics question]

At my university, we receive low numbers of applications for tt and post-doc positions. I would like to compare our numbers to the numbers other institutions receive. If you happen to have numbers from recent hiring processes, would you mind sharing them? I'd be interested in 1) type of institution, 2) area(s), and 3) rank. Is there a place where I might find such numbers?

Since my institution is non-English-speaking, what do you think would be an appropriate time-frame to learn the language of the country?

Many thanks in advance!

[Noah]

I'd be interested in hearing a discussion about how people manage the process of chasing down their philosophical leads. I have an ever-growing list of ideas that, prima facie, seem like they might be fruitfully developed into papers ("philosophical leads"). But, as I'm sure is familiar to many, the process of figuring out which these ideas really are viable is long and fraught. It can require significant time reading the literature, thinking things through, and drafting material, with no guarantee that the process will ultimately result in a paper. I'm curious to hear how others navigate the following issues:

(A) Deciding which of the many philosophical leads you have at any moment to actually pursue.

(B) Dealing with the temptation to pursue new leads rather than complete existing projects.

[Undergrad student]

I am an undergraduate student who is interested in philosophy but not majoring in it. I am thinking of applying to some terminal MA programs, but I have a problem:
My interest is in a relatively niche subfield of philosophy (FYI, it is metaphilosophy). And only a few departments with funded terminal MA programs have people who have published in this field.
In this case, do you think it is a good idea to apply to departments without people working in my field of interest? If so, what should I do in a department without people who share my interest to maximize my learning? If not, do you know of any alternatives?

[Confused Author]

I've noticed that several top philosophy journals -- Nous and PPR, for example -- accept submissions for only a few months out of the year. Why is this? And where can I find information about when these venues pause submissions? (Their websites don't say.)

[Nick]

Does having a website help at all on the job market?

[Robert Seletsky]

Looking for a (partial) list of (US) Philosophy Graduate Student Journals ideally already posted on a website link.

[Co-publishing couple]

Hi! My husband and I are both grad students staring down the job market soon-ish (he in a year or two, I a bit later). He has a very strong preference to get a job in a philosophy department over the next-best alternative, whereas I feel more neutrally about working in industry, so ordinarily we lightly prioritize his job-market prospects over mine. Being further along, he also has more published work to date.

Although for the most part we work in different subfields, we share most of our interests & commitments, and so have a good number of paper ideas we've come up with collaboratively. On average, I think these ideas are more fit for publications in good journals than the average work we do solo.

Considering such a paper sketch, from a purely strategic perspective, do you think it makes more sense to co-publish them? To have him work on the strong ideas for sole attribution, considering he's closer to being on the market & would benefit more? Or for me to sole publish the ideas I had a greater hand in, considering I am further from being competitive on the job market than he? Besides equity & dual-body problems, I think what this hinges on is how a co-published paper in a good journal is weighted.

[sisyphus]

Can some one explain how the norms for peer review got established in philosophy? I ask because while I'm a philosopher by training, much of my research is very interdisciplinary. As a result, I'm asked to referee for both philosophy journals and journals in the sciences. Science journals typically ask for a review be completed within a week or two, whereas philosophy journals often allow for somewhere around six weeks to hand in a review. For me, refereeing a philosophy paper doesn't take more effort or time than it does to referee a science paper. Both require about the same amount of time/effort, and I generally supply a few pages of notes. This leads me to wonder why philosophy journals give so much more time. Does anyone know the history behind how these norms have been established?

[Confused]

If you're at a mid-ranked department, is it important to publish in graduate school? Some say to publish to establish oneself, others say to wait and fully think through your ideas before publishing (so you aren't tied to those views later on). Although the individuals with the latter advice came from top 10 programs, so they might have a luxury we don't have coming out of our program. Any thoughts?

[Questions about questions]

I've been on the job market for a few years and I think I've pretty much perfected the "Do you have questions for us?" portion of the zoom interview. But I've been on very few campus visits and there seem to be meetings with deans and chairs where I'm the one who is supposed to be asking questions. Questions that I'm coming up with like "What kind of research budget would I have" feel weird, presumptuous or even off putting.

This is a long way of asking if any readers have advice on what questions to ask during a campus interview?

[Double Dipping?]

Some time back I wrote a referee report for a book for OUP. The book is now out and I have been invited to write a book review. This would be easy to do since I’ve already carefully read (an earlier version of) the book and already have some thoughts about it, but for reasons I can’t quite articulate I worry there might be something unethical about it? What do people think?

[can we forget about rankings?]

Is there a way to reduce the obsession over rankings in our discipline? including department rankings and journal rankings. It really hurts us in my opinion. I know some scientists, mathematicians and computer scientists, none of who is as obsessive about rankings as philosophers (esp grad students). One of them doesn't even know any journal rankings (including Q1 vs Q2!). What they do know is (eg) which journals have what editors who have written which work etc. I really think it is more healthy than what we have. Also, talking to people in conference based on their departmental rankings is commonplace and insane. (In comparison, I have attended a math conference as a nobody and still everyone sitting around me talk to me about their and my research.)

Having been involved in various hirings and grad admissions, I really do not think too much of rankings!

[am I deluded?]

Could my dissertation/writing sample topic be negatively impacting my job prospects?

I'm ABD, on the job market, and have not gotten a single interview this season. While the most obvious explanation for this is simply that the job market is generally terrible and oversaturated with qualified candidates, and that statistically one is likely to fail, I can't help but wonder if my dissertation/writing sample topic is playing any role in this. My thesis centrally involves a strong critique of Zionism/Israel. I had previously thought (naively, perhaps) that this wouldn't be an issue, given that I'd presented/published on the topic in the past without any pushback. However, it's clear that things have taken a turn for the worse (to put it mildly) when it comes to the silencing of anti-zionist voices in academia.

Strategically, I suppose I could use a completely unrelated writing sample next time around, but it's not like I can hide my dissertation topic from hiring committees. But perhaps the notion that I may have to censor my philosophical and ethical views in order to pursue a career an academia should give me pause and lead me to question whether such a path is even worthwhile. Then again, maybe I'm worried over nothing, since there could be any number of reasons why nothing has panned out for me this season, and one failed job cycle is not particularly remarkable.

[Aspiring Legal Philosopher]

I'm currently a 2L in law school with an undergraduate background in philosophy. I'm preparing to apply to PhD programs next year, and I am hopeful to get clarity on a couple components of the application.

First, I've done a fair bit of work in law school under a law professor with doctorate in philosophy, who has nonetheless never had an appointment in a philosophy department. They can write me quite a strong recommendation, and they've seen me plenty in philosophical (eg workshop) settings. Would one nonetheless advise against soliciting a recommendation from this professor on the grounds that they are not a philosophy professor? My other two recommenders would be from faculty with appointments in philosophy.

Second, lots of the scholarship I both reading and writing engages philosophy with an eye toward its legal application/relevance. To what degree is it strategic to emphasize this in my application? I can imagine that some scholars will see this as less serious, even though I am deeply committed to improving my philosophical skillset.

Third and relatedly, I have various papers written in law school that exemplify the kind of scholarship I enjoy. I certainly do some real philosophy in these papers, but perhaps not as much as in the "straight" philosophy papers I wrote in college. Nonetheless, I think these law papers are quite a bit more interesting than most of what I wrote in college. I wonder what you all make of the merits or demerits of using a paper that engages with law, not just philosophy, as a writing sample. On the one hand, a recent PhD grad suggested it might result in some self-selection of programs that are well-suited to my desires. On the other hand, I fear it might make me look less interested in philosophy, which is neither my goal nor a reflection or reality.

[Too Much Review]

Has anyone had an experience where a Reviewer gave what seemed to be an inappropriate amount of comments? I know that, as an author, my only choice is basically to address them all, but I'm just curious if there are norms around this. I think the reviewer in question may be from an adjacent field, but their report contained at least 15 independent comments, many of which contained subcommands and extensive, detailed digressions into nearby literatures.

Has this happened to others? Is there a norm as to limiting comments, as many as one may have, to (I dunno) 5-8? Especially when they are very, very complex and wide-reaching?

[Too Much Review (Revised)]

The above should read "subcomments," which somehow autocorrects to "subcommands".

[Martin]

What do you think is the effect of having (more or less radically) contrarian views at different points of one's career (from Ph.D. student onwards)? Thank you!

[Help!]

When submitting papers for publication, is it bad to cite papers that are in R&R as (forthcoming)? Or is that not appropriate? What is the norm for citing papers that friends or advisors have shared that may not be published yet, but you want to give them credit for the idea?

[Cara]

I know we've talked about European jobs recently but wondered if anyone had some insights in particular on what it's like to have a permanent/tenure-track philosophy job in Finland or Switzerland.

[Sociallyanxious]

I wonder if others also feel that in philosophy, the only way to get a job or other professional plums is to be liked or well-regarded by the "right" people (in elite departments, etc). I see people who are "hyped" who get all the plums, and they all seem very well connected or otherwise widely liked or highly visible. Our obsession with rankings only fuels this worry. I'm a junior member of the profession and it makes me anxious that I need to be liked by all the big wigs... do others feel this way, or do I have the wrong picture?

[anon]

How much do hiring committees at SLACs factor in the career stage of ABD applicants when they assess them?

I'm an ABD candidate with only two solo-taught courses and a couple of decent publications, and I am not optimistic about landing a job in the next cycle. I know I'll be competing against many non-ABD candidates who have much more teaching experience than I do.

Some friends have tried to console me by telling me that committees will likely factor in my early career stage (I'm starting year 5 of graduate school in the Fall), but I don't know how much consolation this should provide me.

After all, Marcus, you gave this compelling analogy about this question back in 2018: "The best analogy I can think of here is drafting NFL quarterbacks out of college. Anyone who pays attention to the NFL knows this is a huge risk. About half of them go onto have good careers, and the other half are total "busts." Although it sometimes makes sense for a team to take that risk, oftentimes teams hire veteran quarterbacks from other teams--quarterbacks who have already shown some success in the NFL, and are more of a 'known quantity.'"

I'm wondering if you think this is still true, and if you have any advice for how I should approach the next AY accordingly.

I am trying to spend as little time on the market as possible, but I feel so pessimistic about next year that I'm toying with the thought of barely applying at all and waiting until the next cycle after I've got a very polished dissertation with at least 2-3 published chapters and more teaching experience. (There are a few post-doc positions at my institution that are all but guaranteed to us with a decent increase in pay and 3-3 teaching loads.)

Source for analogy: https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2018/04/secret-lives-of-search-committees-part-6-career-stage.html

[assc prof]

I recently got asked to be the external reviewer of a tenure case (my first). Assuming you have the time and expertise, what're the ethics here? Do you accept only if you can give a glowing review?

[UK ECR]

Has anyone had any experience with the Authors' Licensing and Collecting Society (ALCS) in the UK? They say they can collect royalties for published articles. This seems too good to be true. Are academics actually able to make money this way? If so, how much and is it worth it?

[period period]

Something that I haven't seen a discussion of, which is women's menstruation and its symptons. I wonder if it is the case that I am one of the few left in academia who are still bothered by them, so few that there is so little discussion on it. My menstruation is not super regular, and when it comes I will feel super fatigue (my energy and sharpness visibly drop). This can be inconvenient because many important occasions can fall into those periods, including job talks. And I never brings this up in any occasion because it doesn't seem to be a thing to bring up. So I want to ask if anyone else has this experience and handles this with grace.

P.S. I tried birth control pills that allegedly can stop menstruation. But what happened to me is that I bleed for three months straight (and still am).

[grad student]

I'm a fifth year graduate student who is getting ready to apply for non-academic jobs, and I am wondering how to best represent my work as a graduate student on a resume (as opposed to a CV). The resume will of course include the PhD and my work as a teaching assistant/instructor, but I am considering also including something like "Graduate Student Researcher" under work experience. I feel that the resume would otherwise not accurately reflect my work as a graduate student, but I am also worried that this might be dishonest, since I am not getting paid to do research. It is worth adding that the non-academic jobs I am most interested in are research-heavy.

[Menstruation sucks]

Just want to second the request for discussion of menstruation!

[postdoc/parent]

Building on Anon's question re: leaving academia then returning later, how do hiring committees perceive those who leave the TT pipeline (e.g., going from a postdoc to a research position) and then return? Relatedly, do committees want some explanation for the departure and, if so, how do personal decisions (e.g., caring for young children) fare?

[Pronoun Problems]

I've had this question for a while and hesitated to ask for fear of an unhelpful thread, but here goes.

I am deeply committed to using correct pronouns for my students. I've tried many different strategies to ensure that I do so. Sadly, and embarrassingly, and with much shame, I must admit that I still come up short far more often than I'd like. Perhaps I am too hard on myself, because I think it's morally wrong (and hurtful and oppressive) for me to fail on even one occasion. Either way, I really want to do better in this regard and am not sure how to proceed.

I'm interested in hearing 1) if others have had similar issues and 2) any tips as to how one might be more successful in this particular area. Thanks!

[Giving away ideas when reviewing?]

Maybe it's just me feeling good about myself, but I try to be a responsible reviewer. On top of always submitting reviews within a week, I do my best to help the authors improve their papers. (Though sometimes I do suggest acceptance without revision, but that's more the exception than the norm.)

This has led me to this weird experience: I gave out some ideas in my report, and the paper is now R&R. But now I really want to use those ideas to start an independent paper, so I'm not sure I should have given them out in the first place. So concrete questions: a) should I withhold ideas when reviewing? b) can I still use those ideas as my own if they get published?

[sahpa, it's been good to know you]

I'd love to hear people's views on the feasibility of continuing to do philosophy research outside academia. I suppose one obvious barrier is access to a good research library/journal subscriptions -- but, supposing that issue were solved, it seems to me in principle possible to keep publishing and attending conferences, and maybe even apply for grants (especially outside the US). But how might a lack of academic admission hinder this beyond the obvious (i.e., that you will not be paid to do this research and so will likely have less time to do it)?

Having made the jump recently, I suppose I am feeling some last minute urge to salvage the part of my academic career I really enjoyed and think I will miss the most. So info on the practicalities is most welcome -- but I also wonder whether this desire to continue researching will vanish once I am fully 'out'.

[Considering a different approach...]

Last fall, a friend of mine applying to epidemiology PhD programs directly contacted faculty members he was interested in working with before applying and asked about their research, their departments, etc. The result was that my friend hit it off with one of the faculty members he contacted, and the faculty member made sure he was admitted into the program as her advisee. As I consider re-applying to PhD programs in philosophy for the third time, I wonder whether I should take a similar approach this round. My understanding is that this practice (contacting specific faculty members that one wants to work with) is fairly common in the sciences but is frowned upon in the humanities. Is that correct? I’m curious what others think.

[Redcap]

Any advice on making some extra cash as a philosopher (generally, or even in the UK in particular)? I have a decent permanent job that allows me to live comfortably and save a little. But I don't really make enough to also put money toward my student loans, which I would like to do. I'm wondering if anyone has advice on how to make some money in the short term as a philosopher. I don't think there is an option to teach summer courses at my university. Any tips?

[Writer]

I am disgusted by the way my own writing sounds. This prevents me from making progress on my research, partly because it saps my motivation to write and partly because it causes me to waste time endlessly rewording sentences (or reorganizing paragraphs, or reframing whole papers, and so on).

Oddly, however, others who have read my work compliment me on how clear, well-organized, and engaging my writing is. Moreover, when I read papers I wrote years ago, the writing seems fine, despite the fact that I was much less mature a philosopher then.

Have others had this experience? If so, how do you cope with it?