How can we help you? (October 2024)

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

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 RULE: Please do not submit replies to other comments in this thread. It makes these threads unwieldy and difficult for me to keep track of which queries I've posted new threads on. If you'd like to respond to a comment in this thread, please wait until I dedicate a new post to the person's query myself and comment in that thread instead!

Comments

[New to teaching but not to publishing]

Is it appropriate to use my own papers while teaching? I have relatively little teaching experience but a strong publication record, and I thought it would be useful to assign some of my own work for students to read. The course is within my area of specialization, so my papers would be relevant. I’ve once taught a similar course before, and students mentioned they enjoyed reading the papers I chose for the course. However, a colleague recently suggested that using my own papers in the curriculum would be 'iffy'. For what it's worth, I would also include papers by other scholars and not solely rely on my own work for the course.

[Grad student]

CV question. If I have a some pedagogy-related presentations and/or publications, do these go in a different section from my research-focused publications & presentations? If so, what do I title the pedagogy-related and the non-pedagogy-related sections to make that clear?

Note: I would like to be competitive for teaching jobs. But I already have a significant number of research-focused pubs & presentations, and so I'm worried the teaching stuff will get lost inside if they are not separated.

[3rd year PhD student]

For on the job market as a new PhD holder: what is an appropriate amount of teaching competencies to list in your application fresh out of grad school? I assume teaching competencies can be claimed by showing one's interest in developing and willingness to develop courses for these on short notice, but that number for me would exceed the number and kind of courses I've taught or TA-ed for thus far. (I imagine the answer will vary, so anecdotes are more than welcome to show the possible range of competencies claimed and how those applications went)

[Early career]

How do you know when it's time to jump ship at a university with budget problems?

[Hermias]

Micro-working strategies

If an idea strikes me I can sit down with a notebook for 5 minutes and jot it down, but if I’m trying to write an essay then I find it really difficult to make any progress in spits and spots - I like to have multiple hours set aside. These are less available these days. Any tips for making use of the odd 10-15 minutes here and there?

[everwhat]

Does anyone have any idea how the review process for getting onto the main program of an APA actually works?

(I assume some of you out there have been reviewers before - fwiw, I've never heard from a friend in the field of being asked to do this. So who does it? What do they ask you to look for? Overall it seems there's a serious lack of transparency here. It's also obvious to anyone who looks that there is something that an 'APA paper' looks like. Follow that formula, write on a trendy topic, and you'll probably get in eventually. But who is doing all this reviewing?)

[seven-year itch]

A teaching-portfolio question for all, but especially recent search committee members:

What stood out about good teaching portfolios in your applicant pools? How many pages, syllabi, and complete course evaluations do you recommend including? How many of each are too much or too little? What are some things no one should ever do?

I know teaching portfolios have been discussed here and elsewhere in the past, but I find that disciplinary norms change from year to year, and I'm also dragging my feet in trying to figure out how to improve my own teaching portfolio. So advice would be appreciated.

[guy who will write a book]

I am in the early stages of writing my first academic book. I have already published a series of pertinent articles from which I hope to borrow for the book, not by copying and pasting in their entirety, but certainly with enough continuity where I think it'd be necessary for me to reach out to journals for permission.

My question is just about when I ought to contact journals. I suppose the simplest answer would be "as soon as possible", but then again I do not even have a book contract yet. Is there some stage at which book publishers will expect written permission from the journals?

[saving for a book?]

I've reworked 2 chapters from my dissertation and sent them to journals. There's another chapter that I could possibly rework to send off to a journal. But I also want to eventually turn my dissertation into a book, and I think that if most of my dissertation already appears in print, I wouldn't be able to do that. Should I save that chapter?

[anon]

How should you interact with faculty visiting your class to evaluate your teaching?

Should you pretend they are not there, or should you invite them to participate in in-class activities?

[Social-norms-collegiate-philosophy]

This might be an odd question but I’m relatively new to a smallish department. I want to have collegial relationships with my colleagues in the philosophy department and would love to have support building my teaching skills. I can’t get a handle on the culture, though, and it seems the current department members operate largely independently. What kinds of support can I directly ask for that would be socially appropriate even if they all seem quite busy? I would love to sit in on their classes for observations and have them sit in on mine, I would also love direct feedback on my syllabi, rubrics, and assignments, but they seem so busy and I don’t want to make waves. In the long term I’d love to organize philosophy specific talks to the wider college, book circles, events etc. But so far I’m just getting a general sense of…. I don’t know. Maybe it’s that they were understaffed before my hire so they are all tired. Is there a low stakes way to reach out and make it clear I’m interested in collaboration without putting pressure or making it come off as criticism? Or should I seek support elsewhere in case my hunch is right that they prefer to work independently? This might be an odd question since it’s about social norms, I’m not sure if this is unique to our discipline or if any small department would have this sense of uncertainty.

[Three Rejections and Counting]

How does one handle reviewers asking for so much information it would take a book to address it?

I asked one person that, and they half-jokingly but entirely seriously said, "Maybe it's a book project and not an article."

But the paper states as clearly as possible that the article is concerned with a specific portion of Famous 20th century Philosopher's argument, but the reviewers throw in vague objections from the philosopher's corpus. Neither reviewer actually touched what the actual paper said.

Has anyone deal with the issue where you're dealing with a particular part of a famous philosopher's thought, but it feels like reviewers go into rebuttal mode instead of analysis mode?

[Three Rejections and Counting]

Sorry to double post, but I thought of one more question. As an early career scholar just starting to publish, does it really mean anything when you get a desk rejection and the justification emphasizes it's not about quality but scope? Or is that just boilerplate?

I sent a paper to a journal the publishes specifically on X philosophy. My paper dealt with that, but could also be said to deal with Y philosophy and the editor felt it was more a Y paper than an X paper--which is fair.

I'm just wondering whether I should put any stock into "the topic's important" and the emphasis it was not rejected because of quality only scope.

[GettingOld]

How have the requirements for job documents changed (if at all) in the last decade? What should documents for associate professor positions do differently than documents for assistant professor positions?

Some context: I'm a TT Assistant Professor who is readying documents for promotion to Associate, and also applying for jobs. In preparing my applications, I noticed that the most cited advice for job application materials is the same (e.g. Karen Kelsky) as when I was as a graduate student. Kelsky's "The Professor is In" is almost a decade old now, and it regurgitates blog posts that were out for several years prior. A lot has changed since then. The book is also written specifically for newly minted PhD's, and gives little to no advice on how job documents should change as one progresses in their career. Can you say how conventions have changed since TPII was published? What conventions exist for those applying for jobs later in their careers?

[curious jobseeker]

I know that one or two recent job market candidates (for example Elise Woodard) have shared examples of their successful materials, and I was wondering if there was anywhere a compendium of others who've done the same. I find the concrete examples exceedingly helpful for writing cover letters & research/teaching statements (significantly more so than generic advice).

[David]

Does anyone know what the major Medieval Philosophy journals are? Or a resource for ranking (though I understand the great limitations to ranking)? I not so much asking about the main History of Philosophy journals, but specifically the "area" journals for Medieval Philosophy. Thank you all!