The Philosophers' Cocoon

How to make (journal) rejections easier?

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Cara asks:

How to make rejections easier? After years in the game I still get a gut punch when I get a paper rejected. Does anyone have tips for reducing this in advance (I guess I mean actionable tips while the paper is under review, not longer term ones like get therapy and don't tie your self esteem to your work…).

I really empathize, but unfortunately have no real tips. Although rejections have gotten a bit easier for me over the years because I don't need them so much (as I did while on the market), they still sting a lot, and I don't know if that will ever go away. 

Do any readers have any helpful tips?

Are the job-market/academia worth it?

In our February "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

Does anybody think this is worth it? Sorry that this is a grim question. But after a few cycles on the job market, I am wondering whether anybody thinks that this is worth it (and endorses that belief). I see so many intelligent kind friends absolutely burned out by the job insecurity, the constant moving, the two body problems, the low pay during prime saving years, the barriers to starting a family. I know we all know these things and we commiserate with each other - but then we just keep doing it. Line up again for another job market year, keep "crossing fingers". Has anybody figured out a defence, other than inertia, for why they keep doing it? If so could they share it, so that I can have their hope and reasoning as well?

I'm so sorry that the OP and others on the job-market are going through this. I spent seven (or was it eight?) awful years on the market wondering the same thing, and although I finally lucked out and ended up in a tenure-track job, I must confess that I still don't think that I have a good answer. Did a tenure-track job make that tremendously awful better-part-of-a-decade worth it? And would it have been worth it if I hadn't lucked out? I don't know how to answer either question, and I suspect there may not be any generalizable answers. Maybe it's all worth it in some cases but not others? But what about in comparison to relevant alternatives? I've heard a number of people who have left academia for industry joba report being far happier. Then again, maybe they are a non-representative, self-selected group of "alt-ac success stories"? 

In any case, it may be good to have a frank and open discussion of these issues, hearing the perspectives of people in different situations, including those on the market, those who have stayed in academia, and those who have left. 

Does anyone have any experiences or insights they're willing to share? Please do feel free to discuss away and commiserate.

Tips for mentoring a philosophy club?

In our most newest "how can we help you?" thread

I am a new TT faculty and have been asked to take over the job of mentoring the Philosophy Club. Any advice on how to be an awesome mentor?

Good question. It would be great to hear how faculty mentor these kinds of clubs. What works? What doesn't?

Anyone have any helpful tips to share?

Tips for grappling with loneliness in the academy?

Last week, we had an eye-opening discussion of loneliness in academic life. For many of us, whether it is moving many times to different jobs in different cities or countries, working in a small department with high teaching and service loads, significant age or interest differences between faculty, etc., a career in academia has turned out to be a lot more isolating/lonely that we probably expected.

Out of respect for the OP, last week's thread avoided sharing tips for grappling with these issues. The OP simply wanted to know how many others in academia have been similarly surprised about how lonely of an existence it is. At the same time, I expect that some readers may be interested in tips on how to handle experiences of loneliness in the profession.

One late stage graduate student, Joshua, posted the following:

the first and central piece of advice I give to new graduate students is to find friends outside of the department. I suspect academics across disciplines who struggle to do this will pretty much always face the issue OP is getting at. I definitely struggled with moving ~600 miles to start grad school and only found good friends outside of my department well into my time here.

I think this may be sound advice to graduate students, and it may even be for some faculty who are grappling with loneliness. Still, as I mentioned in a follow-up comment, it may be very difficult for faculty with high teaching, service, and/or research expectations to make many non-academic friends.

In any case, do any of you have any helpful tips for grappling with loneliness in the academy?

Loneliness in academic life?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, 'One Hundred Semesters of Solitude' writes:

I'd like to initiate a conversation about the unexpected and honestly often quite difficult loneliness of having chosen an academic career. Note that I'm NOT looking for some Cocoon-style "what are *your* thoughts" on how to DEAL with this loneliness. That's partially what therapy is for, and the solutions to loneliness and solitude are pretty well-known regardless of what profession you choose (find hobbies, volunteer, put yourself out there, etc.).

What I'd like to ask is just how many people, like me, have kind of been surprised by how much less of a social network we have than other friends and non-academics at similar career stages. Here's the factors that affect my life, and I'm wondering how common these are. Again, I'm NOT looking for advice.

1) Lack of social connections from past stages of life -- Some people are able to build social circles out of their college or childhood friends and their mutual connections. However, because I chose to pursue a PhD in my 20s and partially because my program was far away from where friends from my BA ended up, I fell out of contact with many if not most of my college connections. None of my friends from college are nearby geographically. So that makes this source of social interaction slim pickins'. How many others have this experience?

2) Lack of social connections from work -- I'm in my mid-30s and I have a TT position in a major city! So I pretty much hit the lottery. However, I've learned that folks in other industries (tech, law, finance, etc.) often find a majority of their friends from their workplace. This is because these other workplaces are largely populated by people in a (1) similar age bracket who (2) are also looking for new social connections.

However, in academia, it's possible that neither of these factors applies. I am the youngest member of my department by a good 10 years and (nearly) everyone else lives in the suburbs with a family. Nobody is really looking for a buddy to go check out bars with on weekends.

Also, my institution (somewhat anecdotally) seems to do a really bad job of connecting its junior faculty with each other. Previously, when I worked at a much smaller institution, there were TT faculty orientations, meet-and-greets, and so on. At my current institution, there's been none of that.

Anyway, these factors have also made this source of social interactions very hard. How many others have experienced this?

3) The inherent social isolation of academic work -- The other obvious factor that makes it hard to develop meaningful social connections at work is that, unlike say tech or law or finance, academic work in the humanities is almost entirely solo. Most of us aren't running labs, with grad students and postdocs filing in and out and so on. And barring the odd committee assignment where people aren't rushing to leave the Zoom room, literally all of my work is conducted by myself.

I write by myself. I lesson prep by myself. Teaching isn't technically "by yourself," but you all know that it practically is, since undergrads are basically automata a little less able than ChatGPT (only barely joking). It's possible to work an entire semester quite productively without an actual interaction with another person, and I think I actually have had more than one such semester.

--
I think these are the biggest couple of factors, but other additional factors might include whether someone is romantically paired or single, the fact that academics work a unique kind of schedule, and so on.

Again, I'm NOT looking for advice on how to make friends, etc. I'm just curious as to how many other Cocooners have noticed and perhaps been surprised by the loneliness that comes with academic life.

I suspect this query resonates with a lot of people, particularly those who work in small departments with high teaching loads. It definitely resonates with me. My university does a good job of building connections between junior faculty, but otherwise, all three of the OP's major points apply to me. 

What about you all? Have you found your career in academia unexpectedly lonely? If so, for what reasons--the same as the OP's?

Mental Health & Disability Network

Alexandra Gustafson (University of Toronto) writes in,

Philosophy graduate students worldwide are invited to join the Mental Health & Disability Network!

What is the Mental Health & Disability Network (MH&DN)? Now in its third year, MH&DN is a multi-university network devoted to bringing together philosophy graduate students searching for a supportive community. Hosted primarily over Discord, MH&DN has three aims: 1) to maintain a friendly, accommodating, and non-judgmental space in which peers can share their experiences and support one another; 2) to be an advocacy force that will assist in ongoing improvements to make our field an ever-kinder space conducive to everyone’s well-being; and 3) to work toward the broader de-stigmatization of mental health and disability in academia.

Any current philosophy graduate student (PhD or MA) is welcome to join, no formal (or informal) health diagnosis necessary. Interested students should contact Alexandra Gustafson (Toronto) at [email protected] for a secure link to join.

This seems like a wonderful resource, and I am glad that it appears to be flourishing!

The Happy Sophist (guest post by Eric Schliesser)

This is a guest post by Eric Schliesser, University of Amsterdam

Because my dad resented being shunted into the family business – and disguised his anger at himself for not escaping this fate – he made it very clear that unlike his parents, he was willing to support me in my education ‘whatever I would choose.’ (He had received an Associate degree from the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC, but no other higher education.) 

My dad had assumed I would be prudent about my freedom, and was aghast when in my mid-twenties I was pursuing a PhD in philosophy partially subsidized by him. I had opted for a PhD because Professor Eichenberg (my Intro to IR teacher) had asked me to teach a number of sections of his intro to IR course. I loved that vastly better than any of the ‘real jobs’ I landed in the early 90s (the so-called ‘jobless recovery’); academia beckoned.

At The University of Chicago even junior PhD students were given the opportunity to teach their own classes in the required undergraduate great books/Humanities sequences. During one winter session in the late 1990s my dad visited my class, and sat in the back of the room. He had no idea what we were talking about, but after class he was beaming, and he said something like ‘you have really found your calling.’ After that frigid morning in Hyde Park, he only spoke with pride about my career choice (and gleefully remained ignorant of the content of most of my work until he died). 

Back in those days, we received no teacher training, and I was not an especially good teacher. I have some evidence of that: my dad himself often referred back to the class visit by telling people that apparently I had called on a student by asking “is that your hand or are you scratching yourself?” He thought that genius (and ridiculous). I am sure part of his joy in sharing that story is my obvious discomfort about it. But the other part was the shared joy in my vocation.

At Chicago, and also in my first few temporary jobs, I generally taught students who were obviously much smarter than myself. In these jobs, classroom sizes were small; ‘teaching’ basically involved sitting in a small circle and learning from my students while discussing the reading and facilitating discussion. Yes, there were lots of papers to grade, but basically I was being paid to read books with bright, articulate students.

In reflecting on my graduate and undergraduate teachers – remember I had received no teaching training  – I decided that good teachers used an exaggerated feature of their character to connect with their students and, thereby, re-direct their focus to facilitate mutual learning. Plato calls this (more highfalutin-ly) the turning of the soul; Adam Smith (a very successful lecturer), ever so practical, suggests it’s directing vanity to its proper ends. In acting on this insight, I became a classroom character, and my teaching evaluations were polarized. Later I realized that the student-critics had a point: I was teaching to my better students – the ones who would be teaching me – and not to all my students.

So much for introduction. A few years ago, I was disabled and spent almost year in bed with debilitating headaches and general lack of conviction I could ever be professionally active again. (Check out my long covid diaries on this.) I had plenty of time to reflect on my career and the existential choices that had brought me where I was. After discussing it with my occupational physician, and soul searching, I realized that in my job I was passionate about three things: undergraduate teaching, having my research read, and learning from my peers at workshops or conferences. Being denied all three was clarifying. There were also things I enjoyed not strictly part of my job description (like blogging). Things that on refection I really didn’t like: both ends of peer review, administrative tasks, being a PhD supervisor, and a few others. 

Dealing with harsh journal rejections?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader asks:

How do you deal with very critical rejections at journals, the sort that claims that there is almost nothing good in your paper?

I have submitted a draft to 3 places so far, the first two are top ones, and I got mixed reviews recommending acceptance and rejection (which also contains encouraging comments). Then I submitted to a third one, not so top, as the possibly last try. To my surprise, the two referee reports are very negative and criticize everything I said that they selected as "superficial" "mistaken" "not minimally novel" etc. While I try to take in everything the referees say, it is painful to do that. Do you have such experience and how do you deal with it? Also, do you know why less top journals can give much more harsh reports? That seems counterintuitive. (In the early rejections, even for the negative part the referees only say something like the arguments are not as decisive as the author seem to think, not utterly dismissive.) Thanks a lot.

This is a great query, and I'm very curious to hear from readers. Here are my thoughts and experiences...

Tips and resources for philosophers with ADHD?

We recently had a request from a philosopher who has ADHD for any tips, resources, etc. How can you flourish as a grad student, undergrad, or faculty member with ADHD in philosophy?

If you can talk about personal experience and what helps you, or otherwise know of resources, this would be much appreciated! You can put this in the replies to this post.

Grappling with loss of intellectual passion?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, X writes:

I am not interested in philosophy/intellectual work anymore, it seems.

I’ve been devoted to (formal) philosophy for about a decade, and was really passionate at the beginning, with ok success (some ideas people liked, books with ok presses, a few decent papers in good generalist venues, some invitations, visiting appointments, great track record of getting good grants for my career stage).

I feel that’s about to change. Some bad experiences with administration, plus two pandemic years, plus a few relocations, make me unmotivated. I do the bare minimum to keep up with my commitments. My new papers keep on being rejected (from very good journals, but still), and I can’t be bothered to work on them. I don’t feel there are extrinsic challenges left (in the profession) that are enough to be attainable and motivate me to do this for another 40 years or so.

All I can think about is *hobby* (which is outdoorsy, time-consuming, very expensive, and intellectually challenging). I already took last summer completely off work, but wasn’t recharged enough coming the new academic year.

Suggestions?

Another reader, Y, submitted the following response:

I can't help but empathize with X, although I may come from a different place. My motivation took a dip 2 years ago when covid started & I graduated and no longer have an adviser who held me accountable and gave feedback (and encouragement) & I was relocated & racism was rampant. For me, I do research because I want to achieve new understanding and to be part of the conversation that I am interested in. That has kept me going. I suspected that getting rejections play an important role in X's case among all the other unfavorable conditions. It has substantially helped my motivation to get positive feedback from referees and get my papers accepted. This is not necessarily advice to X since what do I know, but maybe it would help to put more effort into getting new papers published and see if that gradually improves the motivation---before considering options of quitting.

This is an excellent query, as I sense more than a few academics are feeling this way nowadays. Indeed, I've heard at least anecdotally that an increasing number of academics are leaving the profession post-COVID due to similar experiences, and I've personally known about a handful myself. I'm not sure, but maybe the OP is experiencing burnout? This is actually a genuine syndrome, and although I'm not a psychologist, I guess I'd suggest the OP look into it more if they haven't already. While I appreciate Y's response, and it's entirely possible that publishing more stuff would improve X's outlook and motivation, I'm curious whether other readers have any other suggestions. Indeed, I'm curious whether there are other readers out there who have grappled with similar situations as X (and Y), how you dealt with the situation, and how well your approach worked.

Do any readers have any helpful tips or experiences to share?

Comparing oneself to others

In our February "how can we help you?" thread, Alex Bryant writes:

Quite delayed but have been thinking recently about how much the weight of comparing oneself to others ends up having for people who are either just about to start the PhD (admissions time!), in the PhD (am I good enough to be doing this?), and early career (job market!). I wonder if anyone in philosophy has written about this experience of comparing oneself to others and how hard it can be to overcome, especially when this period in our lives can feel like one where we are deeply tied to our work. If anyone has suggestions for ways to work on this, I'd really appreciate hearing them--it's an ongoing struggle for me, and one that I've had/seen enough discussion about that I figure it's worth posing here.

Great query. I suspect this is something that a lot of academics struggle with, and I too will confess to having struggled with it at times. Personally, I just try to focus on doing the best work that I can and remind myself that everyone is different and moves at their own pace. I've done most things later in life than my peers, from learning to talk as a toddler to finishing my PhD and getting a job, so I'm sort of used to being behind the curve. ;) Alas, that's all I got, and I know 'just focus on doing your best' may not be super helpful. Anyone else have any helpful tips or resources here? 

Mental health (e.g. PTSD) diagnoses and grad school

In our January "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am ABD. I have recently been diagnosed with PTSD. This wasn’t exactly a shocking diagnosis for me to receive, but something about the isolation during COVID and recently getting my own apartment allowed this issue to bubble to the surface. I feel stuck. I am tempted to go on leave to try and focus on recovery, but I’m worried I won’t come back to my PhD program if I do, and I really really want to finish my dissertation. It’s hard to focus. I am all over the place, emotionally speaking. And I am coming to terms with the fact that I have been using school to smother my trauma— I’ve almost taken that strategy as far as you can take it! Tips? Suggestions? Help? Anyone else managed PTSD while they are working on a dissertation?

These are excellent and important questions, as are questions about managing mental health diagnoses in grad school (and academia) more generally. Studies have found "strikingly high" rates of mental health issues among graduate students and faculty. Do any of you have any tips, particularly for the OP?

Mental Health & Disability Network for phil grads

Alexandra Gustafson (PhD candidate, University of Toronto) has drawn my attention to a new initiative with Parker Rose (graduate student, UCLA): a Mental Health & Disability Network open to all philosophy graduate students. Here are the invitation and contact details:

To whom it may concern,

We're writing on behalf of the Mental Health & Disability Network, a new student-led initiative for philosophy graduate students, with an invitation for the students in your department! What is the Mental Health & Disability Network? It's a multi-university network devoted to bringing together philosophy graduate students who are dealing with significant mental and other health challenges. Hosted primarily over Discord, the Mental Health & Disability Network has three aims: 1) to maintain a friendly, accommodating, and non-judgmental space in which peers can share their experiences and support one another; 2) to be an advocacy force that will assist in ongoing improvements to make our field an ever-kinder space conducive to everyone’s well-being; and 3) to work toward the broader de-stigmatization of mental health and disability in academia. Any current philosophy graduate is welcome to join, no formal (or informal) health diagnosis necessary.

Interested students should contact Alexandra Gustafson (Toronto) at [email protected] or Parker Rose (UCLA) at [email protected] for a secure link to join.

I think this is a wonderful (and much-needed) endeavor, hope it flourishes, and hope it proves to advance its very admirable aims!

Grappling with impostor syndrome?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I'm around midway through my PhD, and have been struggling more than I normally do with imposter syndrome. It's put a real damper on my ability to work. What's the point if I'm not going to do work that others would want to read? And why should I risk revealing how little I know?

I've also been pretty convinced by the cognitive scientist Barbara Sarnecka's analysis of imposter syndrome - found in her book, the Writing Workshop - not as the result of something going wrong on the side of the individual, but as the result of something going wrong in the environment. Those struggling with imposter syndrome aren't usually making bad inferences about their own abilities from good data, but good inferences from bad data. We overestimate the success of others, and so underestimate our own, because we're only ever told the success stories.

I'm wondering if anyone has advice on combatting this kind of bad data. I'm especially interested in what I, as a graduate student, can do about it.

I'm sorry to hear that this reader is struggling, but I'm glad they asked this question, as it's an important issue that I expect a lot of grad students and early career philosophers struggle with. We've talked about impostor syndrome a few times before on the blog, and in fact there were many times early in my career when I struggled with impostor syndrome myself--so I know how hard it can be. So, let me offer a few brief comments that I hope the OP may find helpful before opening things up for comments.

(Better addressing) why grad students drop out?

On Twitter, our own Helen De Cruz (St. Louis University) asks:

What are the main factors that cause grad students to drop out of programs, and how can these be mitigated? How can programs better support e.g., mental health, wellbeing and other outcomes?

These are both excellent and important questions. My sense is that many grad programs could probably do a lot more to better support struggling grad students, but that these issues are often just not talked about openly. In my experience, a lot of graduate students end up suffering in relative silence, not knowing what to do or who to turn to--and, perhaps in part because they are afraid to speak out, grad programs may not know what they could be doing to help.

Finally, of course, there may in some cases be simply a lack of will. Some grad faculty might not think it is their responsibility to help grad students through personal crises that affect their academic performance and ability to finish the program. Although I strongly disagree with this, it is worth thinking about what might be done to incentivize a more proactive and helpful approach in grad programs--such as, perhaps, the APA (or AAUP?) developing some kind of 'best practices' document or instituting some of kind requirement for programs to be transparent about their dropout rates in order to remain in good standing with the organization (which, insofar as it could reflect poorly on the program, particularly to prospective students, might incentivize programs to do better).

Anyway, I'm not sure--but I think these are very important questions, given how much is at stake in the lives of grad students. So, then, how would you answer Helen's questions? What are the main factors that lead grad students to drop out, and what should programs do better?

Mental health, disability, and a virtual MH&D network? (Alexandra Gustafson - Toronto)

Alexandra Gustafson (PhD candidate, University of Toronto) has an excellent post up at the APA blog on the importance and 'how-to' of developing collaborative action and initiatives to provide support and resources for graduate students and other individuals with mental health conditions and disabilities. These are really important issues, and it's wonderful to see more people like Gustafson and her colleagues advocating and pursuing these kinds of conversations and initiatives, both in their department and in the profession more broadly. I want to do everything that I can to support and amplify this kind of work at the Cocoon--so, if there are readers out there who know of resources or conversations that we can share (or readers who would like to submit guest posts on these and related issues), please don't hesitate to email me about them at [email protected].

In the meantime, Gustafson has noted that a few graduate students and early-career philosophers have expressed interest in a cross-program Mental Health & Disability (MH&D) virtual network, such as a Discord server or some other virtual network--and she is wondering whether there would be wider interest in this. I'm not sure whether it would be best to run an informal poll, so in lieu of that, I'm just going to suggest that if you would be interested in the creation of (and potentially participating in) a virtual MH&D network, please comment below! (Please do feel free to comment either anonymously or in your own name, whatever you prefer). Many thanks to Gustafson for drawing my attention to this, and again to her and her colleagues for their important work here!

Social & academic initiatives for conversations regarding mental health?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Javier writes:

There have been many posts about isolation, anxiety and mental health issues, and professional instability, all due to covid or not, and mostly between graduate students. Does anyone know of online social initiatives that are created to bring people together and have a conversation on this issues? Or of initiatives for people in academia who wish to just have a conversation with each other and might not have peers to do so at their uni?

This is an excellent and important query. In response to last week's thread on the question of whether it is a good idea or too risky to be open about one's mental health (particularly as an early-career scholar), Alex Bryant (PhD student, McMaster) posted a related thread on Twitter:

Thinking a lot this morning about a conversation I had with @biopoliticalph yesterday: It may be that there are many working philosophers who are in fact disabled are "in the closet," so to speak. But what changes will be made to make it viable for disabled philosophers to come out of the closet about disability (including those like bipolar)?

Being open about mental health issues?

(Updated with links to additional discussions of related issues).

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I am a PhD candidate who is about one year away from defending and entering the job market. I wanted to know how open I should be about belonging to a protected mental health and disability category (both in my application materials, and on my social media which is under a pseudonym, but could be linked to me with some effort). I have bipolar disorder one, and I know that there is a lot of stigma surrounding mental health in general (and even more acute stigma surrounding mental illness that can involve psychosis). In my personal life I am quite open about this - I think that telling stories about what it is like to live with this disorder is important for destigmatizing it. It is also important to me to be open about it because I think I stand as a good example of how it is possible to live a very happy and productive life despite having this kind of disorder. However, I do not want my condition to count against me when I go on the market! This question was raised for me most focally this month because I wanted to tell a few stories of my experience on a social media platform for Mental Health Awareness Month, but I am quite nervous about the kind of impact that might have on my job prospects down the line. Any thoughts you all have would be very much appreciated.

This is an extremely important query. Unfortunately, my experience is that there is real stigma against mental illness in the profession. As a case in point, another reader submitted the following reply:

First, the chief concern many hiring committees will have is that you might have a psychotic episode during the semester, and need to be hospitalized. Then they, your new colleagues, will have to scramble to cover your teaching - and they will often get no resources from the administration to do it. So imagine a five person department - now everyone's load is increased by 25 % because one person is on a medical leave. And there is no time to prepare lectures. And you might already being doing a 4-4 load ... and your own child is going through a teenage crisis, etc. No one wants that. Second, from my experience, it pays to indicate on the HR forms that you belong to a protected group. I have seen cases where HR intervened and insisted that files be considered.

I've known academic philosophers who have been very open about their mental illness, and at least anecdotally (from what they have reported), it may have very much worked against them on the job-market, impeding their ability to secure a permanent academic position. I've also known many academic philosophers (including tenured ones) who keep their mental illnesses a secret out of fear of discrimination. To be clear, I think this is awful. Mental illness is a veritable epidemic in academia, yet social norms in the profession incentivize people to keep their illnesses a secret. So unfortunately, my sense is that one has to make a very difficult choice: one can either be open about one's health and be an advocate against stigmatization--but at a potentially serious risk to one's career--or one can keep it a secret. I'm not sure there is any 'right choice' here. One must, I think, simply make a choice one can live with. But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Update: Justin Weinberg (South Carolina) kindly drew my attention to these two Daily Nous discussions of mental health in academic philosophy.

Grappling with burnout (or worse)?

In our October "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:

I haven't been able to get much work done in the last nine months on my research because of a problem that is new for me, and I wonder how typical it is for others in academics - emotional pain.

I'm an upper year PhD student who has their dissertation mostly complete. If I needed to, I (and my advisor) feel like I can wrap things up in a month. That has been the case for almost a year now. Also, I've been on the job 'market' since last year.

Every word I type about the thoughts I have on my area of research feels like a scab ripped from my mind. I feel relatively fine writing about anything else. Besides what I imagine are the typical anxiety about rejection and imposter syndrome, I'm feeling a lot of grief and sense of loss among other complicated stuff I cant put really well to words. I'm already not great at taking the time to dwell on writing material to polish things up. Now it's more than just an executive functioning/attention problem. Working on my research and material related to it in my job applications has become a sort of feeling management problem. It makes me wonder if I have a toxic relationship with academia, that this is something that will keep getting worse for me and I'm better off cutting ties with the profession, or whether its because of the context I'm in (covid and job searching despair), that I'm failing to see things objectively.

I've dealt with depression before and this feels different. It feels like grief and loss, less of an autonomous mood and more of a reaction to my world. Does this resonate with anyone here? Is this a sign I should take, that I'm 'burnt out' on philosophy? How does one successfully manage the emotional (instead of motivation) side of getting work done?

This post actually resonates with me a great deal, and I hope we can have a helpful and supportive discussion about the important issues it raises. Allow me to say a few brief things, and then invite readers to share their own experiences and any tips or advice they have for someone grappling with these kinds of issues.

118

In my last major post, I gave the details on how a major depressive episode radically disrupted my academic year and ongoing job search, but I never specified how that search ended. The job search itself wasn’t the core topic of the post, and it wasn’t over when I first drafted the post. But I did survive the gauntlet, and enough time has passed that I think I can finally catalog everything that transpired.

In this post, I’m going to chronicle some of the noteworthy events  that took place during my 8-month academic job search in 2018-2019 while I was completing the final year of my postdoc at the University of South Florida. As will become obvious, there are some aspects of this story that are extremely idiosyncratic and unlikely to be a part of anyone else’s job search. Still, I think there are some meaningful takeaways from the tale, and since it does actually end in success, it’s a reminder that perseverance does sometimes pay off – a message that is all too often overshadowed by the grim realities of the current job market.

Once the lengthy recap of the job search is complete, I’ll highlight some general lessons that can be gleaned from the journey.

The Shadow Self

Last year in November, Alia Wong published an article in The Atlantic that detailed the various ways that PhD students often suffer from mental illness. The factors that put a strain on these students’ mental health are familiar: long-term employment prospects are poor, some students accumulate massive debt, and getting the the PhD is an intellectually taxing enterprise. Mix that together, and you get a recipe for stress and unhappiness.

The article focuses on a study of economics PhDs, and according to the survey mentioned, they are three times more likely to experience depression than the general population. (About 6% of the general population experiences depression; roughly 18% of those surveyed did.) But economics is far from the only field where concerns about mental health loom large. A recent study at UC Berkley found that a much higher proportion of their student population suffered from apparent depression, including an astonishing 64% of surveyed students in the arts and humanities. Broadening to the full spectrum of mental health issues, a recent study found that 50% of academic scholars have experienced mental health issues due to their academic work, which is roughly double the rate at which the general population experiences mental health issues. And last year, Teresa Evans and her colleagues argued that there was sufficient evidence of a mental health crisis in graduate education.

I could list other findings, but you get the point: a lot of graduate students struggle with their mental health. Philosophy graduate students are no exception, and even after graduate school, most early career scholars who find employment spend time in temporary appointments where they are forced to go back in the job market within a year or two. Facing the need to continue publishing and teaching well so that they can brave the job market gauntlet again, these positions are often just as stressful as the tail end of graduate school. And even when stable employment is secured, many departments are just one change to the general education program away from their existence being in jeopardy. A tenure-track position is often not a panacea for the challenges of academic life.

When we consider all this, it should not be surprising that many of our colleagues are struggling to with depression, anxiety, and their ilk. The victims of these conditions are all around us, and yet we so rarely acknowledge this fact. Consider these remarks from Peter Railton’s 2015 Dewey Lecture:

And what of depression?  Perhaps we all know the mask of depression, that frozen, affectless face we catch glimpses of on our students, colleagues, and friends. I can’t do anything about that. But perhaps I can do something about the face of depression—its visible image in the minds of our children and parents, teachers and students. Because in truth, we are still to a considerable degree still in a world of “Don’t ask, don’t tell” with regard to depression and associated mental disorders, such as anxiety, even though these will severely affect one in ten of us over the course of a lifetime, and often at more than one point in a lifetime.

Supporting struggling students

In the Daily Nous comments thread to Eric Schwitzgebel's excellent post a last month entitled, "Seven Principles of Humane PhD Advising", Chris Surprenant writes:

If [PhD students] lack motivation to complete their work while in graduate school, they’re not cut out to be professional academics...If folks can’t cut it, the sooner they learn that the better.

I have heard this sort of thing said many times. I've even heard that some graduate programs effectively codify something like it as a program policy, pressuring students to leave the program relatively early on if they are not making "adequate progress." Although I think the intent behind attitudes and policies like these may be good--aiming to save students "not cut out" for academic philosophy from wasting valuable time in their life pursuing it--I have nevertheless always bristled at this way of thinking. Reading Michael Huemer's (Colorado) new post, "A Philosopher Squeaks By", the other day helped me to clarify why. Allow me to explain.

In his post, Huemer details how "I barely made it in the profession": how he squeaked into graduate school, how get barely got an academic job, how many of his articles "have been hated by referees", and so on. On reading Huemer's story, my initial reaction was that he seems to have fared a heck of a lot better than other people who barely made it in the profession. For example, as I reported several years ago, in her 2014 APA Dewey Lecture aptly entitled, "Accidents", Ruth Millikan detailed how she had to walk out of a grad school exam for personal reasons (p. 4), how she entered grad school at Yale as only one of two women in a class of 22 students and one of only two students without a fellowship (pp. 4-5), how her dissertation supervisor left her program before she had made any real progress on the dissertation (p. 5), how during grad school she had a serious back injury, two children, a divorce, spent a summer in mental hospital, and how her dissertation took her 5 years (!) to complete, with basically no supervision (pp. 5-6). 

I've read numerous stories similar to Huemer's and Millikan's. A few years ago, I remember reading an APA address where Charles Mills detailed how he barely squeaked into the profession. Or consider Rae Langton's (Cambridge) self-confessed "career lowlights":

At Sydney, my background in Philosophy was deemed so poor I needed a remedial extra year. At Princeton, my PhD dissertation was initially failed, though (somewhat awkwardly) OUP had meanwhile decided to publish it, as Kantian Humility (see Books).

Reader query on the stresses of a TT job

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brainstorming department mental health policies

In the comments section of, "Reader query on presenting to a department on mental illness", the reader who submitted the query suggested it might be helpful to gather a list of potential departmental guidelines or policies regarding mental health. I think it's a great idea, and thought we might attempt to brainstorm a rough list of policies here!

Before I open things up for discussion, allow me to briefly float a few policies for consideration. The policies I'm inclined to favor map on broadly to the list of topics I discussed in the earlier post:

Guidelines against stigmatizing mental illness: I'm inclined to think there should be departmental guidelines educating faculty and students about the stigmatization of mental-illness--guidelines emphasizing that mental illness is an illness no less than a physical illness such as cancer; that we should therefore treat it the same way we treat physical illnesses (with compassion, understanding, etc.); that gossip regarding a person's known or suspected illness is inappropriate; that "bad choices" people make while suffering from mental illness may be a temporary manifestation of illness rather than reflective of the individual's true personal or moral character; and that many forms of mental illness are highly treatable, such that a person's personal or professional struggles (and "bad decisions") may resolve themselves once receiving effective treatment.

Reader query on presenting to a department on mental illness

A reader writes in:

I finished my Phd in 2015 and decided not to go into academia. While I don't at all currently regret that decision, now that I have recently been able to finally be completely free of depression for the first time since maybe I was a little kid, I am able to recognize that my decision not to go into academia was at least partly influenced by depression. In short: I had been taking zoloft since my 2nd year in grad school; my marriage fell apart during my 8th year, and I coped by smoking way too much weed; my doctor decided to take me off zoloft because she was worried about its interactions with weed; during my 9th year I completely lost interest in philosophy (similar to my experience prior to taking zoloft during my 2nd year) and was able to eke out the rest of the dissertation but called it quits with philosophy.

Anyways: I was recently chatting with a few of my old advisors back at [redacted]... We talked about how we think it's really a shame that depression just isn't discussed openly within the department, even though so many people have it. I thought that it might be a good idea for me to come back and give talk, sharing my own experiences with depression in grad school, talking about resources at [redacted], etc. He agreed, so I'll be giving the talk in November :) In the meantime, as I'm thinking about the content and structure of my talk, I was wondering if you have any thoughts for such a talk: What sorts of things might be good to include in a talk to a philosophy department whose students suffer from depression and at least some of the faculty are interested in helping and improving the environment of the department?

I think this is a great query, and would like to commend the reader, advisor, and department that took the initiative to organize this individual's upcoming presentation. I'm curious to hear what readers think. I myself feel fairly comfortable offering suggestions, as I have a good deal of experience with mental illness: I worked as an intern in an outpatient ward for a year, was co-director of a group home for the mentally ill for another year, and mental illness runs in my family, being more or less a constant in my life-experience since early childhood. Allow me to share some of my thoughts, then, before I open things up for comments...