The Philosophers' Cocoon

Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy (Guest post by Oisín Deery)

This is the fourth entry in the Cocoon's series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. Today's post is by Oisín Deery, Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow Macquarie University and Assistant Professor (on leave of absence) at York University. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at marvan@ut.edu!

------

My Path into Professional Philosophy

By Oisín Deery

I remember being at a certain conference as a grad student. The two well-known philosophers I was chatting with during a break asked each other whether they’d ever worked at other jobs. One scoffed and said he hadn’t, while the other said she’d spent part of a summer in high school working for a picture framer. I began to feel anxious. When they turned to me, I said I’d been a lifeguard once in my teens and left it at that.

Why had I felt so anxious? I was two years into my PhD program, I was 39 years old (which few of my professors or fellow grad students knew), and I somehow thought I needed to disguise my age and my unconventional background from those people on whom my getting a job—if I got one—might depend. I was trying to fit into a world I knew little about. As a result, I was anxious partly because I was afraid I’d be found out, that I’d receive puzzled looks from these philosophers whose work I admired and perhaps make them feel uncomfortable. I’d worked at many jobs. So, I worried that if I regaled them with stories of working on oil rigs or running a business, they’d not only regard me as strange, as though they’d suddenly noticed I had antlers growing out of my head, but also that they’d think I was mocking their relative paucity of experience.

Maybe it was just me. Perhaps they’d have been fascinated. But I wasn’t going to take that risk. I was playing it safe, trying to fit in, putting big chunks of myself into storage.

I’m now 51 and I’ve currently got two jobs—a continuing position (tenure-track equivalent) in the philosophy department at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, and a tenure-track Assistant Professor position in the philosophy department at York University in Toronto, Canada. It’s all worked out for me in the end, even though it took me years on the job market in postdoctoral and limited-term positions before I landed my job at York in 2019. I’m so grateful and happy to be a professional philosopher.

How did I arrive at this happy state of affairs? How did I even get to be at that conference, feeling anxious about being found out? It’s a long story. But I’ll try to be brief.

Non-Traditional Paths into Academic Philosophy (Logan Scott Mitchell)

This is the third entry in the Cocoon's new series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. Today's post is by Logan Scott Mitchell, a first-year PhD student at UNC Chapel Hill who is also a mindfulness instructor, musical theatre performer, and Certified Nonprofit Professional. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at marvan@ut.edu!

By Logan Scott Mitchell

My path to pursuing a PhD in Philosophy is quite non-traditional – prior to pursuing any type of higher education I spent several years as a professional actor, singer, and dancer in musical theatre. From childhood through my early twenties, performing was my entire life and identity. I dressed up as a “Broadway Star” for career day in the third grade, went to boarding school for two years to study dance, started working professionally in musical theatre at 17, and never even took the SAT.

I moved to New York City when I was 19, which sparked the beginning of my career as a (mostly) full-time musical theatre performer. I travelled across the country working in regional theaters, returning to New York only when I needed more work. I joined the stage actors’ union, Actors’ Equity Association, one year later, and by 2016 landed a role in an international tour of the musical West Side Story, where I was cast as a Jet (aka one the racist white guys). My big break!

Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy (Paul Taborsky)

This is the second entry in the Cocoon's new series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. Today's post is by Paul Taborsky, a writing/composition Instructor at Centennial College who has published and been involved in academic philosophy as a relative 'outsider' without a graduate degree in the field. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at marvan@ut.edu!

By Paul Taborsky

I think the series on non-traditional paths in philosophy is a great idea. I suppose one could say that I have followed a non-traditional career path; I teach first-year composition at a Community College (in Canada), mostly to international students. But my real interest is philosophy. I don’t know if my story is of interest to anyone (or even appropriate, as I’m not strictly speaking a professional philosopher, although I have publications here), but I will outline it briefly.

I do have an undergraduate degree in philosophy, but I never went on to grad school. There are probably a number of reasons for that, some of which I am probably only beginning to come to terms with, but from an academic perspective the principle reason was that, as an undergraduate, I really had no idea what kind of philosophical path I wanted to follow. I was very interested in the history of philosophy, and almost all my course work was in that sub-discipline, but towards the end of my studies I began to be aware there was nothing that really stood out for me that could have been a potential area of specialization or inspiration for graduate school focus, much less a dissertation. It is hard to articulate exactly why I felt that way – it is probably a lot easier to explain why one might be interested in Kant, say, than to explain why no particular path was appealing, but that is how I felt. And how could one go to graduate school in such a state of mind? Or so it seemed to me at the time.

So, at the end of my last year, I had, for example, no ‘favourite’ philosopher (and I still don’t – I’ve always been puzzled by the way this is supposed to be a helpful way of thinking about philosophy), and no favorite ‘-ism’, no key issue or problem (well, not one that I knew what to do with, see below), i.e. no idea of a research programme at all, other than a general orientation towards the history of the discipline, as opposed to systematic philosophy, and what I guess could be called an ‘analytic’ mindset. I suppose I should have talked to someone or sought advice, or taken a more careerist approach, but somehow none of that happened. I was rather isolated as an undergraduate, and the only close friend I had at the time was in a different department (political science), so perhaps I wasn’t connected enough, but so it was. Also, I had started out as a physics major, not a philosophy major; I had originally planned to go into one or another branch of theoretical physics or possibly astrophysics. I think the general difference in outlook and thinking between science and the humanities might also have been a cause for some of my unease, as well. An anecdote might be helpful here: Once, at a party for foreign teachers in China (I was teaching English in China at the time; see below), I was approached by a middle-aged gentleman who was keeping to himself, apart from the others. ‘So’, he said to me, as I came into the room, ‘Are you a science guy or an arts guy?’. I was a bit taken aback by his question, but I explained that I was a bit of both, as I had initially majored in physics, but switched to philosophy. This fellow then said that he was from Melbourne, where he had taught Chemistry, and pointed to the largely younger crowd in the distance. ‘These people are all arts people’, he said. ‘I can’t understand them!’. So I could say that, despite being in philosophy, I remain largely, (but not entirely), a ‘science guy’ in my habits of thinking.

Non-Traditional Paths into Academic Philosophy (Nicholas Drake)

This is the first entry in the Cocoon's new series, Non-Traditional Paths into Philosophy, a series of guest posts by people who entered academic philosophy later in life or otherwise took a non-traditional path into the field. This guest-post is authored by Nicholas Drake, a PhD Student at Australian National University. If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing to the series, feel free to email me at marvan@ut.edu!

Nicholas Drake (nicholas.drake@anu.edu.au) 

I’m a New Zealander and a second-year PhD student at ANU, and have MAs in philosophy from Victoria University of Wellington and Washington University in St. Louis (WashU).

On my mother’s side I’m from Maimai, on the West Coast of the South Island, and my ancestors are Irish and English. On my father’s side I also have Irish and English ancestors and am of the Kāti Kuri hapū (subtribe), from Kaikoura, part of the iwi (tribe) Ngāi Tahu. I’m married, to Hannah Simpson, who is also a New Zealander. (For Māori, where and who you hail from are more important things about you than what you do for a living, so these things are part of how you formally introduce yourself.)

I started academic philosophy relatively late in life, beginning a BA when I was 40. I did a lot of different things before then, and it’s hard to know what to include in the space available; what follows leaves a lot out.

After I left high school, my focus was studying and teaching classical piano. During my 20s I became increasingly convinced I should be doing more to help other people, so stopped charging people for music lessons so money wouldn’t be an obstacle for poorer kids. I lived off whatever koha (donations) I received.

I increasingly wanted to do more to help others, so started Te Whiti-o-Rongomai House, a house for homeless people, in Auckland. Many people who came to live there came off the street, but there were also newly arrived refugees, people coming out of addiction rehabilitation, and people just at a loose end for some reason. Running the house was very difficult, sometimes because I didn’t know what I was doing or made bad mistakes in dealing with people. I was often extremely tired and stressed. I was able to help some people though, and that was very rewarding. Being able to help people have a roof over their head for a while, or a safer and more comfortable environment, felt very good. The two things that I was most grateful for were being able to raise funds to move over from Zimbabwe the family of a refugee who was staying with me, and spending quite a lot of time looking after the children of a homeless man staying at the house. They were wonderful children, and are now wonderful adults with whom I’m still in touch.

I was also involved in anti-war activism, and helped organize protests against the wars against Afghanistan and Iraq, in which New Zealand took part. In a protest action shortly before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 a friend of mine (a Catholic priest) and I made a cross in our own blood on the floor of the US Consul’s office in New Zealand. After the massive demonstrations and other actions across the world failed to stop the invasion it felt like more direct action was necessary. I’ve never felt confident about that action at the US Consulate. It did mean quite a lot for the morale of some people who opposed the war, though. An Iraqi woman phoned me in tears and said, “Thank you for giving your blood for my country.” That makes it sound like much more of a sacrifice than it was, but it is good to know that at least some Iraqi people found the action meaningful in some way.

Call for guest posts: 'Non-traditional paths into philosophy'

A reader writes in:

I have a suggestion that I think would be very nice to have. This would be a series on people who have started doing philosophy later than their peers, maybe only going to graduate school in their forties, with the idea of showing people alternative career paths and encouraging people who feel out of place because they are older than the average graduate student. I also know someone who has done an MA in philosophy and has started on philosophical work (not yet published) in his 60s after retiring from a permanent position in a psychology department. The literary magazine The Millions started a series like this about ten years ago about authors who published their first book in their 40s or later. This includes many of my favourite authors, eg Barbara Pym. This has now grown into a separate website called Bloom https://bloomsite.wordpress.com/

I think this would be a great feature to have, showing that being an early career academic does not necessarily mean being young by age and you don’t have to be some kind of wunderkind to succeed. This could also showcase alternative career paths, like starting to publish philosophy after retirement or writing philosophy alongside an alt-ac job. I think there is a good chance that if I cannot get an academic job, I would try and continue research and writing alongside another (paying) career, so it would be nice to see other people doing this.

I think this is a great idea! If you took a non-traditional path into philosophy and are interested in contributing a guest-post on your experience and path in the profession, please just email me at marvan@ut.edu. Also, if you know someone else who took a non-traditional path who might be interested in contributing a post, please feel free to direct them to me or to this post.