The Philosophers' Cocoon

Teaching Smarter Not Harder

By Samuel Duncan

I was originally going to post this as a comment to Trevor’s post on teaching competently, but I decided that it merits its own post. Trevor makes some excellent points about teaching and what it’s reasonable to expect from yourself as a graduate student. The workaholism and perfectionism that academia drills into our heads is not a good way to approach teaching or indeed most tasks. In this post I’d like to discuss another way that the workaholism that inspires so many of our unreasonable expectations also gets in the way of not just competent teaching but good or even exceptional teaching. I am convinced that many philosophers wrongly assume that when it comes to teaching, more work always equals better teaching. This means that we see teaching strategies that would save us work as compromises between excellence and giving ourselves a reasonable workload. And so we often weirdly resist novel teaching strategies because the fact they save us work makes them seem like a cop out. I know I certainly did for a long time and for precisely this reason. However, this is a mistake on so many levels. One thing I’ve found in the last few years is that teaching strategies that save you time and effort can often be much better for students’ learning than more labor intensive options such as traditional lecturing. Let me give a couple of examples.

In my ethics classes I’ve replaced exams with an ethics bowl competition at the end of the semester. (I should admit here that I completely stole this idea from my friend Ryan Windeknecht, who’s one of the best philosophy teachers I’ve ever known).  If you don’t know what the ethics bowl is you can find more information here. Briefly, it’s a formal debate where two groups each consider an ethical dilemma, comment on the other group’s presentation and field questions from the audience (in this case their classmates). Now this saves me a lot of work. It takes up about six class meetings– five for the ethics bowls and one for an in class prep session for the groups– which means I don’t have to prep for those five meetings or put in the emotional labor of being “on” in front of a classroom. Like many of us in philosophy, I’m not naturally an extrovert and teaching is more than a bit of a performance for me. I generally enjoy it quite a bit, but it’s also emotional labor in the truest sense of that often misused term. I also don’t have to grade exams since I score the teams in class as do their classmates and come up with an average between my scores and the scores of their classmates. And we all know what a miserable chore exam grading is. Most grading isn’t fun but exam grading is really just the worst in my experience. In my book, if most grading is a chore like cleaning your bathroom at home, then exam grading is cleaning the bathroom at a truck stop or a stadium.

So the ethics bowl saves me quite a bit of work, but I’ve also found that students tend to like it. Pretty much every semester at least one student and often multiple students will say that it was their favorite thing about the class in the evaluations. It’s also very good for student learning. Applying the moral theories we’ve learned to real life cases and answering questions and challenges to their approach both helps the students to understand the moral theories on a deeper level and to better appreciate both their merits and faults as methods of moral reasoning. I’ve found that the ethics bowl is probably the single most effective strategy I know of for getting students– both those in the groups and the audience– to engage in real ethical discussion and debate.

Or take logic where I’ve almost entirely adopted the “flipped classroom” model. For most class sessions, I put fairly brief recorded lectures online where I go over the reading in more detail and discuss what I think are tricky points (the lectures are usually about 30 minutes). We then devote the entire class period to working through problems that cover the material from the readings and lectures. I put students in informal groups (usually just based on where they happen to be sitting) to work through the problems and periodically break to go over a set as a class. During the time they’re working on them I’ll make the rounds in class and see if they need help or want feedback on their proposed solutions. In the short term this approach did involve a fair amount of preparation for me since I had to record lectures and come up with exercises to supplement those in the book. However, in the long term it saves me quite a bit of work. Relying on recorded lectures is easier than having to prep for class each day and again it’s a class period where I don’t have to be on and in character in the way I would if I were lecturing. 

However, I’ve found that this is a really effective way to teach a subject like logic. Students get nearly instant feedback on their solutions. We can also work through many more problems than we could if I gave them problem sets primarily as homework (I do still give some fairly brief homework assignments reinforcing the material we cover that we go over at the beginning of the next class). This is a huge advantage since I’ve personally found that for logic or any other similarly “mathematical” subject doing problems is the most effective way to learn the material. In fact, to a great extent it just is what learning the material is.

Anyway, those are just two examples, but I think there are a lot more cases where approaches that make our lives as philosophy teachers easier would also be more effective as learning strategies. I’d love to hear your own. If they’re really good I might just engage in the sincerest form of flattery again.

Financial stress? Academic compensation inside and outside of the UK

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

I feel that UK jobs, starting from like 37k-44k GBP (roughly 45k-54k USD), isn't a lot. At least as the single source of income for a family of four, I don't feel that I can save up to anything. (Bracketing the steep costs for applying for indefinite leave to remain down the track.) Maybe I'm doing something wrong, e.g. having kids too early, and maybe this is something worth taking into consideration for those thinking about having kids.

I'm very grateful for having a job, and I know that I'm extremely lucky compared to my equally qualified peers who are still seeking stability. But I'm feeling the financial pressure, and it is producing a lot of anxiety for me and my partner. (My partner plans to start working once the kids are old enough to go to childcare.)

But here's the general question. Do people who start their first stable (TT or continuing) job in other places of the world feel similar financial stress?

Good question. There were a couple of interesting responses submitted. One reader wrote in:

The UK has a lot of in-work benefits. You probably already know about child benefit, but there are other types of benefits, many of which do not have 100% uptakes by those eligible. Have you met with Citizens' Advice?

But Helen added:

[Y]ou aren't wrong about the UK. I worked early-career in Belgium, the Netherlands, and the UK. My UK salary (no shade on my wonderful employers, Oxford Brookes and University of Oxford) was simply not enough for a reasonable standard of living. Over half my salary as a senior lecturer went up to rent, of a small 75m2 place in the outskirts of Oxford. We had no car, and lived simply, and that was all before the price of living went up after Brexit and with the general inflation in the wake of Covid. I am glad I left in 2019. The Netherlands, an assistant prof salary is much more comfortable (for me it was about 1/3 of rent, and the area around Amsterdam is not a cheap area to live in, no idea how it is now though!) In Belgium I was only ever a postdoc but my impression is the starting salary of an assistant prof there is OK and decent to live on, and there's a clear path of career progression as well as reasonable security. There's been continuous strikes by UK by lecturers, I hope it goes well for them and better terms can be negotiated. In my time in the UK I remember that the unions told us how our salary had basically decreased a lot in real terms since the financial crash of 2008, so UK lecturers feeling the pinch is a fairly recent phenomenon, hopefully still reversible.

I have to confess that I've always wanted to live in the UK, but that the salaries there have deterred me from applying (I've also heard that administrative demands for academics there are very, but that's another issue). I wasn't aware of some of the in-work benefits, including the child benefit, but having just looked it up, it seems pretty meagre. Are there other important benefits to be aware of? If so, what are they? Obviously, state-sponsored health care is a big benefit, but even so, does it compensate for the lower salaries? 

It would be great to hear from other readers, particularly readers like Helen who can compare the quality of work and life for academics in the UK to work in academia in other countries. Also, what are financial stresses like in other countries? Obviously, in the US there are other stressors: the high cost of health insurance, the fact that it's not covered for part-time/adjunct faculty, and so on (which, obviously, are serious issues).

Anyone care to weigh in? 

Working outside of philosophy while ABD?

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

Do you know of cases where people take other jobs (non-TA jobs) outside of the university while finishing a dissertation? I can make more outside of the academy in fewer hours than if I were TAing because of a particular skill set I have, and I want to be able to live with my partner who is in another state. I've only heard about this in other fields, but not philosophy. For context, I feel 50/50 about going into academia or into industry. Have people seen successful or unsuccessful examples of this in philosophy?

Good questions! I'm curious to hear from readers on this. I guess I'd worry a bit about being distracted too much from finishing the dissertation. But then again, the OP says they could make a significant amount of money working fewer hours than they do now. Given that they are only 50/50 on going into academia and working outside of their university would enable them to live with their partner, the positives might well outweigh the risks.

But these are just a few of my quick reactions. It would be great to hear from readers who have tried this! Were you able to work outside of academia while finishing up your dissertation? How did it go?

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?

Preparation tips for soon-to-be (birthing) parents in academia?

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

I'm starting a permanent teaching position this Fall (3/3 load, small classes of 20-30 students, no research obligations - though it seems most people in this position do publish a little), and will have the equivalent of a "tenure review" after 3 years. My spouse and I also hope to grow our family in this window and I'm the birthing parent. (FWIW: after a year of employment I'll be eligible for a semester of parental leave, and the department I am joining has a reputation for being a supportive and caring environment.)

Do folks have advice for how to best prepare for this? Ways to build excellent courses that are dynamic and engaging (i.e. will make material for an impressive teaching portfolio and get stellar reviews from both students and supervisors), but that also can adjust for pregnancy-related interruptions and the collateral damage of postpartum sleep deprivation + hormones? I'm also open to advice about more general "life stuff" like time/household management, making the transition from 1 to 2 kids, etc. (FWIW: My spouse has a hybrid work schedule, we have a toddler who is in full-time daycare, a cleaning service 2x/month, and Instacart. We have no family nearby.)

My first pregnancy was physically very rough, but I was not teaching at the time. I also had postpartum "baby brain" for about a year - honestly, this is the thing that worries me the most. I LOVE teaching and am SO excited to start the new position, and a I want to do a stellar job. At the same time, I am not going to put my personal life on hold for my career. But (insofar as it's possible!) I want to be smart about this.

There have been a few good advice threads on pregnancy + parenting on this forum before, which I want to collect here for those searching for this kind of insight in the future:

https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2020/03/tips-for-professors-with-children.html

https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/02/grad-school-survival-guide-part-4-having-children-in-graduate-school-as-a-woman.html?cid=6a014e89cbe0fd970d01b8d2688f7c970c#comment-6a014e89cbe0fd970d01b8d2688f7c970c

https://philosopherscocoon.typepad.com/blog/2017/01/grad-school-survival-guide-part-3-having-children-in-grad-school.html?cid=6a014e89cbe0fd970d01bb096eb022970d#comment-6a014e89cbe0fd970d01bb096eb022970d

Thanks to Marcus (as always!) for cultivating the supportive environment found here on the Cocoon. It has helped me think through a lot of my choices and strategies over the years, and has made me feel less alone.

Thanks so much to this for the very kind words! Do any readers have any tips for how expectant parents--particularly birthing parents like the OP who may be starting a permanent full-time job--can best prepare, personally and professionally, for this exciting next step in their lives?

Doubts about continuing on in academia: to carry on, or not?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, Questioning Their Career asks:

I'm close to finishing my PhD - I could be done this coming year if I so choose - and I'm not sure what to do next. I'm just not sure that I really like this work anymore. In the last month or so, I have absolutely dreaded the very thought of writing, and even just talking about philosophy, whether with professor, friends, or students, feels painful at times. I know this is a common reaction to finishing up a dissertation - none of my friends have liked their work by the end of it - and so this could just be the result of burnout. I also know that I now am closer to a professional philosopher than I've ever been, though. I have a much clearer sense of what the job is now than I ever did in the past. I don't think I should just dismiss my current antipathy because it might go away in the future.

I also currently have an opportunity to pursue a very different kind of work that I have good reasons to think I could find deeply meaningful and enjoyable, and my life on that path would be much easier if I started the pursuit sooner rather than later. I plan to finish my dissertation regardless, but my plans for going on the job market and all that would entail would seriously conflict with my ability to start on this alternate path.

This has all left me feeling deeply conflicted. I've poured so much of myself into pursuing this degree and a position in this profession. Being an academic feels like a deep part of me. I've also, historically, loved it. It's sometimes been bad just like any job, but that's never made me doubt that I should pursue it. It feels like I could be throwing something away needlessly because of a temporary setback.

I'm hoping for some insight into what sorts of factors have lead folks either to decide to carry on with academia despite some significant doubts or to leave the profession. I think hearing about others' experiences would help me to better understand whether what I'm experiencing now is a case of mere burnout or something more serious. Thank you all so much for any insight you might have!

I'm sorry to hear that the OP is going though this, and I empathize. It is a great and very understandable query, and I'm curious to hear from readers.

Tips for thriving in an isolated job?

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

I am a few years into my TT gig, and I have real mixed feelings. It is a comfortable gig, with a lowish teaching load, and in a culturally vibrant place, and the pay is healthy. But I am isolated, and campus life is a lot of tacit antipathy to philosophy. I think I'll get tenure, but it will be begrudging. How do I reframe things to be happy here? Who are some people who have thrived despite being basically alone on their campus?

Excellent questions. I work in a really small department myself, and while my university and city are both good places and thriving, I too have often felt pretty isolated during the course of my career (I work more or less on my lonesome). I don't know how isolated the OP's campus is, but one suggestion would be to see if there are philosophers at nearby universities that one can connect with. Another suggestion, I guess, might be to lean into the cultural aspects of the surrounding area--to try to enjoy life more, rather than focus so much on work (as I think many of us are wont to do).

But these are just a few off-the-cuff thoughts. Do any readers who have grappled with similar things have any helpful tips?

Commuting a distance to work?

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

I was lucky to secure a tenured position a few years ago. I really like the department, and feel privileged to have a permanent position, but am unhappy about the place and really miss the place I used to live. I’ve tried to come to terms with the new place for two years, but it’s clear to me that this is not gonna happen.

I’m considering approaching the head of dept and ask whether commuting would be okay, but worry that this might backfire. My department does not look favorably at commuting, since they worry that faculty will only show up for their teaching and not contribute to the departmental life. I also don’t have a partner, children or any other "formal" reason that would effectively explain my commute to colleges. I just feel miserable. It’s obviously a personal concern, so I am not sure how (or whether) to ask the head of dept about this.

It's not exactly clear how far the OP is thinking of commuting (it might be helpful to know!), but I take it that it would be a serious distance such that they might be poorly positioned to take part in many departmental or university functions above and beyond teaching. Bearing this in mind, another reader submitted the following reply:

First, you can do what you want, within the law. So commute if that is what you want and need. The idea that you would check this with your department is crazy. Second, I would resent having a colleague commuting. I worked in a small department where two colleagues commuted, and I was expected to do all sorts of inconvenient service work because I lived locally. There was no recognition of this, and no compensation. So expect your colleagues to resent you.

For the most part, I think this response is probably right--though I suppose that if one were to (say) move to a different state and fly in once a week just to teach, then (potential legal issues aside) it might be a bad idea not to tell anybody (as hiding something like this might be reasonably considered disrespectful by others).

What does everyone else think? It would be good to hear, in particular, from other people who have commuted to work or had faculty in their department do so. How did it go? Did it work out okay, or give rise to serious problems?

Taking breaks from writing & research?

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

Does anyone have advice for what an early scholar might do while taking a break from writing? I'm in a post-doc and feel a bit(lot) burnt out on writing, having done it at a blistering pace for so, so many years. I'm starting some time "off" from this particular aspect of my career and hoping to spend more time reading, exploring philosophy, and perhaps other things.

Has anyone taken a similar sort of break from writing? How was it? Do people have tips as to how to stay engaged with philosophy even if not through new research projects?

This is a great query, and I'm curious to hear how readers respond. I myself go through peaks when I feel inspired to do write and do research and troughs where I feel worn out and uninspired (often when, like the OP, I've worked at a blistering pace for a while). And I've found it to be helpful to listen to what my body and mind are telling me, as it were. In fact, I'm taking one of these breaks right now, as I've been working really hard the past several months and feel like I need some time to recoup.

When I'm feeling worn out, I'll take a break and focus on other things for a while--either other aspects of work (e.g. trying to teach a particular course really well), and/or hobbies (such as writing and recording music, listening to podcasts, or reading historical nonfiction). Oddly, I've found that many of these hobbies can be great (and unexpected) sources of inspiration for new philosophical projects--so, it's sort of like "doing research without doing research." To be clear, I don't pursue hobbies looking to mine them for philosophical ideas. I often just find that new ideas occur to me out of the blue when doing other things for pleasure.

Unhappy after tenure?

In our newest "how can we help you?", an anonymous professor writes:

I have tenure but I am not happy where I live.

I won the academic lottery after years on contingent contracts, and then I finally got on the TT and received tenure, yay!! I love my job--I have lovely students and great colleagues (don't take a good work environment for granted). But, I don't like where I live. There are limited options for my spouse. I don't like how car-dependent the place is. I do not like the climate, which is getting more and more extreme due to global warming.

Before the pandemic I felt that my love of the job outweighs the not loving the location. But during the acute phase of the pandemic I got a huge bout of homesickness for my home town. Also, I got worried being so far away from my parents who aren't getting any younger. It would not take many hours and I need to take a long flight to reach them.

The pandemic worsened my sense of homesickness and increased my desire for more geographic control. It's like I'm realizing and now only fully coming to terms with how much I (and my partner) have sacrificed for my academic career.

How do you deal with this? Moving to a place that would fit my criteria of e.g., physical proximity to my parents is close to impossible given how the job market is structured. But I'm also not quite willing to go alt-ac. So, maybe what I need is a psychological shift? Any perspective on this welcome, of people who learned to love where they lived or tips to feel more at home.

This is a wonderful query, and I'm hoping we may be able to help the OP work through their situation by hearing from others. Are you (or were you) unhappy after tenure? It might be good to hear from readers on this, as I suspect that many early-career people conceive of a TT or tenured job as the "promised land"--but, as the OP notes, it's not always that simple. One can be lucky and privileged to get a job like this, and yet still be (reasonably) unhappy for a variety of reasons, such as the job or institution "not being all it's cracked up to be" or (as in the OP's case) due to location. Second, if you are (or were) unhappy, how have you dealt with it? Did you make a career change of some sort, or instead try to make a psychological shift? Either way, how did it work out? Finally, based on your experience, do you have any specific tips or advice for the OP?

Grappling with too many ideas?

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

How to deal with the flood of philosophical ideas that come to one’s mind? I am a productive scholar (at my career stage). But the reason why I am productive is that I often get philosophical ideas that really disturb me until I get them published or at least written on paper. Whenever I got a new idea, I get genuinely excited about the idea, and I have trouble sleeping at night since the ideas keep me awake until I have written drafts on them. I am also afraid that someone else will publish my ideas before me – which is not good since very often I have new ideas. I do not want to work during office hours (only), the best thing about being a philosopher is that I can work whenever I got the inspiration. But what should I do when I have too many ideas in my head (or new ideas come too often) so that I struggle to do anything else besides writing and thinking?

These are great questions, and I'm curious to hear answers from readers. This is something that I grapple with a lot. I constantly jot down new paper ideas in the note function in my iPhone, and create new folders for them on my computer (just to remind myself of what I might work on). However, I don't actually get to writing papers on most of the ideas, and can take a while to get to the ones I do simply because there are so many of them. How do I decide what to work on? Basically, I try to rank paper ideas in my head in terms of philosophical importance, urgency (viz. how timely the idea is and how important it may be to get it published soon), and finally, confidence in my ability to get the paper done fairly quickly (I don't like to spin my wheels on papers that I'm not clear on how to complete). Finally, I take special care to ensure that I have a fair work-life balance, so that I don't spend all of my time writing and thinking (I work M-F from roughly 9am-5pm, never in the evenings, and never on the weekends). I'm not sure how helpful this will be to the OP, but hope they find it at least somewhat helpful.

What do you all think and do? If you have a flood of philosophical ideas, how do you decide what to work on? How do you deal with the concern that someone else will publish ideas before you? Finally, how do you handle the above while achieving sufficient "work life balance", so that you have time to do things other than writing and thinking?

How do you work during summer?

It's been a while since I've asked the Cocoon a question of my own, but I've been struggling a bit with what my summer work schedule and routine should look like, so here goes: how do you work during summer breaks from teaching? For example, how many hours would you say that you spend on average per day working? How does your typical summer work day break down (in terms of reading, writing, etc.)? How many days per week do you work? And how much time do you take off during summer "for vacation" (or rest and relaxation)? In addition to hearing your answers, it might be great to hear what stage of your career you are in and what kind of institution you are at!

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?

Universities and remote work post-COVID?

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

As things return to 'normal' how are departments and universities dealing with in-person requirements for service work?

I remember that during the beginning of all this, people were hailing a new era of flexibility in workplace norms as a kind of silver lining of the pandemic. How are departments navigating this? I've been a bit disappointed to find that my own university is doubling down on in-person requirements, even as life (with kids, especially) remains difficult. In my part of the country, schools and daycares have stringent sick policies, other inflexible rules about pick-up and drop-off, it is difficult to find care, and so on. Yet even though it would be easy to conduct remote work or have a hybrid meeting, it's been disallowed by my department and university except in very narrow circumstances.

So I'm wondering how other universities/departments are navigating in-person vs. remote work. I'm not sure if I'm being unreasonable by asking for more family-friendly policies. I'm also not sure how to approach those at my university about this.

These are excellent questions, and I'm really curious to hear people's answers. My sense, at least in my neck of the woods, are that universities may be requiring more in-person work again now, but that they may be more flexible than pre-COVID. For example, especially in departments, there seems to me a greater willingness to hold meetings via Zoom now, and to allow people to attend in-person meetings remotely if need be--and I even know some universities that are continuing to permit online or hybrid teaching methods more than before. But, beyond this, and whether these things will continue moving forward, I'm really not sure. What is everyone else's experience so far?

Weighing priorities (relationships, job types, etc.) when choosing between jobs

In our February "how can we help you?" thread, an anonymous reader writes:

Let's say you currently have a fairly stable NTT position at a reputable institution. Doesn't pay amazing but you get to teach a wide variety of classes in a traditional in-person format and there is no research expectation; however being in this position requires you to be in a long distance relationship.

Let's also say you've been offered a TT position at a community college but there is very little traditional in person teaching but you might be able to stop being in a long distance relationship and move somewhere together. Pays better, etc but you have serious concerns about all the non-traditional teaching.

Thoughts?

This is an excellent question. Another reader submitted the following reply:

That is a major life choice, and only you can do it, because only you have to live with your choice. There are some things in life that are really important, in part, because they play such a big role in our lives for a loooooooong time: a relationship, and a job!

Of course this is true: everyone must determine their own values and priorities in making decisions like these. But, for all that, the OP seems to be looking for other people's insights. So, what do you all think? I'll probably share some of my own thoughts in the comments section, but I'm curious to hear other people's responses. I expect that some of our readers may have had similar decisions to make, and may have thoughts based on first-hand experience of what to prioritize (and not prioritize). Anyone have any tips, experiences, or other insights to share?

Handling pregnancy in a postdoc?

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

I have a one-year postdoc with teaching responsibilities both semesters. I recently learned that I'm pregnant and will be due to give birth about a month before the spring semester ends. I'm super excited! But I don't know exactly how to approach the department/university about this. I don't have a TT and so I can't propose to take the entire semester as "research leave" or something. It's not a huge department and I would find it unfair to ask someone to cover my classes for several weeks. This is complicated by the fact that my spouse lives in a different state several hours away (where I live too when not teaching) and I would much prefer to give birth there. I'd really like to teach my class and I'm hoping I can work something out where I can go online after Spring Break and lecture virtually/have a TA lead in-person discussion sections while I'm gone. But I'm not sure if that's bureaucratically infeasible or just a bad idea. Has anyone been through a similar situation, especially as a postdoc, or been in a department that's had this come up? The university's official policy on maternity leave basically seems to be "work it out with your department," so that's not too much of a help. Thanks so much!!

A great and important question (and a big congrats on the postdoc and soon-to-be new member of your family!). Neither my spouse nor I (obviously) have been a similar position, so unfortunately I'm not the best person to ask here (though I have served as a department chair for several years). That being said, given that the university's policy seems to be "work it out with your department", I guess I'd be inclined to suggest the OP speak to her chair, letting them know just what they wrote above: that they are entirely willing to teach their courses, but that they'd like to teach remotely around and after their due date. See what the chair says. Hopefully, the chair is a good chair, and a reasonable, sympathetic, and accommodating person.

But again, I'm probably not the most well-situated person to give advice here. What do you all think? It would be great to hear from postdocs and faculty who have been in similar situations, as well as from department chairs and others who have been in these situations on the other side of things.

Doing a postdoc (partially) from afar?

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

I am about to start a prestigious postdoc in a country different from where I currently live and work. I am very excited and want to work on the project. However, I have a spouse, (who has a good job) and our lovely house in a different country than my postdoc. Commuting between the countries is possible (and the salary is not a problem for doing so), but it is not feasible to come to my native country every weekend. How to make a case for working partly from my native country? The job is 90-95 % research which I could do anywhere (I am more productive at the home office than at the university). The PI of the project likes me and my work very much, so I think (s)he would be compliant. For the last 18 months or so, I have worked from my native country (because of COVID) while officially employed by the university in another country - without major problems. Should I approach the PI or the HR before starting, or should I talk to both? Or should I just start the job, go and see how much people spend their time at the office and if no-one is there on Fridays, for instance, can I just use Fridays for travelling my native country without letting anyone know (working on train/plane etc). Could I write on Saturday and Sunday to take two days off the next week? How much do philosophers usually spend their time at the office anyway, or are scholars responsible for letting others know where they are at a given time (workshops, conferences etc)? I am not asking to work fully from another country and I am willing to participate in seminars at the campus, but it just feels stupid to sit at the office writing and thinking when I could do it at home. If I don't have to be at the office every day then why cannot I work from another country (there might be issues with taxation and social securities, pensions etc after spending significant time in another country though)? Have any of you managed to get a permit to work from another country?

As someone with an academic spouse, I very much empathize with Roy. Situations like these can be profoundly difficult, presenting one with a bunch of seemingly suboptimal (and potentially risky) options. Alas, I'm not at all sure what to recommend. One reader submitted the following reply:

It would be a mistake to ask to work from home, unless there are health-related reasons to do so. At least where I am from, post docs are expected to contribute to the culture of the department/centre. You are to be involved in the everyday business of the department, entertaining speakers, and attending talks, etc. Your research job is not just about producing papers.

However, Prof. L submitted a more sympathetic take:

Roy—talk to your PI and get clear on her expectations regarding physical presence. I would not take a wait and see approach or anything like that. Just tell her your situation, make clear you are committed to the project etc. And then also find out the requirements of your visa. No one here can advise you about that, since residency requirements vary by country/visa types. I know in the US, we impose hefty penalties on overseas employment, making employing a person whose citizenship is elsewhere to work “from home” prohibitively expensive. At least, that’s my understanding. But you should ask real-life people who actually know about this stuff, and how it might apply to your particular situation.

All good points. Do any readers have any helpful experiences or tips to share here? It might be good to hear not only from postdocs, but also from PIs who might be in a position to say something about all of this from the host/hiring department side of things.

Moving/relocation tips for academics?

On Twitter, Alex Bryant (PhD student, McMaster) writes:

Early career academics: Presumably you have developed a kind of expertise related to moving (including problems common to grad students/academics, like moving books). What have you learned, what do you suggest, and what mistakes could you help others avoid?

Related: One way long-tenured senior people might be out of touch with the state of the profession is just how much of an impact frequent moves has on people who have to move from contract to contract, postdoc to postdoc, rather than picking up lifelong job out of school.

This is a good question that we've never discussed before, as in my experience moving between jobs can indeed have a serious impact on an academic's ability to get work done. The couple of times that I moved (first to UBC, then to Tampa), the summer that I moved was mostly a 'wash' where I wasn't able to get much research done. My experience was that there are just so many things to figure out and daily stressors having to do with it that it can be hard to focus.

Anyway, do any readers have any tips? Also, it might be worth hearing from readers on whether (and how), in their experience, senior academics may be out of touch here.

Tips for tenure-track parents?

In our new thread soliciting questions on tips for faculty on the tenure-track, the OP asks whether readers have any advice for tenure-track faculty who are parents, particularly single parents. I'm not a parent, so I don't have any tips to share. But as a tenured faculty member who is considering having children, I wonder a lot about how I would balance everything and be a good parent and spouse given my workload. And, of course, I expect that the particular stresses and workload of a TT job (e.g. 'publish or perish', etc.) can pose real challenges for parents, particularly (but not only) single parents.

So, I think it would be great to hear from readers with some experience here. If you do have experience as a faculty member who is also a parent--particularly (but not only) if you had children while on the tenure-track--please feel free to share any tips or experiences that you think other readers might find helpful!

Grappling with tenure-track blues?

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

This might not seem like a philosophy question. But I am a philosopher that needs help, and philosophers might understand my situation better than others.

So the short story: I am broken hearted for the very first time. I have a TT position, but I can't focus on anything. It has been some time, and it has not gotten better.

Any advice? How do you move on from this and care about philosophy again? To make matters much worse, I have no living family, and philosophy has my friends both very busy and randomly placed across the country - or the world even.

Although I have put 150% into this my work the last 10 years, and have secured what many of you dream of, it all seems so unimportant - professional philosophy is not anything like what I hoped. Most of it seems a game. This is where I feel the need to qualify things with, "Oh, but I have a nice career and published a lot in such and such fancy places, blah blah," as philosophers always seem to do. It makes me sad and tired -the never-ending game. I just want my person back. But it seems I can't have that. Besides therapy, what can I do?

To all of you suffering on the market but sleeping next to someone who loves you - trust me, you are the lucky one. Please don't forget it.

I empathize, and think this is a great query. As someone who spent a long time on the job market (8 years, 7 of which were post-PhD), I was one of those who thought that getting a TT would 'make everything better.' But, as with the OP, it didn't--well, at least not very quickly (things have gotten better over time). In brief, I think it is entirely natural to struggle with what we might call the tenure-track blues (see e.g. here and here). As the OP notes, academia in general can be very isolating: even if you get a TT job, you generally have to move away from friends and family to a new area where you know no one. Worse, you have to work your tail off, both in order to feel like you deserve the job you got but also (obviously) in order to get tenure. This too can be an isolating grind, as it can leave you without much time to enjoy life, make new friends, and so on. And of course you can feel, as the OP does, that academia is just a game that doesn't really much matter.

I'm curious what readers think. Have you grappled with the TT blues? If so, do you have any tips for the OP? Here are a few suggestions based upon my experience...

Cultivating healthy romantic/social relationships in grad school and beyond?

In a Twitter thread today, an early-career philosopher, Alex Bryant, asks:

[D]o you know off hand if there are any especially good discussions of developing and maintaining healthy romantic/social relationships during graduate school and beyond? The two-body problem is related, but I've been trying to find advice about the rest!

This is a really great and important question. There have been many discussions on the Cocoon and elsewhere about 2-body problems (i.e. getting academic jobs in the same area as a romantic partner). However, I haven't seen too much discussion on the philosophy blogosphere about the more general issue the OP asks about here: simply developing and maintaining healthy romantic or social relationships while in academia. Do any readers have experiences or tips you want to share? Feel free to include discussions of long-term relationships and 2-body issues, as they are common and I suspect many readers would benefit from the discussion.

Mid-career moves?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, a reader ('feeling stuck') writes:

I have a question about mid-career growth and/or moves. I'm up for tenure soon, and all signs suggest I will be successful. I should feel relieved and grateful, but I don't see much room for growth at my very, very small institution and feel a bit stuck. My position is primarily teaching and service with very little research support, though I've tried to establish a robust research trajectory. I love teaching, but I don't want to only teach.

I'm super burnt out, but feel like I need to stay competitive (whatever that means) in case something else comes along. But I'm also in a good location and close to family, and reluctant to give that up. Are these just normal growing pains? Is it okay to feel like I'm settling? Any advice from others at small institutions?

Great questions, and I'm curious to hear what other readers think. My sense is that it can be very difficult to move institutions after tenure, particularly if you're at a small institution--as most senior jobs seem to be at research institutions, hiring people from other research institutions. I do know a few people who moved from small institutions to senior positions at R1s post-tenure, so I do know that it can be done, at least in principle. However, these cases seem few and far between, and in today's market environment it seems to me one probably has to be a 'rock star' of sorts at research to be competitive for these jobs.

In terms of the OP's final questions ('Are these just normal growing pains? Is it okay to feel like I'm settling?'), my sense from talking to people is that it is totally normal, and quite a lot of people feel this way. Most of us were educated in top research departments, and so it can be natural (even for those of us who value and enjoy teaching) to wish that we had more time and resources for research. Still, as natural as these wishes may be, I guess my thoughts here are three-fold: (1) One shouldn't look a gift-horse in the mouth as it were. Those of us who have full-time tenured (!) jobs are in general very lucky to have them, and it is entirely possible to be a good and productive researcher even with a high teaching load; (2) If you're that burnt out (as the OP says), then one of the great things about tenure is that it provides a lot more freedom to decide where to invest one's energies (one can, for example, back off from particularly intensive teaching practices to focus more on research); and (3) Although there's nothing wrong with 'settling', it's entirely up to you whether you want to keep pushing (as it were) to publish in top places in pursuit of a potential move to another institution (again, I've known people who did it!).

But these are just my thoughts. What are yours?

Extrinsic goals once securing a job?

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

I managed, against the odds, to achieve the holy grail of a TT position at an R1 institution. Because I was a postdoc for a bunch of years and a lot of my previous work will count towards tenure, I am not particularly worried about publishing enough to get tenure.

I find myself in the curious position of trying to reset my goals. I enjoy research, so I don’t have a problem to motivate myself intrinsically. However, I wonder what my extrinsic motivations can/should be. I am happy to stay where I am, I don’t particularly care about fame in the profession, and salary is what it is. I guess I am wondering what goals people in the tenure track or those already tenured set for themselves.

Interesting query! A couple of readers submitted these follow-up comments:

[I]f I were you, I'd take a break and try to enjoy life! What aspects of a well-rounded life did you give up on or neglect in order to get where you are? What sorts of things were you interested in before you started dedicating yourself to philosophy? Now is a good time to reconnect with other goals you have for yourself outside of your career. - Other prof

You are a lucky person. My sense, as some later in their career, is (i) set some great goals that you think, wow I would love to do that (write a book), etc. and (ii) keep a look out for opportunities that you never imagined arising. Many of my most pleasurable experiences in the profession came from jumping at an opportunity when it arose. (iii) You can always try to support your spouse or family in reaching their goals (if they exist)... (and assuming they supported you). - late

I think these are great answers, as they very much mirror my own experiences. Although I have stayed very active with research, teaching, etc., since getting a TT job and tenure, the most wonderful thing about finally getting to this place has been the ability to finally reconnect fully with things that I value and deeply enrich my life: writing and recording music, cultivating better friendships, spending more quality time with family, and doing other enjoyable things (skiing, etc.). During my years on the market and pre-tenure, I was so stressed out all of the time that I just didn't have the mental energy to either do or enjoy these things properly. I was always preoccupied, and sort of turned into a ghost of a person. Perhaps the greatest blessing of finally getting a full time job and tenure has been the psychological well-being to be able to answer the OP's question on my own terms: through the time and career stability to finally reflect and pursue what I care about (beyond getting and keeping a job).

But anyway, these are just my answers to the OP's query. What are yours?

Teaching extra courses for financial reasons?

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

I am a junior faculty member. Faculty salaries at my university are lower than the national average, but I am offered opportunities to teach extra courses, especially during the breaks. That's a big help for me financially (I have a family to support) but it's also a serious time commitment. I have a 4/4 load and can rarely have research done during the semesters.

I am curious how people decide whether to teach extra courses for financial reasons. I know this depends on each person's particular situation. And in theory, one should teach extra courses only if it would not significantly affect one's research. But I still feel hard to decide in practice. I am curious what others do and why you do it. Thanks!

This is a great query, and I am very curious to hear how people respond. Although I understand some people have families and may need extra money in the short term, in general--that is, extreme financial need aside--I'm inclined to think that it is probably better for junior faculty in permanent positions not to teach extra courses during breaks. In any case, even though I needed the money earlier in my career, I decided very early on to not teach additional courses. Let me briefly explain why.

12 Tips for Success in Philosophy Graduate School, guest post by Liz Jackson

Guest post by Liz Jackson, Ryerson University, reprinted from her personal website. 

I graduated from Notre Dame in 5 years. I finished my dissertation in my 4th year, and had 4/5 dissertation chapters published by the time I defended (Nov. of my 5th year). My 5th year, my first year on the market, I got both a research post doc and a tenure track job (a 2-2 load with an MA program). Here’s some tips for how I did it.

1. Write regularly, on a schedule that works for you.

• Some people advise to “write every day” or even “write two hours / 500 words every day.” However, better advice is to write *regularly*. On days when writing is going well, write as much as you can. On days when it is going poorly, switch over to reading, email, class prep, or some other task. Or just take the day off (see #10).
• Note that writing regularly may look different in various stages of your life. Sometimes, you might write 9-11am every day. Sometimes, you might write for 1 or 2 bigger blocks every week. Sometimes, if you find yourself super motivated or with a lot of free time, you might write a whole paper in a short period of time. Be flexible based on the season of life you’re in. But also realize that getting into the habit of writing regularly will do wonders for your productivity.

2. Fight the urge to procrastinate.

• Grad school comes with a lot of freedom. No one requires you to work 9-5, you’re normally not under regular, tight deadlines, and you can mostly set your own schedule. Because of this, it is easy to put things off to the last minute. I highly, highly recommend resisting this urge to procrastinate. (I think this is the #1 reason I was successful in grad school). My first semester of grad school (before I took this lesson to heart) I saved all my seminar papers to the last few weeks of the semester, and then I was forced to write 3-4 papers in less than a month. Don’t do this to yourself. Instead, set regular, small, measurable goals. Now, I normally set weekly goals, then break those into smaller daily goals, such as “read article X” or “polish section 2 of paper Y” or “add a paragraph responding to objection Z.”
• Utilize accountability groups and writing groups. These can help a lot with resisting procrastination, force you to wake up at a decent hour, and are also great for advice and social support.
• Be a chipper, not a binger. Meet your goals in small steps that you chip away at regularly, rather than doing an entire project all at once, especially right before a deadline. A caveat: I personally think it’s fine to, e.g. spend an entire day writing then not write the rest of the week, as long as you are not doing this right before a deadline. If you like to work in big chunks, no problem, but don’t save everything until right before it is due.

3. Utilize productivity tools.

• Pomotodo and Todoist (both free apps) have been life changing for me. Pomotodo breaks up your work in 25 min chunks, and then you get a 5 min break to check texts/social media/email. (I also recommend using an app that blocks social media/other tempting websites if you struggle with this). Todoist helps you keep track of your to-do list in “project” categories, and comes with a handy calendar. So, if a cool conference comes up on Phil events but it isn’t due for 6 months, add it to your Todoist app and you’ll see the CFP about a week before. It’s also a great way to set daily goals. 
• There are a lot of other tools out there as well; experiment and find ones that work foryou, even if it’s a physical calendar/planner.

Setting Boundaries: Personal & Professional (Guest post by MAP)

The following is a guest post by Elise Woodard (Michigan), Carolina Flores (Rutgers), Milana Kostic (UCSD), Angela Sun (Michigan), and Jingyi Wu (UC Irvine), graduate students who comprise the organizing team of Minorities and Philosophy (MAP). 

‘Boundaries’ has become a buzzword in academia. We often hear about the importance of setting boundaries and cultivating work-life balance, yet many of us still struggle to set boundaries effectively and confidently. Moreover, the language of boundaries is often not subject to explicit scrutiny, yet like other buzzwords such as ‘self-care,’ it is liable to be co-opted or misunderstood. 

At our Central APA session, Minorities and Philosophy (MAP) attempted to open up the conversation about how to set boundaries and how to talk about them. Here we share some tips on how to set, communicate, and think about boundaries in a salutary and non-individualistic way.

Tips for academics with children?

In our newest "how can we help you?" thread, 'Don't regret my kids but this is hard' writes:

I'm a mom of young kids on the TT who is seriously struggling, particularly with producing research that is up to par while coping with time, energy, mental fitness, sleep, health, and money issues caused by pregnancy, childbirth, and parenting. Any and all advice is welcome—financial, related to time management, daycare, or otherwise. Moms—or dads—how did you make it through? Is this possible?

These are really important questions for obvious reasons, so I hope readers out there with children chime in with their perspective and/or tips! Unfortunately, I must confess that I cannot add much here. Me and my spouse (who is also an academic) have put off having children for years for these very reasons. Given our workloads, neither of us can quite fathom how we could do everything we need to do with children. At the same time, I have colleagues with children who have pulled it off somehow, so I have some grounds for believing it's possible (albeit very difficult, or so I've heard). So, then, anyone else out there have any insight that might help "Don't regret" and other academics struggling with similar issues?

Reader query on pregnancy and having children while on the tenure track

An anonymous reader writes: 

“I am currently in a tenure-track job that I love so far, and my partner and I are hoping to have kids (at least one, but maybe two). When I was a job candidate, I heard horror stories about departments not wanting to hire women candidates in case they might get pregnant. Now, I’m worried that if I get pregnant and go on leave before tenure, that could hurt me in some way. Since my biological clock is running out before my tenure clock, I was hoping I might be in good enough shape to go up for tenure early and have kids after – but that plan puts a ton of stress on me to publish a lot of good work and fast. (And the prospect is taking a toll on my mental health.) Does anyone have advice for what people who want to have kids should do in this sort of situation? If we do have kids before tenure, are two full years of teaching sufficient before going on leave for this reason?”

I imagine many readers face this issue, and would welcome any insights from them. 

Burnout and work-life boundaries

A reader writes in:

I am a big believer in the benefits of treating graduate school as a 9-5 job as a way of preventing burnout. While I have found that I am decent at following the letter of the law, I am not so good at following the spirit of the law. By this I mean that while I don't often actively work on projects in the evening, I cannot turn my mind off. I keep thinking about all the things I need to be working on and it has started interfering with my family life. I am not as present at home with my daughter or wife as I want to be. As a grad student, I know I have it the easiest now as I ever will. Should I be lucky enough to get a TT job, I will only be teaching more classes, with additional service duties, and more publishing pressures. Keeping a work/life balance will be even harder. 

I use some of the tactics that are often suggested for keeping a boundary between work and home. For instance, I keep a notebook with copious to-do lists and make a to-do list for the following day before I go home. I have longer term to-do lists for semester long projects as well. The goal is to externalize my projects and take them off my mind, but I still find myself thinking and worrying about them. I've started meditating and trying to visualize putting my work away until tomorrow, but I haven't been doing that long enough to see if it is effective. Are there any other tactics you or your readers have found helpful at turning your mind off from work for the night?  

I think this is a really important query. In my experience, this is one of the most difficult parts of being an academic. I struggled with it while I was on the job-market (the market was basically on my mind 24/7), I struggled with it once I finally got a TT job (stressing about publishing, teaching, etc.), and I still struggle with it today. Like this reader, I have actually set pretty firm limits on my workday. I only work from 9-5pm on weekdays, and I self-enforce a nearly categorical commitment to never work on weekends (sole exceptions being hard deadlines that necessitate it). I began this practice many years ago while still in a non-TT position, and it worked wonders. However, I've still always struggled with mentally distancing myself from work and not allowing work stresses to compromise my free time (viz. preoccupation when out with friends, etc.).

That being said, allow me to share a few things that I've found helpful and then open up the discussion for other suggestions from readers!

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.

Writing philosophy papers – some reflections, tips and tricks (J. Adam Carter)

By J. Adam Carter (University of Glasgow)

It will be hard to follow up Neil Levy’s post in this series - he’s published over 200 articles! If my own remarks diverge from his, reasonable principles of epistemic deference suggest you should go with what he says rather than me! In what follows, I’ll give an overview of some of the things that work for me. I don’t mean to suggest you should do all, or even any, of these things. But if you run up against a wall and want to try something different, maybe some of this will be of use.

In no particular order, here are some things that, for better or worse, I both (i) actually do and (ii) am under the impression are pretty helpful.

Keep a Paper Ideas List

Ideas for new papers often strike unexpectedly (in fact, this is something I’ve published about, through the lens of virtue epistemology, here). The fact that new ideas can strike unexpectedly is entirely to be expected: the literature on the psychology of creativity tells us that the ‘Aha!’ experience of an insight often hits when we’re not actively working on a problem.[1](For an amazing story about this phenomenon, read about Yitang Zhang and the twin prime conjecture!) Given that insights are hard if not impossible to channel at will, I find it helpful to write down an idea immediately whenever the idea strikes. I keep a list on my phone (currently about 50 ideas jotted there—just a few short sentences for each, capturing the gist), and, when I’m ready to write a new paper, I go to the list and pick one. Of course, some of the ideas on the list will probably never be drafted (and that might be for the best—some are probably crap, or perhaps already covered by someone else!) But it’s helpful to know they’re there anyway.

Making progress on writing when the going gets tough

This instalment of our series on how to write philosophy will be devoted to how to continue when you are stuck on a project. Continuing to write isn't a matter of willpower or perseverance. It's a matter of setting modest expectations, being kind to yourself, and not let the technicalities of philosophy get in the way of your motivations for why you wanted to write what you're writing in the first place. 

There are many situations when you cannot bring yourself to write on a project you'd like to write on. For example, grading, administration and other tasks are sucking away your mental energy. This especially applies when you have a high teaching load; in the UK you can have a significant admin load too. Maybe you devote lots of mental space to politics and feel so much despair there's no headspace left for creative philosophical thought. Or you had to let the project go because of other, more urgent writing projects and it's now dormant on your computer. Before you know it weeks, or even (the horror) months have gone by and you haven't been able to work on that project you were so excited about. You look at your lecture notes or slides, and you wonder, what's the point? 

Here's a way to get back to writing that has worked for me. I'm not putting this out here to say that I never procrastinate or always follow this advice, but in the past it has helped me. This is useful both for newer projects and revise and resubmits, but my focus here will be on projects that are not revise and resubmits (I'm hoping to still commission a guest piece specifically on R and R).

Devote just 20 minutes today to a specific project if it seems formidable

The idea of writing a whole paper or a whole book, or even writing a chapter or part of a chapter can be daunting. Sometimes it helps not to see it as a chapter of a monograph, or a paper, or even in terms of a word count, as in "today I will write at least 500 words". Note that word count aims work for some people, notably Neil Levy, but personally, I prefer to see it just 20 minutes, with no word count expectation.

I resolve, "Today I will spend at least 20 minutes writing at the chapter". You find a quiet time in the day, as early as feasible -- the later it gets, the bigger the risk it never happens -- and you write for those 20 minutes. Do not scatter them across several projects, just put them in the one thing you want to write, today. If you feel more inspiration and want to write more, that's fine, but the thing is to start with low, modest expectations. You can do this even if there is a pile of grading waiting for you. 

The costs of getting a tenure-track job

In a recent post at Daily Nous, L.A. Paul and John Quiggin suggest that when it comes to rationally deliberating about whether to enter a PhD program in philosophy,

The crucial question is whether students can prospectively assess how much they’ll disvalue not getting that tenure track job when the training is done (or, put differently, how much they’ll disvalue the life they’ll find themselves living as an unsuccessful job candidate). 

Paul & Quiggin's post very much resonated with me. I entered graduate school naively optimistic, thinking everything would go according to plan: that I would finish the PhD quickly, get a tenure-track job without a problem, and get tenure. Oh how different the reality was. I struggled to finish my degree, getting stuck at the dissertation stage (like all too many grad students do), and then after I finally finished the degree I grappled with the job-market for seven years. There were so many times--both in grad school and beyond--that I wished I could go back in time and knock some sense into my earlier self, convincing him to stay the heck away from entering a philosophy PhD program.

However, are Paul and Quiggan correct that 'the crucial question' is whether students can prospectively assess how much they'll disvalue not getting a tenure-track job? Some recent experiences have led me to think the crucial question is much more complex--and in some ways much more disturbing--than this. Allow me to explain, by way of two stories.

Taking time away from research

In our most recent "how can we help you?" thread, Ash writes:

I'm not sure if you've covered this already, but.... When do you think a person is "allowed" to take time away from research? My list of papers-in-progress is long and so I more or less always think I should be working on one of them, whenever I have a spare moment (i.e. a moment not devoted to fulfilling other obligations). But right now I have a couple of hours to kill and yet I'm not doing research. I'm tired. I have a young child. I had 4 campus visits this semester and each one was fatiguing to prepare for and to go through. I'm teaching (albeit with a light load). 
How do you decide when to rest and when to push through?

These are great questions, ones I have asked myself from time to time. In fact, I would be very interested to hear answers to them, as I haven't been able to answer them well myself.

Learning how and when to say 'no'

This is a guest post by Kevin Timpe, Jellema Chair of Christian Philosophy at Calvin College 

My writing a post on how to say ‘no’ is roughly like my writing a post on how to drink less coffee. In some ways, I'm the last person that should do it given that I struggle with it so much. But I’m hoping that my own struggles (which, to be honest, continue) might provide some useful guidance or discussion.

I’m a pluralist about the kinds of scholarship we ought to engage in (e.g., for the academic guild, but also for the general public); the kinds of projects that people should engage in (e.g., I think that articles and books and edited collections and book reviews are all worth doing). As I tell my students when we discuss Augustine, most times we have to decide not between obviously good and bad choices, but between different good options. The trick is in figuring out how to weigh those goods properly, especially given their opportunity costs.

In terms of knowing what to do (and thus how to better know how to say know), one needs to know the details of one’s position. What you should say ‘yes’ to and ‘no’ to is shaped, in large part, by what your position expects of you. My department has a very helpful document on what we expect in terms of scholarship for promotion and tenure. It’s 8 pages single spaced, discussing the purpose, scope, audiences, and expectations for scholarship. It includes four different sample scholarly dossiers that might be sufficient for tenure in our department. It’s a very helpful document, and I’m grateful to the colleagues that put it together before I arrived. But my favorite line of the whole document is this gem from page 2: “Policy can never replace phronesis.” This is good advice.

If you don’t have tenure, your focus in scholarly projects should be those projects that are more likely to earn you tenure. (The pragmatic advice in the previous sentence is defeasible. Some things are worth doing despite the opportunity costs even if they won’t help earn you tenure.) Only do a book review, for instance, if you know it’s a book that you know you need to read anyway. And maybe not even then. Obviously, once you have tenure you have a fair bit more freedom to do what you want, and this makes it easier to say no to some things and harder to say no to others.

For me, the biggest trick has been to not let side projects get in the way of my main research focus. I’ve long used some papers, especially co-authored ones, as ‘fall-back’ projects—papers to work on when I have time and energy to write but am stuck on my main projects. I let my co-authors know this. I think having projects like these help increase one’s productivity. But one has to be careful to not have too many side projects—especially when they come with deadlines, such as for an edited volume. For the past three years, for instance, I’ve had an idea for a book I want to write and a press that’s interested in it. But I’ve taken on too many other projects that are keeping me from turning directly to it. Don’t do that. For me, focusing on the main trajectory makes it easier to say no to other things.

Sustaining Activism

This is a guest post by Mark Lance, Professor at the Philosophy Department and Justice and Peace Studies Program at Georgetown University:

Early in my activist career, I had a mentor, Molly Rush. Molly has done an enormous amount in her life, but was most famous as a member of the first “Plowshares” action. She, Dan and Phil Berrigan, and others broke into a missile plant in Pennsylvania and poured their own blood on documents and damaged Mark 12a first-strike nuclear nose-cones. She was sentenced to five years in federal prison. I worked with Molly a couple years after her release and one day was saying how much I admired her courage. She insisted that this was not the right thing to admire. She felt called to perform this action, but insisted that sustained lifetime involvement was much more important and harder than bold, dramatic, performances.

She told me about, and later introduced me to, a woman in her early 60s. Mabel had decided in her 20s that she could devote one evening a week to social justice work. Sometimes she attended a protest; sometimes stuffed envelopes or worked a phone bank; sometimes she organized teach-ins. But she had not missed a week. In 40 years. (20 years later, when I was organizing one of the large mobilizations around the IMF/WB meetings, she emailed me with a long apology, because her doctor had forbidden her from coming to DC on her broken hip for the protests. In introduced her to a bunch of young activists over the phone.)

I’ve had a second career in activism for roughly 35 years. I have seen hundreds of passionate committed young people jump into the work, doing everything, 80 hour work-weeks, nights in jail, enduring verbal and physical abuse, inspiring the hell out of me and others. And then disappearing after a total burnout, never to be heard from again. I’ve also come to know a smaller number of folks who have made movement work an enduring part of their lives.

Avoiding and handling burnout

Last week was my university's first week of classes, and today is the Labor Day, which means we have the day off. Given that I have a MWF teaching schedule, this is a nice stroke of luck, as the sudden change of workload from summer break last week hit me like a ton of bricks. I usually don't have any problems with motivation, but to be honest I was already feeling pretty worn out...just one week into the academic year!

I'll probably adapt to the change in a week or two, as it's always difficult to get back into the swing of things. But it got me thinking about something I was warned about during the tenure and promotion process at my university: burnout. This was something I was warned about several times, both during my 3-year review and the final tenure process--and by both my department and college T&P committees. Each time, the committees noted that I had taken on a lot of optional responsibilities beyond research and teaching, and they warned me to ease off to avoid burnout. Naturally, I didn't listen. I've only taken on more responsibilities this year. But what do you know? I am beginning to wonder whether I may have finally taken on too much...and have wondered what, if anything, I should do to make sure I don't burn out.

Love vs. career

I came across this old Daily Nous thread on what professors would tell grad students but can't (via this newer thread), and was struck by the very first comment by 'Old Prof', which reads:

If I could say anything to a grad student, it would be this: that the only thing that is worth anything in this world is love. (Obv I can’t say this)." 

The comment didn't receive all that many "thumbs up" or much discussion. Nevertheless, it spoke to me in a very personal way. It got me thinking not only about a recent experience I had as a mentor to another early-career philosopher, but also about own personal path and second-hand experience of other people's paths. The more I reflected on these things, the more it occurred to me that there are a lot of really important issues worth discussing here that seem to be rarely discussed publicly: namely, how academics (particularly early-career academics) can often be torn between personal relationships and their career, and indeed face agonizing questions about how to resolve these conflicts. 

What does your summer look like?

Following this exchange about the "culture of productivity" in academic philosophy, I've been thinking a bit about my summer work habits. I feel like I work pretty hard during the summer. Right now, I've been working most of the day Monday through Friday on all kinds of things--writing new papers, revising old ones, doing Chair stuff (in my new position), and so on. I usually begin at about 9am, take a few breaks during the day (to walk the dog, relax a bit, etc.), and wrap things up around 4 or 5pm. I then take each night entirely off (I never work at night, even during the regular school year), and spend my weekends doing all kinds of enjoyable non-work things: writing and recording new music, hanging out with my spouse or friends, etc. 

Balance Series, Part 10: Resisting Digital Distractions

Midway through graduate school, following numerous arbitrary increases in my monthly bill, I abandoned Comcast’s cable and internet service. Afterward, I struck a deal with a friend in a neighboring apartment to use his wireless network and cover half the expense. Six months later, he moved to a different complex, and I was stuck with no cable or internet at home. But my bitter dislike and distrust of Comcast was so strong that I refused to go back to them, even if they were the only provider in my area. So for that summer and the semester that followed, I had no internet access in my apartment.

And this is where the story gets interesting – not because of what happened but because of what didn’t happen. My life did not get any worse.

Balance Series, Part 9: Protecting Your Hobbies

More than 5 years ago, I wrote my first post on the Cocoon. It was the first of several posts addressing issues concerning work-life balance in academia. Given that the last entry in the series was close to 2 years ago, readers might have thought it was over.

Nope. That ideal balance among the things I value still eludes me, and there’s plenty more to write about it. Fortunately, I’ve learned some things over the years that have proven valuable in pursuit of that equilibrium. I want to share one of them today, one that I wish I had better understood when I began graduate school.

Graduate students, if they are aware of their circumstances, will feel significant pressure through their graduate career to be productive and build their CV. Otherwise, their chances of faring well on the job market are slim (except perhaps for those from the highest ranked programs). This creates a strong incentive to get fully immersed in one’s work, and for those who enjoy philosophy, the temptation is even greater. You’re in graduate school, after all: what better thing to do than get sucked wholly into your studies? Isn’t that what you went to graduate school to do in the first place?

The allure of such a lifestyle can be strong, and some of the most influential philosophers get deeply wrapped up in their work. Consider Jeff McMahan’s remarks about the lifestyle of Derek Parfit:

There are many anecdotes about the ways in which Parfit simplified his life to take as little time as possible away from his work. He ate only twice a day, with almost no variation in what he had at each meal. He ate cold food only, mostly fruits and vegetables without any preparation. Even when he could have had freshly ground coffee with only a minute’s additional preparation, he drank instant coffee, often with water straight from the tap. He sometimes kept a book open on the chest-of-drawers so that he could read while putting on his socks… Wanting to preserve his mental and physical capacities, he took an hour every evening during his last decade to get vigorous exercise on a stationary bicycle, but never without reading philosophy (or occasionally physics) while furiously pedalling.

Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy? (Revisited)

By Trevor Hedberg

In a post I wrote four years ago, I noted that certain discussions in our profession seem to resurface every year. One of these discussions is what we should tell undergraduate students who are interested in studying philosophy at the graduate level. Some views on this subject can be found elsewhere on the Cocoon, on the Philosophy Smoker, on Michael Huemer’s personal website, on Bleeding Heart Libertarians, on Goodbye, Academia!, and on plenty of other sites if you’re willing to dig through the search results. Since the job market is so tough and the attrition rate in graduate programs so high, there’s a fairly strong case for discouraging students from pursuing graduate study in our discipline.

Now that I have completed my graduate studies and my first full stint on the job market, I want to share how my views on this subject have changed. The last time I wrote about this issue, I largely echoed the criteria that Eric Schwitzgebel put forward in the opening post of his series on applying to graduate school in philosophy. He writes, “I advise students not to consider graduate school in philosophy unless (1.) they'd be happy teaching philosophy at a low prestige college and are willing to move almost anywhere in the country, and (2.) even if they never finished the degree they would have found the process of studying philosophy at the graduate level intrinsically worthwhile.” I read this advice for the first time in 2009 – when I was considering whether to apply to graduate school myself. I still believe that his second condition is the most important question for prospective graduate students to ask themselves.

Productive in Pedagogy: Some Advice for Instructors, Especially Grad Students

By JG

Recently there was a bit of a dust up over at Daily Nous about a guest post by Jason Brennan on productivity in publishing, with a response by David Enoch. Jason’s advice is actually pretty good, as far as it goes, and its better after he clarifies a few things in the comments on both posts (this is one of the few times I can remember learning something in blog comments, when the debate got more sophisticated as things went on).

However, as Jason notes, his advice is pretty restricted in scope, to grad students who want to publish a lot and are on track for jobs where publishing a lot is the most (only?) important thing. Most of us aren’t in that position, which means his advice is of somewhat limited value (I'll leave to one side the debate about whether we should want to be in that position, though you won't have to do much detective work to see what I think about that).

So, I thought I’d write a companion piece inspired by Jason’s post, about how to be productive in a teaching-centered position.

Battling the feeling of futility in a Brexit/Trump world

Months, what now seems aeons ago, a FB friend asked what we would rather have: a world of Clinton/Brexit, or a world of Trump/Remain. I could not imagine at the time that I would live in that brutal reversal of Leibniz, the world where both Trump and Brexit materialized. 

The lead-up to the referendum on whether the UK should leave the EU was very tense and acrimonious. The Leave campaign harped on about immigration from the EU and what a big problem immigrants were. The Remain campaign was silent about immigration, even though they could have brought up the economic and cultural benefits we immigrants bring to the economy. 

On the morning of 24 June, my husband told me Leave had won by a narrow margin - I dared not check myself. The feeling is hard to describe. I felt I got kicked in the stomach, and like everything I believed about the UK as being open, tolerant, was just a big sham. Working was impossible. I don’t know how I would have been able to grade papers or teach (24 June is outside of our term time). The Leave triumph got followed up by reports of hate crimes. A Polish man was beaten to death in the street for speaking Polish. The feeling of awfulness just stayed with me. 

American friends who came over for dinner said “We immediately thought when hearing the result, a Trump presidency is totally possible. It can happen. It’s scary”. And 5 months onward, they were right.

I know the demographics of the Leave voters and Trump voters are not the same. But the similarities are striking. So, looking at the US now, I see a repeat of what has happened here. I see lots of my American friends feeling angry, lost, unable to work, wanting to emigrate. The day after Trump won the presidential election, I had been working on a paper on prestige bias in philosophy. I think prestige bias in philosophy results in injustice, and shuts out people who are not middle-class and white. But as I was writing this paper, it suddenly felt so futile to write about problems in the profession of philosophy, given the magnitude of the political situation we are now faced with.

Part of this feeling of futility is that we are made to feel futile.  Academics are routinely dismissed as the out of touch elite, who somehow enabled this, or more charitably who were oblivious, living in a bubble. Leave campaigner Gove could not have been clearer: "People in this country have had enough of experts". We're out of touch with angry white voters. We're wrong in our cosmopolitanism and openness to diversity. As May would say, we're citizens of nowhere. So one important reason to battle the sense of futility is to counter the fake revolt led by elites who pretend not to be elites. Academics have a huge role to play in this. Bullshitters don't care about the truth, but we do (even if those truths are philosophical). We need to hold them accountable. 

How, concretely, do we continue to work? I don’t have answers. I am plodding on. I have started a petition to safeguard British education in the light of the Brexit vote (please sign – you don’t need to be a UK or an academic to do so), I organized a Daily Nous special section on Philosophers on Brexit, I wrote to my MP lots of times,  I joined a political party. I’ve written a couple of pieces for a large audience on free movement of people and on why MPs should have a say in the decision of whether the UK triggers the Article 50 procedure for exiting the EU. I am mindful of my students, some of whom are immigrants, others are people of colour, and what we can do to support them. Ultimately, our works and lives are not futile. I am convinced of that.

I am reminded of Sonia’s monologue all at the end of Uncle Vanya.

What can we do? We must live our lives. Yes, we shall live, Uncle Vanya. We shall live through the long procession of days before us, and through the long evenings; we shall patiently bear the trials that fate imposes on us.

So what are Cocoon readers doing when they despair about the political situation about them?

A Dissertation Retrospective

Hey ya'll. Sorry for the radio silence. I've been rushing to finish my dissertation so I can start a new gig in the Fall, and its been all consuming. I'll be designing some new courses from scratch later this summer, at which point I plan to continue the syllabus design series. But in the meantime, since all I'm thinking about lately is my dissertation, I thought I'd share my impressions of the process. So join me after the break for a look back...

Time management skills

Procrastination usually does not encumber my work, but when I had to grad 93 intro to ethics exams and an equal number of final-term essays, it was becoming a problem. I want to do justice to the students, and not read too many essays/exams a day but all I seemed to have energy for except grading was the dark playground of procrastination - checking social media, blogs, the New York Times, Medium, even whole queues of quixotic Quora questions. 

So I started looking for time management techniques, and someone suggested to me the pomodoro technique, which is very good for repetitive tasks such as grading (I am currently trying to see if it works for summer writing as well). In the pomodoro technique, you commit yourself to working for 25 minutes at a given task, allowing yourself a brief break when the minutes are up, and then continue. You can use a cute, tomato-shaped timer (from which the technique gets its name) or you can use an online one. 

This makes me wonder whether philosophers commonly use time management techniques such as Getting Things Done or the very tricky, but effective if well-applied structured procrastination. A recent post on Daily Nous again emphasized the importance of effective time management when our time is essentially unstructured, now summer has arrived, it has lots of useful tips such as creating artificial deadlines, trying to think long-term and do a bit of work every day rather than cram it all in the last weeks.

Things I found that work well include:

• Not working one day a week (even during term time). After interviewing several philosophers on their religious practices, two of the Jewish philosophers I interviewed said they did not work on the Sabbath, which made them more energized and happy. I have since picked Sunday not to work anymore (OK, there are exceptions such as last weekend when my three-year-old suddenly decided to have a 2.5-hour long nap. I managed to write nearly 2000 words that time). In any case, having a resting day has done wonders for work/balance and it has helped me to get things done more quickly, in anticipation of the idle day. This is undoubtedly one of the most ancient time-management techniques.
• Committing to working for given blocks of time without internet or other distraction. I do not need a blocker for websites (which you can use if the temptation is too great), but I do find it helps me to commit to a given time period (25 or 50 minutes)
• Making lists of to-do activities. This is a key part of Getting Things Done. You outsource the keeping all the things you need to do to an external list, thus extended mind wise freeing mental resources. I have three lists. One is all things I need to do in the not so distant future, such as prepping two new courses for the fall. The other is a list of things that are fairly urgent, such as preparing my presentation for the Bristol Minorities in Philosophy Graduate Conference, writing an entry for the SEP, writing an invited book chapter, writing an invited journal article (all by the end of summer). I have one final list which is goals for the day, which consist of two or three tasks or sub-tasks I am confident I can perform. I make sure at least one of these is unpleasant, such as "Write referee report for xxx". Since that's a fairly large task, given you have to be contentious with refereeing, the other task needs to be something small such as "Read article by X on Y". When there is still time and animo left, I do something from the lists more downward. 
• Do not stick fanatically to these things but try to stay close. To use a midwifery metaphor: women are advised to push along with the waves of their contractions, and so similarly, creative work goes best when the muse comes along or one feels enthused about an idea. When an idea hits, just go with it and I feel free to ignore the lists (urgent and less urgent, unless of course there is an absolute hard deadline) and go with that. That's how new ideas are born!

I am curious whether readers use time-management techniques, and am looking forward to read what others are doing!

 

 

Real jobs in philosophy part 9: Neil Sinhababu (National University of Singapore)

This Real Jobs in Philosophy post comes with an opportunity to become my colleague by getting a real tenure-track job like mine! More information is at the end of this post.

Career Path

In my first year at Harvard, my chemistry grades fell from an A first semester to a C second semester because I couldn't stop thinking about philosophy. I was crazy about Nietzsche, so I ended up doing my PhD at the University of Texas at Austin where lots of Nietzsche scholars were. In graduate school it became clear to me that Nietzsche's question of how there could be objective good and evil after the Death of God was basically the question of whether naturalistic moral realism was the right metaethical theory. As I turned my focus to metaethics, I discovered that every area in philosophy borders on metaethics in some way. So I've tried to learn as much as I can about everything. 

After a near-miss in the 2006-2007 academic year, I sent off 99 applications in 2007-2008 as I was finishing my PhD at Texas. When friends outside philosophy asked where I was applying, I told them that I was applying everywhere -- even Singapore! So it was a surprise when I got an email inviting me for a flyout at the National University of Singapore. I didn't know what to expect, but I found an exciting community of philosophers interested in issues from ancient Chinese philosophy to contemporary metaethics. It ended up being my only tenure-track offer, but I would've chosen it over any of the other jobs I interviewed for. I got tenure at the end of 2014, and I'm happy to still be employed there today. 

Current Institution

Singapore is an island city-state slightly smaller than the five boroughs of New York City, with a population between 5 and 6 million. The National University of Singapore is its major public research university, with about 28,000 undergraduates and 10,000 graduate students. If Singapore were North Carolina, we'd be its UNC-Chapel Hill. 

After building successful research units in the sciences and technical fields over the years, the university decided to invest more resources in humanities research. As a result, our department has expanded considerably in size and quality over the last 25 years. Several newly wealthy nations in East Asia are moving in a similar direction, with new philosophy units opening up at a variety of universities in Hong Kong, Macau, Korea, and Taiwan. At present we have about 12 permanent faculty, though this is down from a peak of around 17 due to retirements and other attrition. We have a vibrant MA program and a small but good group of PhD students. 

I have a nice light 2/2 teaching load. With a number of colleagues working beside me in a broad department, I've mostly gotten to teach things I like. Over the years that has ranged from epistemology to political philosophy to Nietzsche, with metaethics at the center. Students in Singapore are generally intelligent, hard-working, and very polite. 

Since our students are very good, there are considerable research supervision duties outside of teaching -- supervising independent study modules, undergraduate theses, and graduate work. Some of our best undergraduates are now at philosophy PhD programs at ANU, Arizona, Brown, and Penn, and one is getting a psychology PhD in the UK. 

It's a very friendly department. I usually knock on all my colleagues' doors at noon before going to lunch so we can eat together, and then we sometimes get coffee afterwards. My colleagues in Asian philosophy are interested in engaging with contemporary Western work, and my colleagues working on contemporary stuff are curious and interested in what philosophers thousands of years ago in Asia were doing. (I've acquired an appreciation of Mohist moral philosophy in ancient China from my colleague Loy Hui Chieh, and I've learned a lot about cool classical Indian arguments in metaphysics and epistemology from Jay Garfield.)

I've managed to use the flexibility and research funding that comes with the job to give an enormous number of talks -- 50 in 8 months during 2011 when I had a semester off of teaching, and 60 in 8 months during 2013 after I taught extra classes in prior semesters to get an extra semester off. Right now I've gotten a post-tenure sabbatical with a summer on each side of it, and I'm pretty sure I can give well over a hundred. It's delightful to have an intense Q&A on one of my favorite ideas every couple days, and then eat and drink with a variety of experts on a range of philosophical issues as they tell me all sorts of cool things they know. If you'd like me to come by your institution in the next year or so, let me know! I'll be going all around the world.

I was mostly shielded from major departmental service obligations prior to tenure, but in the past year I was head of a search committee. This was an exciting but extremely time-consuming process, as we were trying to get extra positions from our administration which might be awarded to people coming out of graduate school with spectacular publication records. As it turned out, we got one of these bonus positions for Bob Beddor, who came out of his PhD program at Rutgers with two papers in Phil Studies, one in Phil Quarterly, and a Phil Review R&R, plus a co-authored Stanford Encyclopedia article! Seeing that, our administration gave him a prestigious Presidents' Assistant Professorship. But we ended up unable to fill a serious teaching need in moral and political philosophy. Now we're advertising specifically in that area. 

So if you're looking for a job teaching moral and political philosophy at one of many up-and-coming universities in Asia, please apply! Our PhilJobs ad is here, and it connects to the AcademicJobsOnline site where you can submit an application:

http://philjobs.org/job/show/5026

Hobbies vs. Distractions

Writing my recent post in our Real Jobs series got me thinking about an issue that I struggled with in grad school, and saw other grad students struggle with as well. And indeed, I suspect a good number of people struggle with similar issues after grad school. The issue is the difference between hobbies and distractions, and how to enjoy the former while avoiding the latter. Let me explain.

At a certain point in graduate school, I got frustrated with philosophy and lost confidence in my philosophical abilities. The two sort of went hand in hand. I was struggling to publish and come up with a viable dissertation topic, and my struggles made me frustrated with professional philosophy being a "rat race" (for publications, esteem, etc.). Like many young people (or so it seems to me) who go into philosophy, I went to grad school wanting to "live the life of the mind"...and, when I was confronted with (what seemed to me) to be the life of professionalization, I sort of rebelled. I was sick of worrying about little else that publishing, a dissertation, etc., and indeed, was frustrated at how narrow my life seemed to have become (viz. all philosophy all the time). So...I took up a "hobby."

I had played in bands all throughout my undergrad years and my two years at Syracuse (before transferring to Arizona), so taking up music again as a hobby seemed to me a perfect way to make my life in grad school more well-rounded. To put it bluntly, I thought I needed a bit of a distraction--something to make life more enjoyable. So, I put together a home studio, recorded a bunch of songs, joined a band, and started playing around town. And it was a whole lot of fun. Unfortunately, it was so much fun that I started spending more time on music and less time grappling effectively with my philosophical struggles. In essence, what started ("harmlessly enough") as an enjoyable hobby...turned into a harmful distraction. 

The vexed n-body problem and the costs of moving

If you are reading this blogpost, chances are you have relocated recently for your academic position. Many of us have relocated several times in pursuit of a permanent (tenure-track or equivalent) academic job. This frequent relocation has large financial costs - with employers providing limited (in the best case scenario) or no funds for relocation, but it also has psychological costs, as this blogpost points out in great detail. 

If your relatives are anything like mine, the frequent relocations spark disbelief or disapprobation among your parents and other family members. For the years I worked at the University of Leuven as a postdoc, my parents could not fathom why they did not offer me a permanent job, or why I would not just ask them for a permanent job “After all, they know what you are worth. Just tell them you will move on otherwise”. Moving on is what I eventually did. I went to the University of Oxford, then to the VU Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and then Oxford again (Oxford Brookes this time) for a permanent post, in a city where I still have friends and a support network. Oxford is an expensive city, but real life friends are valuable.

Our itinerant lifestyle as academics brings with it n-body problems, as the author of this post points out. It brings out the classical two-body problem. Many people I know are in this situation and I am in this situation too. Often the choice is between one of the partners being underemployed or unemployed, or the partners living apart, sometimes even in different continents. When there are children or other dependents involved, the problems amplify. But academic relocation also results in a one-body problem, namely the problem to find a suitable partner, especially for well-educated women, ethnic or other minorities. 

Relatively more women than men have academic partners. In a 2008 study, among STEM academics, “Fully 83 percent of women scientists in academic couples are partnered with another scientist, compared with 54 percent of men scientists.” The two-body problem is a feminist issue. Still, the issue is under explored on fora such as Feminist Philosophers or Being a Woman in Philosophy.

Bad as relocating and the associated n-body problems are, especially for women academics, there are structural incentives that make it worse. For instance, the Marie Curie postdoctoral fellowship, which is the main postdoctoral opportunity offered by the European Research Council, explicitly asks that a prospective fellow has not worked in the country where the institution is situated, or has not lived there for at least 5 years. It is almost as if the Marie Curie Fellowship is written with the express intention that the fellow should go somewhere where she has no support network whatsoever. People who have followed their spouses to a permanent academic post are de facto excluded, because they live in the country where they would want to do the postdoc, even if they have never worked there. 

As Chris Lebron (on FaceBook) suggested, “I think one reason there is a lot of silence [on the two-body problem] is because the academic life is so closely associated with the idea of a solitary male achiever. In this model, there is never a need to take account of anyone else except him. Women are becoming a more powerful and present force in the academy, but the idea of the solitary achiever just seems to be moving over to women as well (though often with perverse forms of unfairness). In both cases, it then becomes a disincentive (not justifiably, but due to social norms and pressures) to openly declare that one's professional well-being in fact depends on more than what is happening in one's mind and one's bank account.”

I think Chris is right in saying that there is a certain disincentive in openly talking about one’s n-body problems (I was hesitating to write this post since we have this problem, but I felt it was important to discuss the issue). So I hope that commenters will weigh in with stories of how n-body problems have affected them, how they solved their two-body problem, and with ideas of how we can address the issue.

Happily ever after? Career advice for mid-career academics

The Cocoon is foremost a forum for early-career philosophers, but I have decided to put together some advice for mid-career academics. This is partly because I am in this situation (I am now senior lecturer, which is the equivalent of an associate professor), after a long period of temporary positions. It is also partly because I have seen that many associate professors are faced with challenges that do not get much attention, because people assume - mistakenly that associate professors have figured it all out by now.  I hereby pool some advice I heard from other academics as well as my ideas on issues facing mid-career academics.

For a graduate student, postdoc or any other academic who is not in a tenured or tenure track position, it seems that happy ever after starts once one obtains a tenure-track position (or equivalent), a bit like the female protagonist finding a suitable partner in a Jane Austen novel. People outside of the tenure track look on in disbelief as their tenured and tenure-track colleagues grumble about committee work, heavy teaching loads, the lack of accommodation for their spouses, decreasing pension and healthcare benefits, and the decline of wages in real terms. The thought presents itself that if only I had such a job I wouldn’t complain. When I was a postdoc, I entertained such thoughts.

Now I know that obtaining a tenure-track position is only the beginning. It definitely beats being off the tenure track, but it is not happy ever after. You need to be savvy about your career in all stages—all the way from searching for a tenure track job to being a full professor. In Jane Austen’s novels, it makes sense that the match is the end of the novel. After all, women in Jane Austen’s time had few prospects, and the main way to have economic and social goods was to marry, and that was the one and crucial decision to make. 

With the erosion of tenure and an increasing mobility of academics, finding your tenure track job no longer resembles a Jane Austen novel, where you find yourself with your dream job (Mr Darcy) or a job you deem suboptimal (but, hey, your PhD is getting stale and you need something permanent, Mr Collins).

According to several surveys, associate professors are less happy and experience less career satisfaction compared to people of other tenure-line ranks. The job uncertainty is finally gone but new doubts creep in: Is this it? Here follow some points of advice.