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PhD students: what do you wish you had known *before* you began the program?

Brian Leiter

A student who will be starting a PhD program in philosophy writes:

Being a fan of your blog and an incoming PhD student in philosophy, I was wondering if you'd think it'd be useful to open your blog up to commenters about things philosophy PhDs wish they had known about graduate school in philosophy before they began studying that would've made life and studying easier?

Some of the best advice about surviving graduate school I've gotten have been anecdotal and I thought perhaps students would benefit seeing some crowd-sourced advice on the blog, popular as it is.

 Students may post anonymously (choose some stable pseudonym so we don't have a thread full of 25 "anon student" posters).   Please include a valid e-mail address, which will not be published.

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50 responses to “PhD students: what do you wish you had known *before* you began the program?”

  1. J

    If you are serious about getting a job — even a teaching job — at a university you've heard of, then pedigree matters much more than anyone will tell you during a visit. Pay very, very close attention to your school's placement record. Your professors and advisors will often have little idea how to get a job since they graduated Harvard 30 years ago without their diss completed and waltzed into a TT job at a top-30. That's not how it works anymore if you're outside of the top 5 or 10.

    That is my biggest complaint currently. I did not struggle with the demands of classes, papers, assisting, or instructing. I did not struggle to make ends meet on the paltry salary, which is just above the poverty level. I did not struggle with the social atmosphere. But now near the end of my career, I am running into a tangle of conflicting advice about the job market, the poor past performance of people from my university, and a generalized pessimism about my future as an academic philosopher. This is the case even though I feel in other regards that I have done everything right. On the one hand, I resent hiring committees for spending six seconds to read someone's pedigree and move on. On the other, I resent some of my advisors for being so far divorced from the market, and I sometimes feel they are of no help. In short — for me, grad school was all fun and games until it came time to get a job.

    Reply
  2. Eddy Nahmias

    Coincidentally, I just happened across this talk by David Schmidtz (Arizona) offering some wonderful words of wisdom to graduate students: http://www.davidschmidtz.com/videos/deserving-succeed

    One thing I'd say is that I'm kinda glad I knew so little going into grad school. There's so much advice, warnings, info out there now (and in what will come on this thread!) that I suspect it makes it harder for students (a) to be creative, forge their own path, make mistakes, etc., and (b) to have fun.

    Reply
  3. Errol Lord

    The best advice I got was from Mark Schroeder (possibly this was second hand but Mark was the source): Do at least one thing every day to help you achieve your goals–the ultimate goal (for most) being securing a permanent job. This might seem like a lot, but it isn't. Breaking down a huge goal into very small manageable parts is, in my experience, the easiest way to achieve the goal. Focus most of your time on small tasks that you know will lead to achieving the bigger tasks.

    Of course, what the smaller tasks are will vary a good bit between programs. The best thing to do to find out about these things is to ask ABD students in the program, especially students who have been on the market.

    Reply
  4. Neil Easterbrook

    The thing I most wish I'd been told is that hiring happens this way: a department has an opening, they create a job description (the ad), then hire in the area/discipline/specialty defined by that description. (This doesn't always happen, but more often than not.) I wrote my dissertation in an area that had in North America, for the three years I was on the market, 1 opening, 2 openings, and 3 openings. 6 positions in three years. I was eventually hired in another area. (Though I'm quite happy with that position, which I've kept for 23 years.)

    Here's the tip I wish I'd gotten: as you choose your career path, the disciplinary area of the work, and the specific project of the dissertation, monitor the job ads: doing so will tell you where the jobs are, in what specialties, which will in turn eventually make you more competitive in the market. Or at least: you will be much better informed about how you will perform in the job market. The advice of your professors and other students will be very valuable when it comes to jobs and areas: but my advice is "trust, but verify."

    If you arrive at grad school knowing that a doctorate is a professional degree program, and knowing that five or so years later you'll enter the job market, and that the market is a market, you'll suffer much less anxiety and bewilderment. You'll still suffer, of course, just much less.

    Reply
  5. anongrad8675309

    It's rare for a professor to go out of his or her way to help you without any prompting. But a fair number of them will help if asked. Do you worry yourself about whether they do so begrudgingly or eagerly. Rather, put your ego aside and use them as much as possible. If you are passive about this, you could go through your entire graduate career improving much less than you could have.

    Reply
  6. G

    The most important thing to realize, I think, is that it's never too early to start thinking about "professionalization" and the job market. It's tempting to put some of that stuff off until one's later years (or last year) in the program but that's too late. Start trying to network, publish, and attend conferences as early as possible. Don't be shy about trying to form relationships with established philosophers outside your department. Try to have a publication (or two or three) by the time you hit the market. This means getting papers out early, as it can take months and months and months for a paper to be accepted (4 months at the first journal, rejection, 3 months at the second, rejection, revise and resubmit at the third journal, etc.). Living in student mode is rather fun. Running up against the end of your stipend with no job is less fun.

    Another important point to keep firmly in the front of your mind (just behind your eyes) is that it is very unlikely that you will end up with the kind of job your teachers/mentors have. Spending 5, 6, 7, 8 years in a PhD program can lead to a distorted picture of the profession. You have to try to prepare yourself (and your CV) for the sort of roles you are more likely to get, which means you need to get teaching experience and if possible have an AOS/AOC combination that will be attractive to employers. You want to be able to teach bread and butter courses, e.g., intro, logic, history, ethics. This means that while you are a PhD student you should be choosing seminars strategically, at least sometimes, and with an eye toward the attractive AOS/AOC combination you'll want to claim when you hit the market.

    Reply
  7. Young Female Faculty

    To add my own anecdote: avoid over-professionalization. Do this because you love it. Pick a topic to work on because you deeply love it, are interested in it, genuinely want to work in it for years, etc. Some job AOS' that were fairly common when I started grad school were already scarce or nonexistent when I went on the market. Had I chosen my dissertation topic in the field that seemed to be most 'marketable' at the time I was thinking about a prospectus, I would have fared poorly on the market. I worked on something I was interested in, and the market had shifted just enough that it worked out much better than I could have predicted. Had I taken advice about marketable topics, I would have spent several years working on a topic I was less interested in, and then perhaps not landed a job.

    It's better to spend those years working on a topic you love, and not get a job, than to spend them working on a topic you think other people might find more interesting, and then not get a job. Try to reduce or avoid the understandable urge to attempt to control every facet of your grad career for the purpose of eventual employment. It will suck the joy out of grad school (and it doesn't work – it is simply not possible to control it well enough to be sure enough of eventual employment).

    Reply
  8. Meghan Sullivan

    I think there is some tendency in graduate school to think that you should isolate yourself. In particular there is a tendency to think you should not show any work to anyone unless its perfect, to think that the people who mainly succeed in this profession are lone geniuses, and to think that the primary route to success is knocking another idea down. In my experience, this could not be further from the truth. Folks who succeed in graduate school, do great research, find good jobs, and love those jobs decades later tend to be those who go out of their way to help others and solicit help when they need it. They are the kind of people who are known as great colleagues, who actively participate in conferences, who share their ideas and open them to criticism, and who work hard to be charitable and helpful to the work of others.

    In graduate school, this starts your very first year with your incoming cohort. You should treat your classmates like valued colleagues, you should try to learn collaboratively, and you should realize that these people in your seminars are going to be some of your colleagues and collaborators for the rest of your (long) career. Your fortunes are, to some degree, now intertwined with theirs.

    Reply
  9. Jasper

    Maybe this is an obvious addition to the first comment, but: pay very, very close attention to a department's placement record specifically with respect to _TT_ placements. Even good schools apparently like to advertise that they've "placed" students in jobs as "lecturers", or whatever. Of course that means that these people have _not_ yet been placed anywhere near the kind of job you actually want. (Unless you're okay with the prospect of slaving away with no security or benefits indefinitely…) Look for evidence that they place people in real jobs, not the BS kinds that often show up on websites.

    Reply
  10. Alex H

    I second all the advice to the effect that graduate school should be approached with a constant eye on the market. Think of it like this: graduate school is an extended job interview. But here is some good news: Writing a dissertation is *much* easier than you think it will be. It takes no magic. Some of the best philosophers the world has ever seen have the job of helping you write it. Ask for help. Don't be sad if they criticize it. Your first efforts will be terrible, but that is to be expected. Work on it every day.

    Reply
  11. Robert

    Dear future philosopher,

    I finished my PhD a couple of months ago, not in philosophy but in science (though somehow related). I also finished philosophy as an undergraduate. There are several important things to think about, not only during graduate school, but also after it. My selection:

    First the obvious thing: Always try to work on a topic which YOU are really interested. You will find that many people are trying to push you more into one direction or another, usually related to what THEY find worth studying. As you will spend a lot of time in grad school and times may get tough, it helps to be really, really interested in what you do. After all it's your PhD. Do not automatically give in to what other people expect you to do, this may get frustrating after all.

    Second, try to think ahead (at least after you've been in grad school for a while). Many students which I know were passionate about staying in academia when they started but thought differently after a while. Especially in a field like philosophy, chances are that you are spending 6 years working really hard on a very specialized subject which, outside of academic philosophy, doesn't find much interest. So keep your eyes and ears open to what happens "in the real world" and don't be too narrow if you don't want to have a bad surprise when some HR lady is asking you about what you did and what it is good for anyway.

    Conversely, if you really think academia is for you, respect and listen to your adviser but do not trust him blindly when it comes to future career plans, especially if he got his position many many years ago. Times they are a-changin.

    Third, especially in a field where writing is your main job, try to write regularly (many departments in the US want you to deliver small papers before you start writing up your thesis, this pressure helps). Get accustomed to writing.

    Fourth, invest in a nice place to live and work if you do not have good office space at your university (which is the case even at some well known universities, especially now, when the budget is tight everywhere).

    Last but not least, have fun! The grad school can be a really exciting time in your life where you can securely follow your interest.

    Cheers, Robert

    Reply
  12. Neil Easterbrook

    I agree with yr general point, and I'm sorry my own comment didn't seem to suggest so. To choose an academic career in the humanities, one must have a love & a joy for the work, and a vocation for teaching as well. Choosing a career path *entirely* by some mechanical response to *fads* in the market would be foolish. W/o passion for the work, one would be unhappy even with a tenure-track position.

    But monitoring & being aware of the nature of the professional market will help grad students be more successful, both as students and as professors, especially young ones. We all need to find a balance of our loves and obsessions measured against the cold equations, however soul-numbing they may be, of the modern "corporate" university.

    Our grad program has followed such ideas. We have, over a 20-year period, a 78% placement rate. (This is newly-minted PhDs taking tenure-track positions in their first year on the market.) That aint bad.

    The people who would be happy spending years of doctoral study w/o getting a suitable, rewarding, and permanent job would be, I suspect, a much smaller percentage of grad students than those who do.

    Reply
  13. Gradjunct

    J above is partially right, jobs at any school you've ever heard of will depend largely on pedigree. But it is worse than that. Jobs at the majority of small liberal arts schools you've NEVER heard of will depend on pedigree as well. As Pindar might say: pedigree is the king of all. Everything hinges on it. I wish I had known that that outside of the top 10 or 15 programs the likelihood of tenure track appointment ranges from scarce to non-existent. In unranked programs like mine, exceptionally bright, promising, grad students with solid publications in top journals, and excellent letters, are having to take jobs at community colleges, such is the situation.

    BL COMMENT: I think there are more than 15 programs that make their graduates competitive for tenure-track jobs, but I agree with the general point. The PGR is, in part, an attempt to remedy this situation for prospective students.

    Reply
  14. Tamler Sommers

    Dave Pizarro and I devote an episode of our podcast to this question. You can download or stream it at http://verybadwizards.com/episodes/21

    Although like Eddy, I'm happy I was so naive going into grad school (I had no idea what the APA was until deep into my second year.) I think that helped me find my voice in philosophy, and not try to overthink things in terms of strategy for the job market.

    Reply
  15. Eugene

    Here are a few things I wish I had known about graduate school in philosophy before I began studying. However, I don't know if knowing any of these things would have made my life or studying in the program any "easier". Let me reiterate that these are just a few things that I wish I had known going into _my_ department.

    (1) Working 60+ hours a week is the norm.

    (2) Your being a graduate student in philosophy can be very hard on a spouse/partner who doesn't do philosophy. This is because in general, philosophers have a hard time not excluding non-philosophers by not always talking about philosophy.

    (3) Unlike many other professional cultures (e.g. computer programming), failure is a black mark on one's reputation in graduate school. Graduate students in philosophy tend to be very dismissive of each other. For example, if you make a weak contribution in a seminar, many of your peers might begin to suspect that you're not cut out for this. As a result, graduate school in philosophy can be very hard on one's self-esteem.

    (4) Like many early-20-somethings, I didn't really care about getting a job at the the time that I started graduate school. Naturally, I care a lot more now as I approach 30. I wish I would have known that I would eventually start caring about gainful employment, because I'm not so sure I would have entered graduate school having known that I would eventually care about that sort of thing. The market for philosophers is bleak. This can't be emphasized enough. But unfortunately, it is often hard to fathom how bleak it is until it is too late, i.e. until you've failed to secure employment year after year, after year.

    Reply
  16. JPJ

    I kind of wish someone had told me how political some departments can be – that if you tow a 'party line' (like being all go for Heidegger, or formal logic, or some particular branch of ethics, or whatever [I've only seen the first two in action]) it's much easier to get attention, or teaching hours, or similar. It's not a big problem, but it can be frustrating to see how, at least for some people, towing a line gets you noticed within a department.

    Reply
  17. SLAC Guy

    Future Grad:

    Don't listen to those who are saying that pedigree means everything at all jobs. It's not true. Maybe in R1s, or R2s, or in top name SLACs. But all those schools combined don't make up the majority of schools who will post job advertisements. I can say that at my own SLAC (a very good school, but not a top marquee name SLAC) pedigree means little. SCs (and I've been on quite a few) are looking to see if you can do the job they need you to do. You need to provide evidence that you can do that job as described in the ad, and well. That being said, my main pieces of advice to you if you will seek an SLAC job would be:

    1. While in grad school, teach a variety of different classes. Be able to say that you can cover a variety of needs. When I was in grad school, the grad program adviser thought I was nuts to want to do this. He was wrong.
    2. Think about pedagogy far beyond the typical boilerplate stuff that everyone puts into teaching philosophy statements. If you get an interview at an SLAC, they will ask you those kinds of questions, and it is clear who is BSing and who is not. Publish an article in _Teaching Philosophy_, if you can!
    3. Again, for an SLAC, in your cover letter address everything they ask for. Read about their gen-ed program, and say a bit about it. Most phil departments stay alive through their contributions to general education. Read about the school's mission, and say a few things about it. SLACs are fighting for their lives in this crazy higher education world. SCs are looking to hire people who are fired up about what the school does.
    4. Know that at an SLAC, you'll be expected to learn to wear many hats. At SLACs, particularly, faculty are being expected to do lots of different things, not just teach and write articles.
    5. Remember to have fun. It's worth it.

    Reply
  18. Mark

    It is important to remember that you are always 'on.' There is no faculty member in your department that you can afford to give a weak effort for, either in seminar or in assisting in courses. It is not true that you can count on the efforts of a few hand-picked letter writers to present you in your best light. Often I get inquiries from acquaintances in other departments that say 'X is under consideration for a job here — what do you think about X?' If my only exposure to X is that X was my TA, and did a shitty job, or that X took my seminar, and was often unprepared, I am going to be extremely unhelpful to X. On the other hand, if I can say 'of course I am not on X's committee, but I had X as my TA, and she/he was terrific,' that is a nice thing to be able to say.

    Also: go to departmental events, even if they don't strike your fancy. Go to every departmental colloquium. When job candidates come through, do what you can to see what they are going through and how they are conducting themselves. Get feedback from faculty members whether the candidates hurt or helped themselves by their visits.

    It is just false that "that outside of the top 10 or 15 programs the likelihood of tenure track appointment ranges from scarce to non-existent." I am not sure how anyone who actually looked at some placement records could come to that conclusion.

    Reply
  19. Ian Stoner

    After I defended my dissertation, I wrote up a list of mostly concrete tips that made (or would have made) studying and teaching easier. A couple of these are semi-specific to the University of Minnesota, but it sounds like the genre of advice your correspondant is interested in.

    http://www.tc.umn.edu/~ston0235/grad.advice.html

    Reply
  20. Michael

    Agreeing with Meghan: A professor at my undergraduate university told me that my fellow graduate students would be just as important to my education as the professors and thus advised me to spend time with them. It was great advice. My philosophy is better because of those folks and my time in graduate school was a lot more fun than it would have been otherwise. Many grad students don't spend time in the department arguing, socializing, forming casual reading groups, goofing off after seminar, etc. Those activities were all very helpful when I was in graduate school, and they have continued to help me in my career. That initial web of contacts across the country is useful for arranging colloquia, hearing about job opportunities, networking, and the like. Plus, being an active participant in department life resulted in more contact with professors and other opportunities that I might have missed.

    Reply
  21. Michelle

    First, read this book: Advice for New Faculty Members, by Robert Boice. That book has changed my life, improved my philosophic work tenfold, and helped me lower my general anxiety level tremendously. The main message I got from it was this: don't expect your work to be perfect before you've started, don't wait for "muses" to awake your brilliance, and let your academic pursuits be a normal, simple, calm element of ordinary life. I know there are other books available that provide the same message, or similar ones. If Boice's outlook doesn't work for you, keep shopping around until you find one. That you are going to grad school means you likely are very good at thinking and writing. But that you are a human being means that you most definitely could use advice and guidance in how to regularly, successfully, and healthily think and write.

    Second, remember that grad school is your job, not your life. It is not your identity. You are a person with worth beyond your philosophic endeavors, and your philosophic endeavors should not swallow up the whole of your existence. Everything and everyone you come across while a grad student will push against my claim, here. There will be constant pressure to understand yourself singly as a philosopher. Some around you may act as if having any sort of interests or hobbies beyond philosophy is a mark of failure or lack of commitment–don't let them get to you. It just is not healthy to conflate your identity as a philosophy grad student with your identity in general. You will live a far richer, happier, and more successful life, if you recognize that philosophy and grad school are only one element to your life, not the whole of it. If you feel yourself slipping, visit/call up some relatives or old childhood friends. Realize they love you just as much, even if you made a stupid comment in seminar last week.

    Third, floss. Chances are, you're looking forward to five or more years without good dental insurance. If you don't floss during those years, you're setting yourself up for some nasty problems later. Also, exercise and eat your vegetables.

    In general, look after yourself as a whole being, not just a philosopher. Don't treat your time in grad school as something distinct from "real life," as if you enter some time vortex while a student such that you don't have to worry about anything but academics until you get a diploma. You continue to be a human being while in grad school, even if the entire culture of grad school tries to convince you otherwise. You will be more successful as a grad student, if you recognize and appreciate your status as a human being independent of your academic success.

    Reply
  22. Vo

    "Professional development" is important for getting a job. But if you're a rational agent, you're not in philosophy solely to get a good professional job. You could get good professional jobs in many other fields much more easily. So, for the first few years stop checking the Leiter blog (no offense!), try to learn philosophy properly and focus on educating yourself (perhaps imagine that you're a theology student in the middle-ages). You'll have the luxury of trying to become a good philosopher at least for the first three years. Then you can start obsessing about the business side of things. Also, I'm certain that, down the line, becoming a better philosopher will help you with the business side of things too.

    BL COMMENT: "Philosophy in the News" category usually has links that are of philosophical interest, for those looking to avoid the more "professional" stuff.

    Reply
  23. anon_former_grad

    Try getting published EARLY in your grad student career. Pick one paper every semester and work extra hard on it and try to get it placed. Even if you don't succeed the experience is useful. And if you can get a decent publication or two before you start on your dissertation you have a huge head start.

    I treated my first couple of years in a top program as an extension of undergrad – I got good grades in my classes (as almost everyone does) and did some interesting work but really achieved nothing that helped toward the goal of getting a good academic job.

    BL COMMENT: Let me say I'm skeptical that this is good advice, i.e., trying to publish so early. I do think the vast majority of grad students are well-served by having a publication before they hit the job market, but the likelihood of producing publishable material so early in one's career is slim in all but exceptional cases.

    Reply
  24. A

    I just graduated. Here's my advice for the beginning student: you are in grad school to learn things. This means that you don't need to come in knowing everything. Other incoming students will probably be very concerned about conveying the impression that they do know everything, so you may feel behind if you don't. Be honest about what you know and what you don't. Don't pretend to have read stuff if you haven't read it. Don't pretend to have a strong view on something if you don't have a strong view on it. You'll learn more about philosophy every year you're pursuing a PhD than you did in all of your previous education. If it seems at first like everyone else has read everything and knows everything and you aren't cut out for it, just wait. You'll learn from being around these smart and seasoned folks. On a related note, don't uncritically accept the biases of your department. If everyone thinks x is worthless, then don't just go around spouting this line without really knowing for yourself. Especially don't do this outside of your department, where the line may be totally different.

    Also, if you are a woman/racial minority/LGBTQ/etc. know now that it may be tough, and you may have to deal with stuff that other people in your department don't have to deal with, and everyone else might fail to see what's extra hard about what you have to go through. I'm sorry. I wish I could tell each of you individually that it gets better. Find friends in your department and other departments, go to conferences where your work will be valued, and try to find mentors who will help you. You aren't alone, and philosophy is actually pretty cool once you find your place (which might not be where you initially thought it was).

    Reply
  25. Neil Mehta

    No one begins graduate school as an excellent writer, with respect to the standards of professional philosophy. Accordingly, I believe that it is helpful to cultivate one's philosophical writing skills at every turn. Natural ways of doing so include:

    1. Taking note whenever you read a paper that is exceptionally well-written, and identifying as explicitly as possible what makes that paper exceptionally well-written.

    2. Taking note whenever you discover an author who writes exceptionally well in general, and identifying as explicitly as possible what exceptional features characterize that author's writing style.

    3. Observing, and perhaps even recording, really nice philosophical maneuvers worth incorporating into your work. Some such maneuvers are large-scale, e.g., the maneuver of listing relevant constraints in some domain, and then delimiting the exact class of views that can satisfy all of those constraints. Others are small-scale, e.g., not merely stating a counterexample to a view, but also explaining the general feature of the view that generates such counterexamples. (For inspiration,see Alan Hajek's papers on philosophical heuristics.)

    On a separate note, I also believe that it is helpful to get feedback from as many sources as possible, rather than becoming an acolyte of a single professor, or mingling exclusively with a small clique of other graduate students.

    Finally, it is helpful to think about building a broad professional network as early as possible. Try to meet (and interact substantially with) professors and graduate students at other institutions.

    Reply
  26. David

    I am a third-year PhD student in philosophy at a ranked (but not top 15 by any means) program.

    One of the difficulties with a thread like this is that you will have people who graduated in 1974 providing answers alongside those who will graduate in 2015. Perhaps there is some general advice (though I'm skeptical of even this) that applies to both cohorts, but when it comes to the job market–which is what most graduate students are concerned about and wish they had known more about before entering the program–there is simply no comparison between then and now. Having said that, I have a few comments.

    First: I've read a number of comments on this thread, as well as other threads on this blog, that indicate how frustrating, absurd, and silly it is that departments rely on pedigree when hiring. I agree. Yet it would seem that the very people posting on these threads are often times the people who are in a position to change how departments make their hiring decisions. The level of hypocrisy is almost staggering. Within my own program, I've seen the same professors who talk about the unfairness of relying on pedigree use that very factor in making hiring decisions. Why? I'll leave that to the discerning reader to decide.

    Second: there is a lot of talk on this, and similar threads, about "professional development" and making sure one gets a lot of teaching experience in grad school. Well, in my department, that advice is basically useless. As a PhD student, I am not allowed to teach any of my own classes. Rather, after three years in the program, I am still little more than a glorified grader. This is a departmental decision, not a university-wide rule. Again, it seems that the very thing that most professors would say is necessary to having a good chance in the job-market is being denied to future job-candidates. And it isn't just my program that has this policy; I've spoken with students from many other PhD programs who have run into the same problem.

    Reply
  27. Ex-Philosopher

    This won't apply to everyone, but the ones it applies to don't know it applies to them yet.

    1. It's possible to fall out of love with philosophy in the middle of the long hard slog of a PhD program. No matter how much you love it now.
    2. It's possible to completely internalize the grad-school culture that says that "dropping out" = failure, admitting you are not smart. No matter how independent-minded you think you are.
    3. If (1) and (2) happen to you, NO ONE in your life will be in a position to give you sane advice. Your non-philosopher friends won't understand why you didn't quit two years ago to go work on Wall Street. You won't have even hinted to your philosopher friends that you aren't 150% committed to being a philosophy professor for the rest of your life, even though that thought now makes you sick.

    I know, it could never ever happen to YOU of all people, but please just keep in mind that IF it does, you are not crazy, and please try to be one of the people that gets brave and leaves academia to do something else, even if your competitive colleagues sniff and think that you just couldn't cut it.

    Reply
  28. Jason, recently tenured at a regional Catholic University

    There are a lot of points in other comments above that I agree with and won't recapitulate here, but the one that certainly bears repeating is that it isn't entirely true that pedigree is the sole determinant in job placement. Of course it's true that the placement records of the most renowned programs are stronger than that of other programs (it would be astonishing if this weren't the case, wouldn't it!?). And of course it's also true that the job market is pretty crappy (to say the least). But, departments also tend to hire faculty from the same kinds of institutions from which their own faculty received their degrees. For instance, whatever one thinks of SPEP, it is true that programs in which faculty are more involved in SPEP also hire from other institutions in which the faculty are involved in SPEP. So even though SPEPpy programs aren't generally high in the PGR's reputational survey, they do seem to maintain fairly decent placement records. (I confess, that this is entirely anecdotal on my part, and I'd be pleased to be corrected if anyone–e.g., Brian Leiter–has accurate statistical data about this that differs from my impression.)

    But, in any case, that's all pretty obvious when you stop to think about it for a moment. What I would add to this that hasn't already been said is that I wish it had occurred to me earlier that the kind of advice I was getting from graduate school advisers was generally from people who followed a career path that I wasn't likely to be able to follow and that, in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't try to follow. In other words, the faculty in my grad program DID come from prestigious institutions even though my grad program's placement record has never been strong with those same institutions. Consequently, the advice I received from graduate faculty in my program was skewed toward what helped THEM get their jobs, not what would have best helped me get MINE. It all turned out OK for me, so it seems silly to speak counterfactually about this, but I do wish I had realized this sooner. At the very least, it would have saved me some postage when I was applying for jobs.

    In my view, many graduate program faculty haven't got a very good sense of what goes on in programs that do not offer PhDs. And many will, quite naturally, perpetuate the notion that one ought to seek the most prestigious position possible. But, to be perfectly honest, I LOVE my position at a mid-sized regional Catholic university in which the curriculum requires all students to take six hours of Philosophy courses and in which there are no graduate programs in the humanities. It is NOT, by even the wildest stretch of the imagination, a prestigious position, and that certainly involves some drawbacks. But there are a lot of benefits, too: I love the students that I am privileged to be able to teach, the teaching load isn't bad (3-3 with low course caps), the internal research support is decent, and I don't have to endure graduate students trying to cope with the kinds of life-issues that are common among the philosophy grad-student set (the life-issues of 20-somethings from white, privileged backgrounds just aren't that compelling to me). Also, because I'm positively heathen-ish in my personal religious views and upbringing, I had no idea that I'd be so comfortable in a career at a Catholic institution (I had misgivings about it, in fact). And none of my graduate advisers could have been any help in recognizing this; most of what they taught me to expect about Catholic colleges and universities has turned out to be distorted or simply false.

    By comparison, one of my best friends from grad school DOES now have a prestigious R1 position (and fully deserves it since he worked so hard to get where he is). He does enjoy his 2-2 course-load, advising graduate students, has better internal research support and potential for external funding, and so on. And although I am satisfied with my modest scholarly achievements and opportunities for future projects, I am also quite certain that my friend will lap me in terms of scholarly output many times over in the course of our careers . BUT he hates the undergraduates at his university, he's in a Department in which political infighting is common, he has a much higher bar to meet for tenure than I had to meet to accomplish my tenure, and, even once he accomplishes that feat, will (I suspect) have to continue to confront anxiety about his scholarly prestige to a degree I'm quite pleased that I won't have to deal with.

    Honestly, we're both happy with our career paths, and we're both at institutions that fit our personalities and professional goals. We both have our complaints about our own places of employment, too, of course. But, bottom line: he'd be far less happy at my university than I am, and I'd be far less happy than he were I employed at his university.

    The upshot is this: graduate advisers aren't always in the best position to give helpful input about career paths that differ from their own. So get lots of advice, and get it from lots of different places. Also go ahead and work as hard as the person who would be happiest in the most prestigious job in the whole wide world; just don't assume that you'd actually be happiest in the most prestigious job in the whole wide world.

    (Oh… and yeah: you have to work really, really hard. You have to be dedicated. And you have to be a little bit lucky, too. But the work is essential. So even if the work-load of faculty members at SLACs is apportioned differently at SLACs than it is at R1s, don't imagine that fewer publication requirements for tenure means fewer overall responsibilities. You won't be able to get, let alone keep a job at any college or university if you're not willing to put everything you've got into it, so you might as well start putting 60-80 hours per week of serious, meaningful commitment into this as soon as you start your PhD program.)

    BL COMMENT: My impressions about SPEP school job placement are the same.

    Reply
  29. David Wallace

    The purely-practical thing I would tell my younger self: wake up to how little time anyone will spend looking at your application. Chances are any job you apply to has 200 other applicants. Even if someone on the panel spends 20 hours, i.e. 2 days plus, looking at applications, that's 10 CVs an hour, or one CV every six minutes. And they probably won't spend 20 hours.

    So don't stress about exactly how to phrase that bit in your "other interests" section about your charity work. Make your application's strong points completely clear to a bored person who will read it in a hurry as one of a vast pile of tedious application dossiers they have to get through and rank-order somehow.

    (Of course, if and when you get longlisted, people will start going through it with a fine-toothed comb. I'm talking about the first cull here.)

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  30. V

    A mix of humorous and good advice.

    http://verybadwizards.com/ninastrohminger

    Reply
  31. Bharath Vallabha

    Here are some things I wish I had known before I began grad school:

    1) Distinguish two reasons for going to grad school: to continue the student life from undergrad, and to acquire the kind of life your teachers in undergrad had. If you are going to go to grad school, move quickly beyond the first reason and actively endorse the second. The sooner you do that, the easier it will be to see the point of grad school.

    2) Balance following your passion with being professional. Going to conferences, publishing, networking, etc. are not selling out or being more interested in recognition than truth. Baseball players have to wear uniforms and play at night. Academics have to publish and give talks. The sooner you accept that, the easier it will be to follow your passion while being an academic.

    3) Don’t try to mimic how your favorite philosopher from the past might approach grad school. Forget about how Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Quine, etc. got jobs or what they did or did not do as academics. The situation now is totally different. Wittgenstein, etc. benefitted from academic structures which were classist, sexist and racist. This is not a reflection on their philosophies. But it does mean that becoming professional as an academic is not shallow. To the contrary, it is the only way academia can be fair and open to all people.

    4) Avoid venting too much against the profession (though some venting is healthy!). As a grad student you are already a part of the profession. Don’t vent as if you are outside the profession. Otherwise just from the venting you will find yourself becoming more and more marginalized from it in your mind. Any dissatisfactions you have about the profession, channel into a journal or an occasional conversation. Don’t make it into you vs. the profession, because that is only bad for you.

    5) At any time you can leave grad school or academia without that reflecting on your abilities, interests or self-esteem. If you are no longer interested in philosophy, ok, do something else. If want to do philosophy but not in academia, ok, do that. In grad school it can seem shameful to even think these thoughts, let alone express them. But in reality there is nothing shameful about it, and there are no thought police.

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  32. Anonymous Ex-Adjunct

    This more or less reiterates what J said in the first post and what a few others said afterwards. The thing I most wish I'd been told is that pedigree is EVERYTHING (to exaggerate only slightly). My advice: don't do a PhD in philosophy unless it's at well-ranked PGR program. Don't risk it. This isn't to say that programs that aren't well-ranked are bad (some are very good). It's to say that hiring committees composed of philosophers are irrational, bourgeois entities enamored with prestige. If you're a grad from a poorly ranked program, then even if you have, for example, 10 articles (in good journals), a book (with a respected press), tons of teaching experience, etc., you might be passed over in favour of an applicant from a well-ranked program even if s/he has no publications, no teaching experience, etc. (and, of course, nowadays there are hundreds of such applicants for EVERY decent job). There are exceptions, of course, but don't take the risk if you don't have to. If you do, there's a good chance you'll end up in the basement of the ivory tower doing menial, low-paid contract work with no benefits or job security. You'll be one of the dregs of your institution.

    BL COMMENT: I'd prefer this thread not devolve into a debate about whether pedigree is or is not relevant to hiring. I do think the basic advice–go to a program with a strong reputation, either overall or in your specialties–is a good one, whether or not pedigree is or is not a reasonable factor in hiring.

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  33. Michael B

    I would like to second the advice of Ex-philosopher in post 27. 1 and 2 happened to me. I felt like an alcoholic or something, even admitting that I had a problem (heart no longer in it) and then feeling like an utter failure, a sell-out for not pursuing the life of the mind to the Socratic level of financial ruin, and an embarrassment to my tutors etc.

    I was at an internationally respectable department at an internationally respectable institution and my own supervisor's advice (who got his PhD from a still stronger institution) was: "If I could do it all again, I'd stop at undergraduate." I understand 2 years later he is still (academic) job hunting. It wasn't lost on me that one evening he, myself and another terminal-MA student were sat around socialising and between us we had 7 philosophy degrees and 0 jobs. Not just 0 academic ones. 0. And not for lack of trying.

    So, given that a reader is going to do a PhD anyway, my advice would be to work on (additional) marketable skills for outside academia anyway, *just in case*. E.g. hobbyist open-source programming.

    It's all very well telling yourself, 'I enjoy mathematical logic so can probably pick up programming quite quickly', 'I have an analytical approach to problem solving', or 'I have great communication skills' which may well be quite true; but in this nightmarish jobs market, no HR gatekeeper will give you a ticket to the dance where you can explain all this at interview when there are so many CVs with words on that are perceived as more useful than 'philosophy' competing with us.

    If you don't want to/can't get into academia, you'll want a Trojan horse on your CV, then when you're at interview you can unleash your intellect and charm. But I wish I knew a) even passions for, what you think is your life's calling, can fade, and b) it's simply practical wisdom and rational to spend a little time on a back-up plan.

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  34. eyeye

    Two points.

    1. Much of the philosophical writing you read should not be emulated. This is perhaps obvious in some cases, but less so in others. For a time, I took Quine's writing as setting the standard–and although he *is* a great writer, that's just not how philosophers today write. If any, emulate the writing of recent articles at top journals (but even there, one must exercise discretion).

    2. Several people have encouraged working on what interests you, rather than what is trendy or what have you. I agree with this, though with a caveat. Do not dissertate contra a view which your director loves. This may seem obvious. But if you're like most folks, your director's interests will affect your own; you'll often see it as pressing to either defend his/her views, or define your own in opposition. However, do NOT defend the opposition if it is one of your director's cherished views. You can grind that axe later in your career. Otherwise, you can just *ruin* your credibility with your director. That doesn't mean you should always be in agreement. But take it from me. I went to a top ten program, had two serious pubs in grad school (and more since then)–but this fall will be year six looking for a TT job.

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  35. Chet Manley

    There are students in my program who are extremely involved. There are also students who are not very involved at all. The involved students audit courses regularly, attend talks regularly, and socialize with other graduate students often. I have noticed a pretty strong correlation between activity in the department and success while in grad school and when seeking a job. I can imagine a case being made for the causal direction going either way. Regardless, activity seems to me an indicator of success. So my advice is this: attend everything you possibly can and be really active in your department.

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  36. This is my pseudonym

    I think folks reading this thread for advice need to be very cognizant of the fact that a good chunk of this advice is context dependent and that all of it can be misinterpreted. For example, as a general rule, yes—you should absolutely treat your classmates as collaborators, and you should absolutely recognize that you have something to learn from them. There are important exceptions though, and this is probably especially important for underrepresented students in departments with an unhealthy climate. If some of your classmates are prejudiced jerks, you’re better off looking elsewhere for your network of philosophical collaborators. If some of your classmates are continually disrespectful and unhelpful, at some point you’re better off if you stop trying with them. There are so many philosophers who are wonderful to work with, to think with, to talk with—you shouldn’t subject yourself to mistreatment in order to bond with your cohort. Conferences can be a great place to start building alternative networks if needed, and it’s a great place to expand your network even if not, in this way, necessary.

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  37. neurotic grad student pretending not to be one

    One piece of advice not yet mentioned is to try to cultivate some loosely academic friendships with people outside of philosophy when you move to a new place for graduate school. I think this is important professionally as well as personally. Because of a non-academic interest, I have a lot of friends who are grad students in math and sciences (and a few in other humanities). From a professional perspective: talking to them about my work, and listening to them talk about their work, has been enormously helpful and has taught me a tremendous amount (and is, I think, good practice for many job market situations: I often need to think of quick, snappy ways to characterize the very abstract/inaccessible stuff I'm thinking about that makes it seem interesting and accessible). It's good to get some perspective on what you are doing. Having to talk with people outside your area is one way to do that. But having to talk with smart people outside philosophy can be an even better way to do it.

    Also, personally: It's much easier to maintain friendly/collegial relationships with the people in your department if you have real friends outside of your department who you can complain to, spend time with when you are stressed about departmental stuff, etc.

    Finally, and related: though I don't think you need to develop marketable skills as a previous poster suggested (not that it's a bad idea!), making sure you engage in some things that you care about that are non-philosophy related will keep you much saner during grad school than you otherwise would be. Some people can successfully be pure philosophy nerds, but most of us need balance. Balance can be easily lost in grad school because it's very stressful, and you see people around you working non-stop and think you need to do that. I do think you need to work hard, but I think there's an unhealthy obsession amongst grad students with how many hours of sitting and reading/writing one does in a day. I do my best philosophy when I'm relaxed, don't have too much stuff cluttering up my head, and have spent time doing something else I enjoy. Being relaxed doesn't mean that you are doing the wrong thing, and other people's neurosis doesn't mean that they are doing better work than you are, even if they are sitting in their office for 16 hours a day. Indeed, I suspect for the most part, they are being less productive than people who balance out an 8 hour work day with sports or music or painting or whatever it is that they enjoy (of course, there are exceptions, but that's what I've observed).

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  38. neurotic grad student pretending not to be one

    One other thing: Developing a clear work routine *before* you finish coursework/pre-dissertation requirements really helps when you get to the dissertation stage. It's best to figure out when you write best (for a lot of us, in the morning), to start forcing yourself to write every day, and to figure out how to use your time (I, for example, tend to only write in the morning, and try not to be distracted by internet/other stuff then (use one of those internet blocking programs if you need to!), then need to exercise/take a break if my brain is going to work in the afternoon, which I usually spend on some combination of reading/teaching related stuff/administrative commitments/etc.). If you get yourself into some sort of routine before you are dissertating, you're much more likely to be able to stick to that routine than if you work haphazardly until the dissertation stage and then find yourself lying in bed all morning, etc.

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  39. Monica

    I would like to share some of my thoughts in the hope that some other incoming students will find them useful. Since I am still a graduate student, these views are based on my experience about the years of graduate years before ABD and do not mention the state of the job market. *Young* faculty's advice on this topic (see above) is to be searched for. Also, I do not claim my views generalize. As always, I think that any advice (including my own) should be taken with a grain of salt. Here are my tough lessons:
    (1) If you happen to be a passionate person who really wanted to do something because they found the research in a particular area or a particular philosopher interesting, you might be hitting a wall pretty soon. Yet your particular passion& curiosity will always be the inner drive that will help you (unless you are specifically looking for a miserable life).
    (2) Do not try to master each course (i.e. do groundbreaking reasearch or write a fabulous paper for each class). Do not try to write only to please the current state of the literature on a topic. Instead, if possible, look for something that sparks your interest (yes, the sooner, the better) and work on it from the beginning of the semester. Concerns about AOC and AOS could come later. By the time you are done with coursework and had devoted time and writing to things you found interesting, you will have developed both writing skills and research skills.
    (3) About writing. See Meghan's advice above- its value cannot be stressed enough. Share your work. Ask people if they want to read yours, ask to read theirs. Exchange ideas about their paper topics. This is not only a matter of improving writing: as Meghan said, it is also a matter of building trust, collaboration, and friendship. Some other things about writing: it might be the case that very few people in your graduate institution will have developed a method for improving writing and helping others to improve theirs. A difficult problem is the following: you will probably get a lot of feedback telling you where and what you did wrong, but none about how to fix your problem. Solution: (1) Ask people around about members of faculty that give best feedback&method for writing philosophy. Necessarily, take a class with them, present your work to them, even if they are not in your specialty area. (2) Compile all advice that rings true to you or that you find useful in a file/document. Develop your ability to diagnose your own writing.
    (4) Failure. For people who never worked outside academia before coming to graduate school: Generally speaking, academia is a low tolerance medium for failure, yet rejection is all around. People fail in graduate school, people leave graduate school. Papers get rejected, grants projects get rejected, ideas get rejected, etc. Find out why. Be aware of the omnipresent survivor's bias. Learning from failure is a much better life advice than "try to emulate the successful peers".
    (5) Well-being. Different people struggle with different problems while in graduate school and beyond. Stress, depression, unhappiness are just few of them. Unfortunately, most students will put up a brave face. Do not fall for it. You will find out that others might share your concerns.
    (6) About specialization. Academia is more about people than it is usually stressed, I think. Knowing people in your fields of interest should be a better guide than reading their journal papers or books. Look for those people (both faculty and other students) among whom you feel like a fish in the water. 🙂
    (7) If you are an introvert and find it difficult to socialize, use other means of communication: emails,FB, chat, etc. But don't isolate yourself for extended periods of time.
    (8) You might find Haggerty's 2010 piece useful: Haggerty, Kevin (2010). Tough Love: Professional Lessons for Graduate Students, The American Sociologist, Volume 41, Issue 1, pp 82-96. He is a Sociology professor, yet I think he has valuable advice for graduate students in philosophy.
    (9) Sometimes, we take ourselves too seriously. It matters just as much to play and experiment. If nothing else, you will be healthier individual. 🙂

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  40. Matthew

    Although a lot of advice rightly focuses on the sometimes grim realities of the job market, I wish I'd also been told to enjoy myself more. Precisely because the odds of success can be so slim, I wish I'd been told that it might be the last time I got to do philosophy. It's important to be aware of what will happen after the Ph.D. and to get good advice about how to maximise the likelihood of job success. But an exclusive focus on treating the Ph.D. as a means to that end is a route to feeling miserable. If you don't get a job, you'll feel like your time in grad school was wasted.

    Following on from that, I wish I'd been told to think about a Plan B (and even prepare for it concretely by doing the occasional summer internship or using the university's careers service to prep for assessment centres). Knowing what the routes might be if philosophy doesn't work out, and thinking through them seriously, is useful because if that day comes when you decide to leave academia, you don't all of a sudden feel lost at sea with no idea what's next. Having a realistic grasp of the non-academic possibilities (i.e. not all non-academics are corporate drones) also means the idea of not being a philosopher won't fill you with so much dread, which might make it easier to enjoy your time as a grad student.

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  41. owen flanagan

    I am lucky enough to have had wonderful students like Eddy Nahmias and Tamler Sommers, neither of whom, as they have said, thought much about anything. They did what they love and they did it well. To J #1 – the job market 30 years ago was worse than it is now. Many more of us then did philosophy because we loved it, not because we expected a job in philosophy. No one worried too much about the job market because jobs in computer science were abundant and logicians could easily snag good ones. So times are very different. Choose projects that you are passionate about not ones you think are prudent professionally. Originality and passion stand out.

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  42. Steven Hales

    I have one piece of very narrow advice that served me well in grad school: never take an incomplete for one of your courses. Ever. Your profs may encourage you to do so, maybe so you have more time to work on that term paper. Don't do it. You'll get bogged down and behind. On top of which, you'll need to learn good time management skills so you're not always putting out fires and scrambling for deadlines. Plus, you don't want to spend a decade in grad school.

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  43. current grad student

    Many pieces of advice I've read here are very useful and have definitely been beneficial to me. Another thing I would add is that some philosophers and philosophy students are jerks with absolutely insufferable personalities. Even though these folks will share with you an interest in philosophy, you might find that you have no desire to speak to them or even be around them. This is normal and you shouldn't let it bother you. It might take some time but you'll eventually find people who both want to discuss philosophy rigorously and don't make you wonder why you ever applied for philosophy programs in the first place. So, just be patient and don't let the weirdos get you down, because there are going to be a lot of them.

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  44. Venerable 25-year-old Grad

    This Onion article is just so apt here:

    http://www.theonion.com/articles/24yearold-receives-sage-counsel-from-venerable-27y,32515/

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  45. Daniel

    Three things I wish I had been told:

    1. Take control of the dissertation writing process and, as much as you can, your committee. For most people, their education to the point of writing the dissertation is not self-directed: you have class assignments throughout undergrad, and then in graduate school you have course work where, even if you can choose the topic you write on, the basic issues you might deal with are circumscribed and the deadline for getting the work done is pretty set. All that changes when it's just you and your dissertation. Your advisers will provide guidance (if you're lucky), but you are now the one in charge. No one from here on out will be as invested or interested or knowledgeable about where things stand with your work as you. So take the bull by the horns. Set your own deadlines, both short and long term, and do your best to bring your committee along with those deadlines. While you cannot insist that you're going to go on the job market in year X (well, I guess you could, but that's probably not a great way to do things), you *can* do the work required to get there *and* make clear to your committee what your plan is. I know this seems obvious, and I certainly would have agreed with it if someone had told me this when I started grad school, but it actually took me a little while to really *get* it.

    2. Try to write a dissertation that has an overarching idea *and* can fairly easily be cannibalized for papers, including a writing sample and job talk. I think this can be a hard balance to strike: sometimes, pursuing a big idea doesn't lend itself to a chapter structure that breaks down into papers. And clearly writing a series of papers around a particular topic is not the same as putting forward an overarching idea. Papers are the currency of our field, particularly early on: basically no one wants to see a dissertation as part of the job process but everyone will want to see a paper, maybe two, maybe three. The trick, then, is to have a genuine project, but to write in such a way that you have paper-length materials to use.

    3. Avoid people that make you feel bad about your work or productivity. Seek out people that are good philosophical interlocutors and interested in helping you move forward. Try not to compare yourself to other people in your program or the profession in general. That way lies unproductive self-doubt and loathing.

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  46. Reginald Williams

    Brian has mentioned (comment 32) that he'd prefer this thread not to devolve into a debate about pedigree, but one important point connected with this hasn't been made: one I wish I'd known, and appreciated, before entering grad school. The point is that, ultimately, it will be academic administrators, not hiring committees, who hire you in the event that you land a job. There may be exceptions to this of which I'm not aware, but I take them to be rare if existent at all. There's a reason for this: Academic administrators are the ones who extend tenure track, and even adjunct, jobs to professors–i.e., legal contracts. They, moreover, are the ones legally responsible if that contract somehow goes awry. These administrators are very rarely, if ever, professional philosophers. What, then, do they rely on to make their decisions? They certainly take into consideration the recommendations of hiring committees. In the end, though, the administrators have the power. They don't always even confer with the committee or its chair. So they rely on other factors, ones that they take to impress the institution's board of directors, and oftentimes the key factor there seems to be pedigree.

    I wish I'd known this in graduate school, and prior. Those who actually extend a contract to you to teach or do research in philosophy will not know the difference between Ethics, Nous, and Phil Review, and . . . They won't know what departments have incredible strengths in sub-disciplines. They will be very familiar with Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Stanford, and so forth. This point merits attention.

    BL COMMENT: An related anecdote: I've been told more than once of cases where Deans pushed back against departments who wanted to hire someone from Rutgers or Notre Dame, asking, "Why can't you get an Ivy League PhD?" or something comparably inane. In all these cases, the departments successfully used the PGR to educate their Deans that, in fact, the candidates they were hiring were from top depratments, outstanding in the fields of interest. One reason there's still a vocal minority invested in trashing the PGR is because they know all too well how often it is now utilized by administrators.

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  47. Matt Drabek

    Philosophy graduate students are training for a job, not a vocation. This should be on your office wall. Learn it now, not later.

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  48. Michel X.

    1.) There will be days (perhaps more) when you feel like you don't belong, that everyone (or many other students, anyway) are much better than you are, and that you're just skating by with a thin veil over your incompetence.

    Know that it happens to everyone, and is so common it's even got a name: imposter syndrome. You're surrounded by brilliant people (after all, getting in is mega-selective, and there are hundreds of applicants ever year), but don't lose sight of the fact that you also made the cut (this can be especially tough to remember if you were a waitlistee). You're *all* very bright people, and odds are that you figure prominently in someone else's imposter syndrome.

    2.) Don't be afraid to participate, to share your work and ideas (that includes attending colloquia, even if they're not of interest to you). That kind of anxiety is toxic, and ends up affecting everyone negatively within a fairly short period of time. When one cohort is infected, it trickles down to the next, and at that point it's very hard to turn things around.

    3.) Don't procrastinate too much, especially when it comes to participatory-type activities.

    4.) You're here to learn, so don't be afraid to take or sit in on courses outside your areas of interest, to expose yourself to new ideas and ways of doing things (e.g. if you're into 19th century stuff, avoid the temptation to use your Kant seminar to satisfy the metaphysics & epistemology course requirement). Attend public lectures, colloquia, local conferences, etc. that are outside your projected AOS/AOC combination.

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  49. John Schwenkler

    At least one person has mentioned impostor syndrome. This is a very important phenomenon to understand, and be on the lookout for in oneself — I know I'd have been happier and more productive in graduate school if I'd known more about it. Here are a couple of resources that look decent: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/self-promotion-introverts/201304/managing-your-impostor-syndrome and http://vpge.stanford.edu/newsletters/S13impostor — though surely there are many others.

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  50. Dennis Whitcomb

    Don't work too much; it is counterproductive.

    What you need to do is spend about 40 really focused hours per week on your work. This means 40 hours really doing philosophy and teaching, not playing on facebook or checking email or making your coffee or whatever. After your daily 8-hour or so shift, stop.

    You will be much, much more productive on this system than if you spend 60-80 hours sort of half-working and half doing other things. (And if you really did focused philosophy and teaching for 60-80 hours per week, you would soon burn out.) On the 40-focused-hours system will get the rest you need, and the hours you do spend will yield far better results. And you'll be able to have a life! I didn't pull this off very well myself in grad school, but for several years now as a faculty member I've been doing it and….it is surprisingly effective results-wise. There is documented evidence that it works across a widespread range of people too; see the Boice book Michelle references above.

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