If you could give beginning philosophy graduate students just one piece of advice, what would it be?
I know that some readers will want to jump in to say “don’t”—either as a wisecrack or as sincere guidance.
But as humor it’s clichéd, and as advice it’s not helpful. All graduate students nowadays have heard some version of the warnings most of us know to give undergraduates who tell us they want to go to grad school in philosophy, and they’ve decided to go anyway. So let’s offer advice that will help them do well at what they’ve chosen to do.
I ask that commenters limit themselves to offering just one piece of advice, and to try not to repeat what other commenters have said.
(I know it’s probably too much to ask you all to refrain from raising problems regarding the individuation of advice, but try.)
I’ll start:
Communicate, don’t isolate. If you’re having trouble understanding something, if you’re struggling to keep up with all of your work, if you can’t quite figure out what to write or how to write it, if you feel inhibited from speaking up in class, if you don’t know what you are supposed to do, etc.—it is better to talk about it and seek guidance rather than to ignore or hide your issues, or absent yourself in significant ways from your department. If you have a faculty member designated as your advisor, talk to them; but feel free to approach other faculty as well. And of course your fellow grad students, especially those a few years into the program, may be of valuable assistance. Graduate school involves new tasks, but even familiar kinds of work takes place at a new level of difficulty or intensity, so it is not surprising that some students will be having a hard time. Know that many of today’s talented philosophers felt as you did once, sought advice, and succeeded.
Your turn, philosofriends.
Related:
Grad Traps!
Being an “Awesome First-Year Grad Student”
Douglas Portmore’s Six Commandments for Getting the Most Out of Graduate School
Prioritize understanding when reading.
If you find yourself disagreeing with something, assume for the moment you’ve misunderstood, re-read, and re-consider.
If you still disagree, try one more time.
If you disagree after that, then okay, you might be on to something.
Say “I don’t understand this” at least three times per day. Sometimes, younger persons think that this is shameful, but some of the most intelligent people I know say it all the time! (And: Socrates)
Go back, it’s a trap!
On that note, my advice is: always do the reading (blog posts included).
Find the mental health resources on campus or affiliated with your program and make an appointment; if you’re already in therapy or have a mental health support practice, don’t interrupt it.
Graduate school raises all kinds of things that hard-driving folks keep under wraps, and having a therapist or someone outside the program you can speak to may be helpful in keeping the challenges and obstacles in an appropriate (and hopefully manageable) register.
Some demographic groups receive (sometimes weak, sometimes substantial) preferential treatment in hiring, while others face (sometimes weak, sometimes substantial) disadvantages. Find out whether you belong to a group that benefits, and shamelessly pounce on it if you do. Many people will dislike and resent you for it, but you will get a job and they will not.
My one piece of advice? Try to figure out how to ignore, and insulate yourself from, comments like what Viktor says above; in order to do so, try to form a community of people who aren’t like this and don’t think like this, but instead try to do philosophy together in a supportive, cooperative, wanting-the-best-for-one-another way.
“All graduate students nowadays have heard some version of the warnings most of us know to give undergraduates who tell us they want to go to grad school in philosophy, and they’ve decided to go anyway.”
It would indeed be wonderful if snarky, jaded TT faculty, who have already achieved what we hope and dream of, could keep this in mind.
My advice: Let yourself form friendships. Resist the urge to think of the journey solely as a competition (even if to some extent that’s exactly what it is). The satisfaction of “being right” fades fast, and it will never be enough. Ironically, the people who tend to do the best in the long run are those personable and humble enough to form lasting relationships. This is essential during job talks, especially.
Specialize in philosophy of AI.
/s
Get comfortable with the idea that you may not secure an academic job, relax and enjoy yourself. What a huge privilege to spend a few years thinking about such difficult and interesting questions!
Become a morning person.
Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
Don’t be shy Quickly find a way to at least feel comfortable — and, ideally, enjoy for its own sake — doing philosophy out loud with other people in person. You already enjoy doing philosophy privately through reading and writing papers. But that will only be a small part of the philosophy you’ll now be doing for at least the next several years in seminars, teaching, conferences, hanging out with other philosophers in and out of your department, and so on. So much of this job is done in public; you might as well enjoy it. Besides, enjoying doing philosophy in public for its own sake will also likely bring a host of other instrumental benefits with it.
This advice comes from my own experience. It took me ~3 years into graduate school to stop worrying about what others thought — and, not to be too dramatic, it was agonizing. It wasn’t until I forced myself to start speaking up that I stopped worrying, and only when I stopped worrying did I start to flourish.
Hours spent on writing are one of the strongest predictors of publishing success.
Write every day. For the most part, view “discrete thought” rather than “paper” as the basic component of writing. If (in line with some above comments) you’re reading something and find yourself disagreeing, write the disagreement down; if you’re thinking about something from a seminar, write it down; if a (counter-)example comes to you, write it down; etc.
Connected to this (so, 1.5 pieces of advice), come up with a good file-naming and storage system as soon as possible.
Every piece of graduate school advice, every anecdote about what works and what doesn’t, will be true for someone. It may or may not be true for you. It may or may not work for you. It may or may not make you better at doing philosophy or getting a job.
The only way to find out is to be open to trying different approaches. Some write every day, I’m the most published person in my department and I absolutely do not write every day. I’m lucky if I write once a week. Some find success by being socially engaged and having good professional networks, others find success living largely cloistered monkish lives of teaching and writing.
You may think you know which one you are…but be open to the fact that you may be wrong.
Approach all of your term papers as though you’re trying to write something that could be published. Try to make a defined contribution, even if it is only of the “reply” variety. Don’t think about the paper as just the final paper for the class. Think about it as an opportunity to make a genuine contribution.
Most of your term papers won’t end up being published or publishable. But cultivating this kind of attitude towards your writing will be professionally useful.
My first piece of advice would be in line with the others here that emphasize fostering social connections. But, my second piece of advice would be this:
Resist the tendency to think that what you know is a strict subset of what people you identify as “smart” know. You almost certainly see some things or have insights that others do not and what might seem obvious to you isn’t always obvious to everyone. Don’t sell the uniqueness of your perspective short.
Treat grad school as a job. For people going directly to MA/PhD from undergrad (which I don’t recommend to undergrads who ask me about grad school, but that’s already a second piece of advice–sorry Justin), that means not treating grad school as an extension of undergrad, where your professors are the ones directing the flow of your education and you can kind of let things happen as they happen. Develop a sense of yourself as responsible for how grad school goes for you, and start making your career your own.
Flip side: treat grad school as just a job. Don’t let it eat your whole personality. Get a couple hobbies, make friends who aren’t grad students, etc.
Trust your instincts. Strive to honour your own sense of what is important.
Build/join a community of friends who have nothing to do with philosophy or graduate school, and (generally) don’t talk about grad school or philosophy with them.
Learn how to do conscious streaming writing and practice everyday half an hour, with your favorite drink!
Make friends who are not in your graduate program. Join a graduate intramural team, club, whatever. Having another grad student to talk to who can understand the challenges of being a graduate student but at the same time is NOT a philosopher and not in your program is an amazing asset.