If there is one guiding theme behind my mid-career reflections so far, it is that while our careers in the profession are subject to a great deal of 'life and luck', adaptation is key. As I explained in my post on bitterness and resentment, early in my grad career I didn't adapt very well to some unlucky events and aspects of the profession I found frustrating. I let bitterness and frustration get the best of me for a time, mostly to my own detriment. Similarly, as I wrote in my post on why people matter, I didn't get it early in my career why people matter. Finally, I've explained why I think it is important to adapt to the fact that quite a bit of conventional wisdom in the profession seems dubious at best. If one just follows conventional wisdom unreflectively, one may inadvertently adopt counterproductive job-market strategies.
In a sense, none of this should be very surprising. What is true in philosophy seems true of life in general: uncontrollable events aside, the better one adapts the better off one is likely to be. But this in turn raises the question: what strategies can one adopt to better ensure that one adapts well to things in the profession. When I reflect on my career so far, one thing stands out: the importance of asking for help when you need it. Allow me to explain.
As I explained on this blog a while back, I'm an extremely shy and introverted person. This might surprise a lot of people given the fact that I blog so publicly–but, the thing is, I have a much easier time being open behind a keyboard than I do in person. That's just sort of the way introverts can be! Anyway, as an introverted person, I've always had a really hard time opening up to others and approaching them for help. Whenever I run into a problem–whether it's a philosophy problem, a personal problem, or a professional problem–my first inclination is to try to figure it out on my own. Alas, this got me into a lot of trouble early in my career.
After finishing comprehensive examinations in grad school, it was of course time to sit down and come up with a dissertation topic. Naturally, I did what any introvert would probably do: I holed up in my room reading books and thinking all on my lonesome, avoiding my faculty advisor and other faculty members like the plague. Needless to say, it didn't turn out well. In between playing music and videogames, I spent about a year and a half spinning my wheels on one topic: a defense of Humean internalism about normative reasons (something I finally returned to many years later here). When that project went nowhere, I holed up in my room for about another six months toying and writing up a few chapter drafts of some ideas on voting and opinion polling (which I also later returned to). Alas, that topic didn't work out either: my dissertation committee was so unimpressed with what I gave them that they canceled my prospectus defense the night before (yikes).
Anyway, after literally two years or so of trying to do things 'my way' and getting nowhere, I finally had a bright idea: that maybe I should actually approach my dissertation committee and other faculty members for help. So that's exactly what I did. As uncomfortable as it was–and as ashamed as I was that I had spent about two years being completely unproductive–I walked into people's offices and just asked for any tips they might have for coming up with a good topic. And just like that, one faculty member gave me an amazing tip: he told me to read widely, far outside of my normal areas. I had never thought of that. I had spent a year and a half poring over the literature on internalism and externalism about reasons, running my head into the proverbial wall…and it had never occurred to me that maybe I should just read totally different stuff. Anyway, I followed his advice, read a ton of social and political philosophy (which I didn't focus in at the time)…and came up with my dissertation idea! All it took was asking for help.
This wasn't the only time in my career asking for help worked like this. There's a passage in the Bible that reads, "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you." (Matthew 7:7) I had always considered it a pretty silly passage. Like really, all you have to do is ask and doors will be opened to you? It can't be that easy, right? Well of course it's not…and yet my experience in the profession has been there is really something to it. Time and again, whenever I have struggled, asking for help helped. Here are just a couple of other cases.
Like many people, I had trouble publishing early in my career. I had a few R&R's at good journals while in grad school, yet none of them turned into publications–and a year post PhD, all I had published was one short 'reply' piece. I knew this was nowhere near good enough if I wanted a TT job. So I did what I did when I was struggling with my dissertation topic: I reached out to people for help. I approached two recent graduates from my program–both of whom had fantastic publishing records–and asked them what their 'secret' was. They both independently told me exactly the same things: that because rejection rates at philosophy journals are over 90%, they always had ten papers under review. Their rationale was simple: they didn't have time to waste. They needed to get tenure, to get tenure they needed publications, the peer-review process takes forever, and 9 out of 10 papers are rejected. So, they said, to publish consistently they found 10 papers under review is the golden number. While I thought there was no way I could draft up that many papers (I had spent the last year writing a measly one and a half papers), I listened: I forced myself to draft up and submit ten papers. And voila…I discovered they were right: I began publishing several papers per year, just like they did.
That's one case. Here's another. When I first moved to Tampa, I had a terrible time adjusting to our long class times. Unlike most universities, which use 3-credit courses, our university has 4-credit courses. This may not sound like that great of a difference. But when you have a 3:3 course load, prepping courses you have never taught before, it can be brutal: I had a Tuesday/Thursday course schedule each semester where each of my undergrad courses met for two hours twice a week (so, six hours per day). The teaching strategies I had always used–Socratic dialogue–just didn't work. Students tuned out after the first hour or so, and the second hour of each course was like the longest hour of my (and apparently, their!) lives. Anyway, it didn't work. They hated, I hated it, and my student evals were abysmal. The magic answer: you guessed it, asking for help! I approached someone else who had experience and asked them how they handled it…and I attended our university's teaching guild meetings where we read on different kinds of pedagogy. Once again, it worked. I reworked my teaching style, and things got better.
Long story short, the lesson I would suggest to early-career folks going through tough times is this. When you're going through difficulties, you may want to pull away from others and try to figure things out yourself. I've seen more than a few grad students go this route. However, it rarely turns out well. Ask for help. The worst thing that can happen is that you won't get it. The best thing that can happen is that you will. Either way, I think, it's a chance worth taking.
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