In our June "how can we help you?" thread, a reader writes:
I am a somewhat new assistant professor at an RI university with a PhD program. I am supervising a thesis, on several other committees, and I have taught several graduate seminars. I have been a bit surprised by the way some graduate students interact with professors – notably, they seem to be unnecessarily shooting themselves in the foot. I will add that I am an easy going person, and I try my best to not let any of my personal judgments affect how I treat students, but of course, no one is perfect. And I know many other professors who don't have the same views as I do, i.e., they think it is okay to hold certain types of behaviors against grad students. Since this is a forum for early career philosophers, I thought my experience might be worth mentioning and perhaps discussing.
1.When professors provide comments on your work, at least reply to the email and say something like, "thanks for your feedback." If the professor works in your area, it is wise to attempt to have a conversation about the comments once you have had time to digest them. For one, you can often learn a lot this way and improve philosophically, and two, this professor might be writing you a letter. Responding to comments shows a certain type of motivation and willingness to learn, but can also convey to the professor that you are improving, and depending on what you say, they might be impressed by your response. No reply at all risks irritating the professor, and it also makes if far more likely they won't think anything about you either way, positive or negative, and this makes it much harder to write a strong letter.
2. If you need to drop a graduate course, send the professor a quick email. Maybe you are dropping because you don't like the professor and the course. That's okay, but it still seems pragmatic to send an email of the type, "I wanted to let you know I dropped your course. For various reasons, I realized it just wasn't the best fit for my schedule this semester. I hope this won't cause disruption." Letting the professor know is simply courteous. Often graduate students are assigned to do various things in certain weeks of the course, and this needs to be rescheduled if a student drops.
3. Do not just disappear from your committee. If you are having a hard time getting work done, at least send emails and try to communicate the trouble you are having, or that you are indeed thinking about and trying to move forward. For one, your professor might be able to help. And two, it is hard to write good letters for students when you don't know them well and you don't know their work well. Reading drafts over a couple of years is a way to get to know a student's work much better than just reading the final dissertation draft before you are ready to defend.Besides, if you plan on going on the market ABD you had better have given your committee enough material so they can write a decent letter.
4. When there are emails about the program asking for feedback and ways to improve, reply! There are a lot of complaints on here about how departments run their grad programs. However, several anonymous surveys were sent out to our graduate students about ways to improve the department and the response rate was very low. There was plenty of time to do the surveys, and several requests for responses were made. While the department might not always listen, they might listen sometimes, especially if they are going to the trouble of asking.
5. If you are taking a grad course, and your professor offers to give feedback on uncompleted drafts, take advantage of it! Getting feedback can prove to be very difficult, and it is wise to take advantage of any opportunity that is made easily available.
I know graduate students are in a very rough position. And as I said, I do my best to not hold anything of this against them. But it is also prudent to behave in ways that will maximize your learning experience.
Of course, I am only one person. I would be happy to hear from other grad professors – maybe my experience is off base, or maybe I am just expecting too much.
I think these are fair tips, and would encourage other grad faculty to weigh in on them and propose tips of their own in the comments section. However, I also want to propose a general tip for grad faculty, both new ones (like the above reader) and more experienced grad faculty: namely, to be forthright about the above kinds of concerns, but also understanding. Let me explain both halves of this tip.
First, as the above reader points out, graduate students can sometimes (oftentimes?) be simply oblivious to things faculty members think they are doing wrong. Second, at least in my experience, there can be a tendency of faculty members to never say anything until a really big problem arises. For example, I've known quite a lot grad students–both in philosophy and in my spouse's discipline–who routinely did #3 above, 'disappearing' from their dissertation committee, never getting anything done and avoiding their committee at every opportunity. Insofar as grad students tend to make certain kinds of errors, I'm inclined to think that faculty should point out to students when they err and proactively seek to help them avoid such errors in the future. In other words, if you think they're messing up, talk to your grad students! This may sound trite, but again, in my experience, there can be a real tendency of faculty to avoid things and let things slide until it's 'too late.'
Second, although I think being proactive and forthright are good things, I'm also inclined to think that faculty members should be firm but understanding when students mess up–even if they mess up pretty good, as it were. Here's why. I've had the interesting experience of not only going through graduate school myself, but of witnessing grad student behavior in my spouse's top-5 program in another discipline. What's really striking to me is this: grad students appear to systematically make certain kinds of mistakes–not just little mistakes, but big mistakes. One of the most common mistakes I've seen, again, is #3: grad students can get really stressed out, lose confidence, suffer mental health challenges, and so on–and then make bad personal and professional decisions (such as avoiding writing, avoiding the department, going out with friends too much or getting sidetracked by hobbies). Again, I haven't seen this sort of thing just happen a few times. On the contrary, I've seen them happen with a vast majority of grad students I've known–including (and this important) student after student who then went on to have very good careers. Grad students screw up. It's simply what many they do. Grad school is uniquely challenging in many ways, presenting many students for the first time in their lives largely unsupervised academic work (as, after coursework in particular, students are largely left to their own devices to 'figure things out'). Many grad students are also young and still figuring out how to be responsible adults. Indeed, empirical research indicates that certain forms of impulsivity (particularly substance use and abuse) peak around the age of 24–something that also coheres with my recollection of grad school.
None of these remarks are intended to excuse bad behavior. As someone who made a lot errors in graduate school myself, I know all-too-well the negative consequences of making them. All I mean to suggest is that while it is important to provide grad students with tips on how to do better (as our OP reader's comments aim to do), it is also important for faculty not to forget how difficult being a grad student is and how, despite making mistake after mistake, many students who make them eventually learn better and go on to have fine enough careers. Conversations like these, I think, can be good in both directions: for alerting grad students to what faculty think they should do better, but also for reminding faculty that good mentoring simultaneously involves firm candor, but also empathy, forgiveness, and understanding.
But these are just my thoughts. What are yours? Do you have any tips you think grad students should know, or conversely, tips that faculty mentoring grad students should know?
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