On Working on Problems That Really Interest You; On advice to PhD Students

Work on problems that really interest you. Cross train. Be competent in multiple disciplines and methods. Don't be afraid to start draft/writing before you know all that there is to know. Publish well. Use social media cautiously. Don't think you will be an exception to standard rules because of your race or color. A woman does not get tenure because she been a hard-working institutional citizen rather than research productive. Don't try to please everyone. Make professional friends widely. Go to everything. Develop resilience. Learn to negotiate and to talk about money and goals without embarrassment.--Anita Allen@What Is it Like to Be A Philosopher? [HT Dailynous]

The inspiring and sobering -- so much misconduct in philosophy! -- interview with Anita Allen (whom I have never met, I think) reminded me of an episode at a lovely conference in Edinburgh a few years ago. It was a concluding, closing round-table, and together with the other 'senior' scholars, I was asked if I had any suggestions for the PhD students and early career scholars. I think all of us [apologies to my fellow panelists, if I am mis-remebering!] said something to the effect of, "Follow your passion!" All of us (at different levels of seniority) had done well for ourselves in the discipline, and each of us was busy with and had carved out a distinctive niche/voice for ourselves. I don't recall how much discussion we had about this at the time and to what degree we qualified the point, but for some reason I felt uneasy about the memory. (In other respects the conference was a joy, so it was a strange ambivalence.)

These days, the best advice I can give to PhD students are twofold:

• Get a dog. {If allergic, get a designer poodle}

S/he structures your life (you have to go out regularly; be home on time); you'll end up meeting [interesting] people outside your program, and they will be a more reliable support group if necessary than departmental peers; most important: you'll get to develop your nurturing qualities, and in return you get unconditional love. All of these are goods, but I also think it's the vest antidote for the many ways in which depression hits graduate students. [Obviously, the previous sentence is not advice against getting professional when you show signs of depressive or obsessive symptoms in graduate school.]

• Talk with other PhD students before agreeing to work with a particular supervisor*

I am always amazed by how little research people do before they entrust the most important professional relationship of their career to somebody they barely know. To be sure, each relationship is different and a PhD supervisor who works well with one person, may have more complex relationship with the next. But often the supervisors that create problems, tend to have a string of problems. Obviously due to publicity over sex scandals in philosophy the focus is on inappropriate behavior (of the sort Allen also describes, alas.) But the problems can be very diverse. For example, in grad school, I knew a professor who showed no signs of ever reading not just seminar papers, but also not the chapters of his students' dissertations. I was not alone in noticing this; yet new PhD students kept signing up with him, etc.

The interview says something, I'll copy henceforth:

• "Don't be afraid to start draft/writing before you know all that there is to know."

I love Prof. Allen shares this wisdom! It's not just very important advice for the more obsessive/compulsive types (who will always find reason to keep researching). It's good advice for all of us because drafting/writing is -- when properly structured -- an excellent tool in research. To simplify a great deal, when you have a sense of a thesis and an argument (etc.), writing these down, helps you, on re-reading your own words, point the way toward modifications of your thesis/argument and the need for further evidence. (If you are one of those people, by contrast, who thinks all your written work is fantastic, you can share drafts with others.) By drafting in the context of (say) an outlined chapter, you also can create constraints that will help y ou put yourself in position to make choices about what belongs in the chapter/essay and what should be left for other moments. During my dissertation I would try to cram everything into single, monster chapters. But since then, I have come to see the wisdom of working in more modular fashion. You may also discover, that while writing, you already know quite a bit. [None of this is meant as a discouragement to read the literature and engage  it--there is a strain in professional philosophy that looks down own this, but I am not a member of that party.]

Okay, with that out of the way, what about the following your passion advice ("Work on problems that really interest you")? I am less sure about this. It's worth noting that this can be high risk high reward strategy. (Prof. Allen's case is instructive: she 'left' professional philosophy to go to law school, then left a high status law firm, etc.) But that also means you may not succeed in your ambition (in getting a PhD, a post-doc, a tenure track job, etc). Given that the people who get interviewed in What it is Like and who show up as keynotes, this also creates obvious selection effects; you hear from the 'survivors'. Moreover, there are other, non-trivial costs  along the way; your intellectual community may be small, and so you will feel isolated and lonely.  If you are doing something genuinely distinctive and original, you may also face genuine intellectual hostility ("why is that philosophy?") and opposition. The  peculiar fact of academic philosophy is that there is simultaneous eagerness for novelty and enormous intellectual brutality against people that branch out. (Not to mention the fact, that we continue to glorify the sharp-witted take down of others.) As Prof. Allen suggests (perhaps reflecting on different issues), Don't think you will be an exception to standard rules.

To be sure, nobody really knows what will be thought significant a few years out. And given that it is out of your control, you probably should not worry too much about it (as the sports psychologist echoing Seneca recommend). But a PhD is not just a contribution to original research, but also credentialing and the moment when you acquire a whole range of competencies. In that respect it is significant that Prof. Allen started working on "problems that really interest her" after, if I understand correctly, she had acquired a PhD and a law degree (so credentialed and very competent). (Maybe I am wrong about this--apologies if so.) It's not that I don't agree with her (and others) that soulless academic work is pretty pointless (and God knows the world does not need more publications that lack intellectual necessity). 

One final thought: often when people suggest, follow your passion, there is an implicit suggestion that there is just this one thing that can really interest you. (Prof. Allen does not claim or imply this; just a further thought.) The idea is a bit analogous to the Aristofanesian-Platonic idea of the one true love. Maybe there is truth in the story, but it fails to do justice to the more subtle point that becoming competent is in part the facility of becoming passionate about unexpected things.**

Now, most of us are acquainted with the panic that we may have one idea and so better milk it for all its worth. (I'll spare you my favorite example of the senior professor who is de facto always writing the same paper.) I don't doubt narrow-minded hedgehogs exist and maybe most of us are better off by being such a hedgehog. But I suspect that what the hedgehog focuses on is very context-specific, and that it could have been otherwise, even otherwise for that individual. 

 

*Obviously different academic systems allow for more or less choice and also create different conditions for prior research.

**Update: the previous sentence was introduced after and inspired by a facebook comment by Martin Lenz.

Comments

[Jordan Rodgers]

I'm in agreement with basically all of this, but just want to underscore that there's another reason for saying "work on problems that really interest you" rather than "follow your passion." You note one -- that "problems" is plural while "passion" is singular. But the other is that talking about "finding your passion" suggests that there is something already out there, waiting to be found, and that your feeling rootless at the moment is a sign that you haven't found it yet. But my sense is that hitting on a good research program doesn't actually feel much like having finally *found* something, such that you have quieted that rootlessness worry.

Suggesting that someone work on problems that interest them might mean to advise against working on hot topics just because they're hot, but it might also be meant to advise against putting off doing work until you're sure that what you're pursuing is your "passion."