Monday, September 17, 2007

It's a Shame You Have to Learn the Hard Way

I'm sure everyone's already seen this, but via Leiter, here's Aidan McGlynn's handy roundup of publishing advice for grad students in philosophy. As someone who's gotten astonishingly shitty advice about this in the past, it really is useful to see the thoughts of people who aren't evil freaks.

There's one thing about publishing I wish someone told me back when I was starting my dissertation. Obviously, I don't have a whole lot of experience publishing, so take this for what it's worth. But I wish someone had told me not to think of what I was writing as a chapter. It wouldn't make sense to think about it as a stand-alone paper, either. I wish someone had told me to think about what I was writing as neither a chapter or paper, but work. Because the work is going to be the basis for both a chapter and a paper. I wish I was thinking like that, because then I'd have been thinking about how the work would have to be packaged to be a chapter and how it'd have to packaged to be a paper. It seems like that could have saved a lot of pain in figuring out how to rewrite a chapter as a stand-alone paper.

Anyway, I wish somebody had told me that.

2 comments:

Inside the Philosophy Factory said...

I just found your blog and am loving it!

I'm trying to balance teaching a 5/5 load at a community college and writing a dissertation... believe me, it isn't easy.

I do know that if I can pull it off, I'll be able to answer the "how will you balance teaching and research" question...

Good luck and let me know if you'd like a guest-post about applying at a two-year school. I've been on three search committees, so I saw that from the other side.

Pseudonymous Grad Student said...

ItPF -- Sorry for the delayed reply. I'd love to get your take on how teaching school and CC search committees work. E-mail me at philosophyjobmarket -at- gmail, and we can set something up.