Daily Nous 征集：给哲学研究生新生的一条建议

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

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