7 Years Later: Surviving Graduate School in Philosophy
Back in 2011, after completing my first year of graduate school, I spent a lot of time browsing the internet for advice on how to improve my philosophical abilities, professionalize, and be competitive on the academic job market. While there was a lot of good advice scattered across the internet, there was nothing as comprehensive as I had hoped to find. Moreover, a lot of the existing advice was inconsistent. 7 Years Later: Surviving Graduate School in Philosophy is my attempt to create the document that I was once looking for.
I had three main goals in writing this guide. First, I wanted to provide a cohesive and thorough overview of every major element of graduate school. To my knowledge, no such resource exists for the discipline of philosophy. The information that exists is mostly scattered across various philosophy blogs posted within the last decade. I believe this is the first time so much material and information has been consolidated into one place.
Second, I wanted readers to be able to read about their topics of interest easily rather than having to hunt through the entire document. To facilitate this, I formatted the document using three layers of headings to create a robust, easy-to-navigate table of contents. Just click on your section or subsection of interest, and you’ll jump straight to it. As with most digital documents, the text is also searchable using the Ctrl + F command.
Third, I wanted the document to contain lots of references to additional resources. I did not want readers to be limited to just my perspective on these subjects. To accomplish that and avoid cluttering the text with formal citations, I primarily used hyperlinks in the main text and in footnotes to direct readers to other web pages and articles. For that reason, this guide is best read on a digital device connected to the internet. (You're already on the internet if you are reading this webpage, so this shouldn't be a problem for you.)
I am currently gathering suggestions for revisions or updates that I will implement in Summer 2025. If you want to leave feedback on the guide, please open the Google Doc version of 7 Years Later, and use the comments feature to make a suggestion in the relevant part of the guide.
If you aren't sure whether there is any information in the guide that would interest you, a simple sketch of the table of contents is below. Remember that the stable PDF version is probably best for reading, but the Google Doc version is the one to open if you want to leave feedback.
7 Years Later – Table of Contents Overview
- Part 1: Preliminaries
- Part 2: The Basics
- Part 3: The 5-Year Plan
- Part 4: Coursework and Other Program Requirements
- Part 5: Research and Writing
- Part 6: Publishing Papers
- Part 7: Academic Conferences
- Part 8: Developing a Professional Presence
- Part 9: Teaching Competently
- Part 10: Teaching Well
- Part 11: The Dissertation
- Part 12: Job Market Preparation
- Part 13: Work-Life Balance
- Part 14: Obstacles to Finishing Graduate School
- Part 15: Leaving Academia
- Part 16: Final Thoughts
- Appendix A: Should You Go to Graduate School in Philosophy
- Appendix B: Applying to Graduate School in Philosophy
- Appendix C: Active Learning Techniques
- Appendix D: The Shadow Self
