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Over the past few months, in the lead-up to the publication of my book, I’ve used this space to share brief excerpts. Now the book is out! If you want a copy, you can order it from the University of Michigan website (or other popular book ordering places!). In case you haven’t decided whether this book would be a good addition to your library, here’s a brief overview.
I wrote Thriving as a Graduate Writer because I believe graduate students can reframe their experience of academic writing. We all know that writing is at the heart of the academic enterprise. It is both how we communicate and how we are assessed. That combination can be brutal for any writer, and it’s particularly fraught for graduate writers, who must learn disciplinary writing practices while being judged on their early efforts. Recognizing these challenges is valuable; graduate students are better off knowing that their difficulties with academic writing are entirely legitimate. This recognition, however, is only the first step. The next step must be to find ways to ameliorate those challenges.
In the book, I offer a discussion of principles, strategies, and habits that I think can help. (The table of contents can be found below, so you can see the breakdown of this material.) The principles point to a way of thinking about academic writing. Since writing takes up so much time and energy, it is worth exploring foundational ideas that can ground a writing practice: writing as thinking; writing as revision; writing as reader awareness; writing as authorial responsibility. Those principles lead into concrete strategies that can transform the experience of creating and revising an academic text. The heart of this book is the five chapters that unpack these approaches to working with text: managing structure; managing sentences; managing punctuation patterns; managing momentum; and building a revision process. The final element of the book is the consideration of writing habits. Even with a solid approach to academic writing and range of useful strategies to hand, we all still need to find ways to get writing done. Graduate writers, in particular, need exposure to writing productivity advice that is rooted in their unique experience of academic writing. This chapter provides a range of strategies to help build a consistent and sustainable writing routine: prioritizing writing; setting goals; finding community; developing writing awareness; and grounding productivity in writing expertise.
This book is a short (only 226 pages!) self-study text. You can read through the whole book—in whatever way works for you—and then use it as a reference. The manner in which you refer back to the book will depend on what you currently need to concentrate on. Most readers will benefit from returning to two chapters: Establishing a Revision Process (Chapter Eight) and Developing Sustainable Writing Habits (Chapter Nine). Those chapters are organized around charts that are distributed throughout the chapter (and that appear again at the back of the book). Since every writer has their own challenges and their own optimal writing process, I urge readers to take those charts and rework them—on an ongoing basis—to suit their needs. In addition to the charts, you will also find other resources at the end of the book: guides to using the book in a graduate writing course or graduate writing group and brief account of the blogs and books that I most recommend to graduate writers.
Overall, this book aims to inspire graduate writers to think differently about the nature of writing and then offers concrete strategies for managing both their writing and their writing routines. It was a labour of love to craft the writing advice that I offer everyday—here and in the classroom—into a more coherent and enduring form. I hope it gives you the capacity to approach this indispensable part of academic life with more confidence and more enjoyment. I look forward to hearing what you think!
Thriving as a Graduate Writer is now available from the University of Michigan Press. To order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!
rcayley
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I’ve spent the last few years working on a book about graduate writing. That process is now drawing to a close: Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be published in June! Between now and then, I’m going to use this space to share brief excerpts. In addition to my discussion of principles, strategies, and habits for effective academic writing, the book has short ‘asides’ that allowed me to engage with topics outside that main narrative. Over the next four months, I’ll share my favourites of those asides. As always, I’d love to hear what you think!
Conservatism of Expectations
It’s hard to talk about meeting reader expectations as a graduate writer without attending to the conservative implications of prioritizing established expectations. Rather than conform to expectations that feel allied to outdated and inequitable systems, some graduate writers may wish to write differently, in ways that confront or subvert the norms of standard research communication. Resisting those expectations can take many forms: normalizing World Englishes; refusing white supremacy in language; understanding subjectivity in research imagination; drawing upon Indigenous research epistemologies; integrating multimodal research into doctoral theses. Any one of those endeavors could easily be hampered by the replicative nature of doctoral education. And writing in a manner that requires adherence to existing academic practices can be demoralizing; making changes to those practices is central to why some people undertake graduate work. As a result, some writers may choose to discount those norms during graduate work. It’s worth noting that some writers may share those critical commitments while being uninterested in challenging existing norms. Despite wishing change to happen, these writers may feel that their academic work is already unfairly scrutinized or that it isn’t their job to transform academic writing practices. What’s more, some writers in this situation may feel particularly anxious to gain access to a hidden curriculum that others seem to assimilate more easily. Given that range of attitudes and pressures, I think there is value in laying out established conventions in a way that leaves the writer the freedom to choose their own path. Certainly, working around norms—or making norms work for you—is easiest when those norms are well understood. I don’t want the ideas contained within this book to be an impediment to writing in ways that support the work that feels urgent to you; instead, I hope they can be deployed in the service of the academic work that you want to do in the way you want to do it.
Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!
rcayley
Book Cover showing title: Thriving as a Graduate Writer
A graduate student in philosophy has the responsibility of organizing a graduate student conference hosted by their department, and has some questions, starting with:
1. “Why put on a graduate student conference? What should the purpose of a graduate conference be?“
(modification of a photo by Simon C. May)
They write, “One possible answer is that it provides a low stakes opportunity for grad students to practice presenting and commenting. And the student presenters can get valuable feedback on their work.” But the student hase questions about how to address various issues:
2. “I don’t quite know how I should balance the needs and interests of the two main stakeholders: student presenters from other schools and the grad students at our school.”
3. “Which papers should we accept for the conference? The obvious answer is to accept the best papers. But there are competing goals. For example, I want the presenters to benefit from the conference. Our conference will have a (faculty) keynote speaker. So it seems there’s a reason to prioritize papers by graduate students that suggest they’d benefit the most from the keynote speaker’s presence.”
4. “I want to be inclusive of the diverse interests the audience (i.e. grad students at our department) might have. Not everyone is interested in the main theme of the conference, and I’d feel bad having them sit through the whole conference feeling bored. How many of the accepted papers should be ‘off-theme’?”
5. “Should location be taken in the consideration, by preferring students closer to our department since the travel cost would be lower?”
6. “Which parts of the conference do presenters and keynote speaker find the most value in?”
7. “How should I pick the conference theme? How narrow or broad should it be?”
8. “How can I get the grad students in my own department to be more invested in helping with the conference and making it good?”
They add: “In general, I want to hear from people who have attended and/or organized grad conferences. I want to know what they like and dislike about grad conferences, and how such conferences can be made better.”
Readers?
Graduate students at Temple University have been on strike since the end of January, seeking an increase in wages, more affordable healthcare, longer parental and bereavement leave, and better working conditions.
Faculty in the Department of Philosophy at Temple have issued a statement in support of their graduate student workers. Dated February 10th, it states:
As members of the Department of Philosophy faculty, we support the demands of the Temple University Graduate Students’ Association (TUGSA) in their current contract negotiations with the University. We also strongly oppose the University’s revocation of striking graduate students’ tuition and health insurance benefits. Our graduate students rely on Temple health insurance to meet their basic healthcare needs. Directly threatening the health and welfare of members of our student body evidences a disregard for our community and undercuts the University’s claims to care about equity.
Graduate workers are a key part of our department and our university: without them, we are not able to complete our own research, mentor undergraduate students, or effectively teach students in our courses. For over a year, TUGSA has put forward proposals to ensure fair wages, working conditions, dependent health care coverage, and leave policies for graduate TAs and RAs. These proposals would improve the lives of graduate workers, as well as benefiting our department and enhancing the quality of undergraduate instruction.
We believe that the members of TUGSA, even while they are on strike, remain Temple graduate students, and we hope that the University will refrain from unnecessarily harsh or disrespectful treatment of them.
Eli Alshanetsky, Philip Atkins, Katie Brennan, César Cabezas, Lee-Ann Chae, Eugene Chislenko, Paul Crowe, Kristin Gjesdal, Espen Hammer, Brian Hutler, Miriam Solomon, and David Wolfsdorf
Department of Philosophy, Temple University
You can learn more about the strike here.
If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will know that I’ve spent the last few years working on a book about graduate writing. That process is now drawing to a close: Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be published in June! Between now and then, I’m going to use this space to share brief excerpts. In addition to my discussion of principles, strategies, and habits for effective academic writing, the book has short ‘asides’ that allowed me to engage with topics outside that main narrative. Over the next four months, I’ll share my favourites of those asides. As always, I’d love to hear what you think!
Since graduate students are so often on the receiving end of advice, some of you might find it helpful to be able to engage in a quick translation process.
Advice: You should do X.
The person telling you to do X is probably suggesting a way to achieve something (let’s call it Y). Unfortunately, they aren’t talking about the importance of Y or telling you how you might achieve Y; they are just telling you to do X. If all you do is attempt X, without understanding its connection to Y, you might actually make your situation worse. A little further investigation on your part can help translate the advice into something more helpful:
Translation: You should do X because Y.
Once you have that formulation, to can adapt the advice to your own purposes:
Advice you can use: You should do something to achieve Y.
To make this more concrete, let’s consider a perennial favourite bit of writing advice:
Advice: You should write in the morning.
This advice is fine if you are a morning person; however, if you are not, you may end up struggling to force yourself to write according to someone else’s temperament. Or maybe you are a morning person, but your life circumstances–the demands of paid work or care work–prevent you from using that time for writing. To avoid the frustration of advice that doesn’t work for you or your life, you can try to understand the underlying reason for the advice:
Translation: You should write in the morning to avoid wasting your best energy of the day.
Advice you can use: You should find ways to avoid wasting your best energy of the day.
Now the ball’s in your court. You need to identify when you have the most energy and find ways–within the context of your life–to preserve that time for writing. This translation technique has the potential to help you to use supervisory advice, especially when you find it overly attuned to the specificity of someone else’s writing situation. The cliché that all advice is a form of nostalgia can be true. But it’s possible to translate such advice into a more suitable form, thereby deriving the benefit of advice in a way that makes sense in your writing life.
Thriving as a Graduate Writer will be available in early June from the University of Michigan Press. To pre-order your copy, visit the book page. Order online and save 30% with discount code UMS23!
rcayley
Book Cover showing title: Thriving as a Graduate Writer
Joshua Smart (Southern Illinois University – Edwardsville), once again, is organizing them. He writes in with the following information:
Signups are open through Sunday, January 29th. To join, fill out a short survey at www.jasmartphilosophy.com/virtual-dissertation-groups.
What it is: Virtual Dissertation Groups is a free service for those currently working on their doctoral dissertations in philosophy departments (or philosophy of science or the like). Since 2014, VDG has connected students from over 30 countries to provide peer feedback on dissertation work with a minimal time commitment.
How it works: Each dissertator is placed in a group of three on the basis of a short survey about their project/area of work. Toward the end of each full month of the semester, one member will send some work (3k – 6k words) to the other two, who then return feedback in a week or so. (Usually these are written comments, though some groups choose to have video discussions.)
Why it’s good: While advisors and committees are important, it can be incredibly helpful to discuss one’s work with peers in a lower-stakes environment and particularly enlightening to do so with those who take a different approach, outlook, or focus. There is even evidence from psychological research that even just thinking about problems in relation to persons who are geographically distant can promote creative insights. With students at a variety of programs and from around the world, VDG is a great way to capture some of these benefits!
FreshRSS 