Scholar's guilt

Today is the first day in years that I've had an entire day to myself. My son is away for the day and night with Beavers, and I had an entire day to do with as I pleased.

Obviously, I have day times when he's at school and I am at home, but this was an entire 24 hour period.

It was weird.

So what did I do with my time? Well, I did a few necessary tasks like laundry, then I decided no, I should make the most of having the day of freedom.

So, I got myself a glass of wine (it was 4pm; I never drink before my son's bedtime to this was an uncharacteristic indulgence), set up the hammock hanging between two trees in my garden, and lay back and read a book.

Sounds leisurely enough, right?

The book was an academic text which I think will be pretty crucial for my PhD (John Danaher's Robot Sex). I was highlighting and making notes too.

The incessant studying even on a day of 'freedom' is of course caused by a phenomenon that many students, professors and academics are familiar with: scholar's guilt.

Whenever I'm not writing/researching (and not parenting) I have a voice in my head which says "you should be working on your PhD". It's like a micro-managing pedant lives on my shoulder, forever checking up on what I'm doing.

That's not to say I'm always working - of course I'm not! In fact I found the time today to scroll through Pinterest while lying in the hammock - then accidentally dropping my mobile phone onto the floor and smashing the screen on it 😭 (and I was only a couple of gulps into the wine, in case you're wondering!) But I digress.

The salient point is that while I was scrolling through Pinterest- and later, Googling how much it costs to repair the screen on my phone (it costs about 75% of what I paid for for the phone 😭) - I had scholar's guilt all the while.

I suppose it's just something that people either learn to live with, or they somehow overcome it. I don't get the guilt when I'm with my son, as there is no conceivable way I could do any substantive work while he's awake... but whenever he's asleep or away from me, I feel it. The nagging feeling that I ought to be working. Even when I'm sleeping over at my mum's house, or on the few occasions when I wake up before my son, the scholar's guilt is there, telling me to get PhD-ing.

Then again, perhaps a little scholar's guilt is a good thing, or else I may spend my non-childcaring time just lazing around in a hammock and drinking wine all day long. Then I'd never complete the PhD - and it'd cost me a bloomin' fortune in smashed phones too!

"They mustn't have had many good submissions" - impostor syndrome and negative assumptions

A couple of months go, I sent off an abstract to a CFP for a conference and this week I got an email saying I'd been accepted/invited to present my work there. "Hooray!" I thought - which was almost immediately followed by the thought "Maybe they didn't have many good submissions." I astonished even myself with my instantaneous self-doubt! "Maybe they're desperate for speakers?" I wondered, and "Maybe their reviewing procedures are biased?" I asked myself as I recalled the double-blind review procedure.

I can, through an act of will - and in defiance of my inner critic - insist to myself "No, my work was selected because it was good, not because they are desperate or careless with their selections", but it does sometimes feel forced and disingenuous to say that to myself. 

Of course, I recognise that my self-doubts are impostor syndrome, plain and simple (but if I recognise I have it, then I realise I'm good, and if I know I'm good then I don't have impostor syndrome!) 

Anecdotally, impostor syndrome seems commonplace among high achieving people. As kids, they see coming second as failure; getting 98% in a test just shows you weren't perfect; and no matter how well they do, still the feeling remains inside them that it's simply not good enough. Does this come from the school system? (I've seen the 'Two stars and a wish' strategy all over the place - ie each piece of work receives two positive comments and one suggestion for how it could be improved further.) I think self-doubt is perhaps reinforced by a school system which of course wants to push children to make progress. If my teachers hadn't reminded me that I needed to put capital letters after a full stop, I probably wouldn't do it now. But it can't be just the school who are to blame, as there are many kids who (outwardly, at least) aren't self-critical. But so often these aren't the kids who are getting 95% and just have a positive self-image; they are the kids who are getting 45% but just don't care that they're doing badly. There really does seem to be a correlation between high achievers and the feeling that one isn't (yet) good enough. 

Some self-doubt and feelings of inadequacy is probably what causes the high achieving - or at least helps it along. I work hard, achieve well, feel like it's still not good enough, and so work harder and achieve more. It's a good recipe for high achievement!

John Stuart Mill (I ❤️ Mill!) wrote that it's better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. In many ways, it seems to be true - the esteemed but sometimes dissatisfying life of high achievers does seem to be of a higher quality than the satisfaction a 'fool' gets from, say, reality TV and beer. I'd hope that achievement and happiness are not mutually exclusive, but if they are, then for my son I'd choose happiness over achievement every time. 

But what of my own impostor syndrome? Well, I suppose I really ought to heed the advice I've given to various kids about taking pride in your achievements and accepting praise and compliments with good grace. So I'll say this (even though it feels boastful and forced): if I've been chosen to speak at a conference, it's because I'm good enough to do so. I'm awesome!!

"You're so lucky!"

I have a few posts which I've labelled with the tag 'stupid things people say'. "You're so lucky" should be placed front and centre. Of course, there is such a thing as luck, and so there are times when "You're so lucky" is an entirely appropriate thing to say.

My lucky dip numbers came up on Lotto.
     "You're so lucky!"

I happen to have been born in a country where medical treatment is free at the point of delivery.
     "You're so lucky!"

I won a game of Snakes and ladders.
     "You're so lucky!"

All of the above are indeed examples of (good) luck, and "you're so lucky" is an appropriate and true thing to say; I have no complaints about events such as these being attributed to luck, as these are genuine examples of luck.

My gripe is when things happen in my (or someone else's) life which are not due to luck, but people say "you're so lucky" nonetheless.

For example, after I finished my undergrad degree, my then boyfriend and I decided we wanted to go travelling. I worked a rubbish job earning £5 an hour, and I took overtime whenever I could. We didn't go out at all for over a year, except for a curry once a fortnight costing £5 each. We seldom drank alcohol, we spent less than £20 on clothes during that year, we had one vehicle between the two of us, and we lived in a shared house which was cheap because it was skanky and in a rough area. I managed to save up £2500 in a year, and we went off to Australia, New Zealand and Thailand. And it's funny, the people who'd called us 'boring' and even 'weird' for really tightening our belts that year were the very same ones who said we were 'lucky' to be able to go travelling abroad. It made my blood boil. No one called us lucky when we were scrimping and saving.

And I get the very same things said to me now. (And I'm sure other hardworking people also get this said to them, and it's so offensive.) I don't have a job at the moment because I'm doing a PhD. So I stay home reading articles and writing stuff on the computer.

"You're so lucky!"

Well no, I'm not lucky. I've always worked hard at my studies and that's why I'm now able to do the PhD.
"Yes but you're lucky that you don't have to worry about money."

No it's not luck. All funded placements are funded on merit; they don't just roll the dice and fund people randomly.
"Yes but it's lucky that your mortgage and bills are low enough to allow you to survive on a £15k stipend."

No, I have a small mortgage because I bought this house with a big deposit of my own money which I'd saved up by working hard and spending little. I could have chosen a more expensive (and bigger) house with larger mortgage payments, but I chose not to. So it's not luck that I have low mortgage payments. And I still choose not to spend frivolously; I buy budget brands and I don't go out for expensive meals and nights/days out. That's not luck.

it's so offensive when people say that career success and academic success are down to luck; it's a way of saying "you don't really deserve your success - it's just luck that you're successful". If someone has got rich by winning the lottery or inheritance, then yes that is lucky, but most people are where they are in life because of what they've done with their lives. That goes for people at both ends of the spectrum. it is lucky that David Beckham had a successful football career or that Ed Sheeran is having a successful music career? Someone doesn't become an amazing footballer or a have albums selling tens of millions of copies because they're lucky. Equally, someone doesn't become a heroin addict or a murderer by chance/luck alone. People might genetically inherit a small amount of 'natural talent' or an 'addictive personality', but they make the choice to practice football, promote their singing, or to take heroin. There are a few exceptions to the rule: people who were injected with heroin against their wishes, or people whose family have had enough money to help them on their way to success, but these people are the exceptions rather than the rule.

In fact there are few things in life which are genuinely and completely down to luck. I concede that it was lucky for me to have been born in England in the late 20th century to hardworking parents who loved me and looked after me. I've also had the lucky privileges of being white-skinned, average-looking, and heterosexual. Whether these lucky privileges are cancelled put by the 'unlucky' facts that I'm female, working class and I've been disabled/in poor health for half of my life, I don't really know. But it seems to me that by and large, our lives are what we make them, and not a lot of luck is involved in repeated success or failure.

People should think twice before saying "you're so lucky" because much of what happens to us in life is not due to luck: attributing someone's success to mere luck is just another way of telling them they don't deserve to be where they are. It that's what you want to tell someone, then fine, go for it, as there are definitely cases of people who haven't worked for their success (or haven't worked to avoid their failure) but the lives of most of us regular people are affected far more by effort than luck.

Beginning my PhD

Secure funding from M3C for PhD study - Check!
Attend orientation residential session by M3C - Check!
Start work on PhD --- umm...

So, it's the end of September, and it's time for me to start work on my PhD. Having been on the residential session through M3C earlier this week, I've met numerous other students at the start of their PhD journey. We have been warned not to be overwhelmed by the magnitude of what we need to produce (i.e. an 80,000-100,000 word thesis), and to be honest, I don't really feel overwhelmed by it, so that's a good thing. I've produced work of similar lengths before, and when it's broken down into chapters, and I need to produce 12,000 words about a particular idea, that is not overwhelming at all. Producing quantity of work has never been a problem for me.

...It's producing quality of work which is my difficulty! But even that is something which I can evidently do, based on some of my MA work, so quality is something that I can produce, given enough time - hopefully.

My issue is this: I don't know what I'm going to argue. Some people are setting out on their PhD journey with a clear understanding of what they are going to argue. For example, they're going to argue that abortion due to foetal abnormality is an act of hermeneutical injustice, or that the work of Chaucer helps us better understand Islamic radicalisation of teenage boys, or that machine-generated musical compositions can improve the overall wellbeing of people with autism. But I'm not in such a clear position. I know my PhD will establish (or attempt to establish) what consent is, and how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent - and the same for harm. But as things stand, I don't know how an AI robot ought to conceive of consent or harm. Hopefully that will come with time, because "I don't know; it's all a matter of opinion" isn't a good conclusion for a PhD thesis!

Massive thanks to M3C (soon to be M4C) for all the
lovely money and incredible opportunities to conduct
awesome research and make a difference in the world.

I'm starting out now, looking at some legal conceptions of consent (ie laws on sexual offences) and I'll read some articles on consent and take it from there. For me, the joy of philosophy is and has always been the search for answers, more so than the answers themselves. It's just as well really, as definitive answers in philosophy are as rare as rocking horse sh!t. But I am so excited to be starting out on PhD study, it really is like a dream come true for me. Having been to the M3C residential the other day and rubbed shoulders with people who are far younger and far more intelligent than me, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't feeling a slight sense of impostor syndrome. But I guess somebody thinks I'm good enough to do this, so objectively, I probably am good enough. I am just so, so pleased that I'm being fully funded by M3C (I'm resisting the urge to say 'lucky' as it implies a randomness or lack of desert which is not a principle of AHRC funding). So for the next 3 years I get to study what I want to study: can there be anything better in life? I don't think so... well, except maybe chocolate!

Let the search for answers commence!!

Finishing off my MA thesis

When I was pregnant with my son, it was a problem-free pregnancy and I didn't mind being the size of a house and having a baby jumping around inside me. But as I reached my due date, I started to want him out; not just because I was looking forward to motherhood, but because I was just sick of being pregnant. A week after my due date, I was REALLY sick of being pregnant and I just wanted the pregnancy to be over with. He finally arrived 10 days after the due date, and although I'd enjoyed pregnancy, I was so glad it was finally over with. (Of course, I soon realised that motherhood was a thousand times harder than pregnancy, but that's another story!)

I feel the same way now about my MA thesis as I did about pregnancy: it's been fun, but I want it over with. On the other hand, it feels like there's just not enough time to get it finished to a really good standard, even though I've been working on it for an eternity. I guess that's another parallel with pregnancy: no matter how much preparation you do, you're never quite ready for it.

My argument has generated far more interest than I expected it to; I thought people might be squeamish about talking about sexbots, but I should have credited people with more maturity. My work has been a talking point among my friends, family, and other academics, so of that I am grateful. At least my work is not so obscure that it's impossible to explain to the lay person, and every couple of weeks I see a sexbot related news article or something that someone sends me via email. I've pushed "not safe for work" to a whole new level, with people sending me all kinds of grisly stories.

I'm hopeful (but not expectant) that my work can be published in a journal. There's very little work on sexbots in the philosophical literature, so that is a point in my favour, but novelty shouldn't (and won't) be mistaken for quality, so I'm still going to have to produce something of a really high standard if I want it out there on Philpapers. Hopefully my MA thesis is a reasonable quality, but I'm so close to it I just can't tell any more. I've spotted a couple of holes in my argument but I'm not sure whether they are insurmountable failures or minor imperfections. They seem glaringly obvious to me because I've been embroiled in it for so long. Maybe others won't really notice them... or maybe they will. I suppose that there can't be many philosophy papers - if any - which present an argument so perfectly that no one has any criticisms of it. (Gettier's paper is the only one I can think of which comes anywhere close to universal acceptance.) So maybe a flawless argument is an impossible, unachievable goal to strive for.

Anyway, it's due in tomorrow, so there's not a lot I can do between now and then if my work is rubbish. I might have to resort to crossing my fingers until I get the grade back.

Best. Conference. Ever.

A couple of days ago, I returned home from what was, as the title of this post suggests, the best conference ever. Now admittedly, I've not been to loads and loads of conferences (maybe 10?) so I don't have much frame of reference, but I think I can say with some confidence that this was the best conference ever. I fear that few or no conferences will ever come close to the very high standard which has now been set.

I shan't name names, because it may only embarrass those involved, and I wouldn't want them to be the targets of conference-envy (is that even a thing?!) Anyway, the conference was held in Portland, Oregon, on the west coast of the USA. I think America is a fantastic country anyway; I've spent around 5 months there in total, and have visited 8 States (Oregon is number 9!)

The 5-day conference is an annual event, meaning that several of the attendees have known each other for some time - some for as long as 25 years - although I didn't realise this until a few days in. As one might expect from a conference, it involved different speakers presenting papers on a range of related (ish) topics; presentations began at 9am each day, and some days continued on until 9pm (other days we finished earlier at 5, 6, or 7pm). So on paper it was a fairly gruelling schedule... but almost all of the papers were really interesting, and so it didn't feel gruelling at all. There were about 25 or so people there at any one time, and we ate lunch together, we went out for dinner together in the evenings, and for drinks afterwards, and they were so welcoming and so much fun to be around. Sometimes when there is an established group of friends, it all gets a bit cliquey and newcomers are sidelined (sometimes unintentionally) as old friends want to catch up with one another, but this really didn't feel like that at all: I was welcomed into the group with open arms, and it felt like I was meeting up with a group of friends I'd known for years. Ah, they were great people!

The people I met were - almost without exception - left-wing liberals, atheists, Trump-hating, anti-gun, immigrant-sympathetic, they believed that climate change is happening, and children should be vaccinated. The news (or is it "Fake News"??) would have me believe that Americans are none of these things. At any rate, no one expressed any right-wing, creationist, Trump-supporting... (etc) views. I guess I wasn't seeing a representative sample of the population, but I'm not complaining.

Conferences I've been to in the UK have primarily consisted of people clicking through a powerpoint and talking about it, but it would seem that the American style of presentation is somewhat different: "presenting a paper" can mean to literally read through an essay word-for-word (with the standard 30 minutes of Q&A afterwards, of course). My style of presentation felt somewhat at odds with this standard: I suppose that 14 years of teaching A-Levels has got me used to a more informal style of presentation which might appear low-brow or inarticulate to some viewers, so that was a concern... but thankfully my concern was unwarranted and a couple of other delegates described my presentation as "a breath of fresh air" and "the highlight of the week". A wife of one of the speakers said to me "I'm a non-philosopher, and I can tell you, I find so many presentations dull because I just don't understand them -- but I understood yours! It was great!" I'm taking that as a compliment.

Portland is a great city, and felt really safe. I've been to New York City and I did not feel safe there; once darkness descended I felt anxious that I might get attacked or shot! OK, I was 20 and it was my first time travelling alone, but still, there seemed to be a lot of gang members on the streets at night. But Portland was really lovely place, and I didn't worry at all about getting shot!

So overall, it was a fantastic experience, and I felt genuinely sad at the end of it. It's going to be pretty hard for any conference to top it. However, it's an annual event, so maybe I'll manage to attend again next year...? To quote my sister (who was being sarcastic when she heard I'd be travelling all the way to the USA to present my paper) "people must really want to hear about sex robots!"

Funded PhD scholarship - secured!

It feels like it's been a really long road towards securing funding for my PhD, and I won't lie: there have been tears along the way. But this week I got the news I've been waiting for! I've been awarded a fully-funded scholarship to research exactly what I want to research, at the university I want to study at (ie where I currently am: the University of Nottingham) and I am so happy, relieved, and excited that I can hardly contain myself.

There have been a few opportunities to apply for funding over the past year, and I've applied for whatever I could. Earlier in the year (April maybe?) I got through to the final 'round' of scholarship awards from the funding body I most wanted to be funded by, only to fall at the final hurdle. It was a tough blow, not least because I am currently not working, and I have a mortgage and a young child to support, and I need income from somewhere in order to put food on the table. So that was very disheartening, but there was still a glimmer of hope because I had heard word that there was set to be some funding available for arts and humanities research in the field of AI, which is exactly my preferred field of study.

I think it's probably fair to say that it was science fiction which cultivated my interest in philosophy before I even knew what philosophy was. Time travel paradoxes, robots with feelings, mind-body swaps, the ethics of dealing with alien cultures - ah, I love it! Throughout all these years, I've continued to enjoy sci-fi and philosophy, but separately. But the opportunity to study emerging technologies through the lenspiece of philosophy, well, I'm in heaven! So when I found out about a funded scholarship studying how AI robots should conceive of consent/harm, I didn't need to think too hard before applying.

What can I say, the rest is history: I applied, I was selected, offered the scholarship (covering fees, plus a living stipend), and I accepted. Now I'm just finishing off my MA dissertation before starting work proper on something I can't wait to get started on: it's like a dream come true for me. Yes I know that's a cliche, and I'm sure it will be difficult, hard work, and at times maybe exasperating, but right now I am just filled with excitement for what lies ahead over the next three years.

Bring it on!!

Conference presentations

Well, it seems like it's all go at the moment, in a good way. Last month I responded to four calls for papers / abstracts, and I've had word that I've been accepted by two of them. I suppose lots of students get invited to speak at lots of conferences, but it's the first time I've been accepted, so quite exciting, and hopefully it's the first of many such experiences.

One event is an interdisciplinary graduate research event at UoN, and the other is a philosophy conference focusing on philosophy and current events, in the USA. I was thinking to myself that the UoN conference was probably not all that competitive so not that much of an achievement, but then, there are over 8000 postgraduate students here at Nottingham uni, so perhaps I ought to give myself more credit. There's no way for me to know how many applied to either event anyway, so maybe I should just feel pleased. I'm not posting the exact details on here (yet) in case it all falls apart! I'm quietly hopeful but sensibly cautious. I'm not sure how these things are funded: who pays for the flights, accommodation and suchlike for the conference in the USA where I'm due to speak? I hope it's not me.

I also presented at the PGR seminar this week (that's not an achievement though; any philosophy postgrad student can present; there are a group of about 8 of us who regularly attend, and so the audience is usually only about 10 people.) At the two upcoming events, I'll be presenting the same paper that I presented at the PGR seminar; it's one which I've been working on for my MA dissertation. It's about sexbots and some intrinsic wrongs associated with a particular type of sexbot. The presentation went well, I think. Lots of questions pressing me on the distinction between a robot which intentionally represents someone, and a robot which accidentally resembles someone.

If I am able to proceed with my PhD, I plan to be studying a whole lot more socio-political-ethical-legal issues surrounding sexbots and other (non-sexual) lifelike robots. Aside from the fact that it's fascinating and exciting and what I always hoped I could research when I saw things like I Robot and Star Trek, one great thing about my research is how current it is. Hopefully the philosophical investigations into robots won't just be a flash in the pan, because building my career on a mere trend could be problematic. But I am versatile and I have wide-ranging philosophical interests, so even if I am not researching robot ethics for the next 20 years, there will be no shortage of issues I want to write about.

I just hope that these conferences go well. Sometimes I feel as though other people are so much more cut out for this than I am. That seems unfounded though, given that teaching involves (in part) presenting to an audience, and given my extensive experience in that, then it's just implausible to suggest that I'm not cut out for this. Nonetheless, the feelings of inadequacy persist. Maybe they'll dissipate in time; if these upcoming presentations go well, it will help. I've had some academic / funding disappointments recently, so hopefully some better times are on their way. I'm not referring to it as luck, as I think very little of what happens in academia is down to luck, but that's another post for another day.

Labouring under a delusion? The post-PhD job market

I would love to be a philosophy professor at a university – but then, it seems, so would every other philosophy PhD student! Many areas of academia – physics, social policy, musical composition, psychology, archaeology – have corresponding industries which one could enter upon completion of a PhD. I would imagine that this attrition clears significant space in universities for those who wish to pursue careers as professors, but it occurs to me that, given the lack of philosophical industry, we philosophy postgraduates are forced through a bottleneck whereby a career in academia is perhaps the only career choice in which we’d be able to continue to practice our subject. This is in stark contrast to someone who has a PhD in, say, chemistry or psychiatry; I can only assume that this is at least part of the reason that the nature of the job market for philosophy professorships is so horrendously competitive.

Just add another 300-600 androgynous
plasticine figures, and that'd be about right. 

How many of us undertake a philosophy PhD hoping and believing that we will be able to secure academic careers afterwards? Quite a few, I suspect. From what I have gathered from talking to a few people in the know (um, I mean “networking”), it is not uncommon for a university to receive 300-600 applications for one job opening. All things being equal, that means each person will have to apply for 300-600 jobs before being offered a position. I don’t know how many years it would take to apply for that many jobs, but I think it would take a fair few.

“Don’t be choosy” and “Take any job you can get” are direct quotations from professors at UoN when they were talking about the job market to a group of us grad students hoping for academic careers. It’s all too easy to see these successful professors and think to ourselves “They’ve all managed to secure academic careers, so it’s obviously doable” but this would be like attending a party for people who’ve won Lotto, looking around and thinking “They’ve managed to win the lottery, so it’s obviously doable”. Looking around the department, we are looking at the winning tickets; the success stories. The people with PhDs and a less than illustrious non-philosophical careers tell a different story. We must do whatever we can to tip the scales in our favour, but it would be naïve and ignorant to be immune to the statistical likelihood of not securing the job we would like. Like I say, I would love to be a university professor, but the statistics are not in my favour – nor indeed in anyone’s favour. So am I labouring under a delusion in undertaking a philosophy PhD?

My friends and I never did this at our undergrad graduation and I
feel suitably cheated. When I complete the MA and PhD, I'll
be throwing my cap into the air at the drop of a... hmm...well... hat.

Well, no. I really enjoyed my undergrad degree; I’m really, really enjoying my MA, and no doubt I will really, really, really enjoy my PhD (how could I not – getting to spend 3 years writing about something I love; for me that’s heaven!), and so whether or not an illustrious career awaits me upon completion is in some sense irrelevant. I have always felt that education is an end in itself, and whilst I would hope that it is also a means to an end for me, that is not a necessity in order for me to be able to look back on my years as a philosophy student and feel they have been worthwhile.

Here goes...

I'm feeling a huge amount of pressure to create an amazing, inspiring and poignant first blog post. The source of that pressure is, of course, myself. What follows will almost certainly fail to live up to expectations - both yours and mine. This blog will be my unfettered and uncensored philosophical thoughts, which may decline in to rants and ramblings, but I can live with that. It's not like anyone is ever going to read this, right?

I am and will always be a student of Philosophy with a capital P. Yes, I've been a teacher of (A-Level) Philosophy for a number of years, but I'm primarily a student, and barely a day goes by where I'm not dumbfounded by how little I know.

Some students standing around UoN whilst talking and laughing and
reading and writing, which is exactly what we all do, all the time.

I'm currently a postgrad student at the University of Nottingham, and the experience is quite something. I am constantly surrounded by people who are far more astute, far more well-read, and often far younger than me. It's humbling, but not (always) humiliating to be struggling to appear adequate in such a place. As for whether I am genuinely out of my depth, or whether I'm suffering from an acute case of impostor syndrome, I'll leave that up to you to decide
based on my forthcoming posts.

No pressure at all then...