The Wonder Philosophy workshop, which aims at helping students from disadvantaged backgrounds (mostly first-gen, but also financial hardship and women of colour) who are interested in applying to philosophy graduate schools to navigate the process, has just concluded this past weekend. (I wrote a post about it back when it was still in the planning stage.) Of all the things I’ve done, this is the most involved and very possibly the most successful. Obviously I didn’t do this all by myself (in fact this is an important element of complexity that I’ll talk more about below), but I did kick start it, so I feel entitled to be proud of it. This post contains some of my reflections concerning this type of work and how to make it more successful (according to my own experience, obviously).
Maximize the impact-to-effort ratio
The central principle with this project that I had when it first occurred to me was: maximum impact with minimum effort. For something that is student-led and uncompensated (we managed to pay honouraria — still way below the hourly minimum wage — to presenters, thanks to the APA; our School decided that no funding is allowed to go towards honouraria. Still, it would’ve been nice to pay volunteers more.) every slight increase in effort translates to a not-so-slight decrease in the probability of it happening. I’ve seen many projects fail at their infancy because not enough people are willing to put in the effort. Worse, many people pay lip service to the idea of helping but do not actually show up. This is especially damaging to inexperienced organizers such as myself, who believe their words when they say they’ll help and so put in the hours into making the event more likely to occur, only to discover that nobody shows up when the time comes and it’s actually not going to happen and our time and energy has been wasted. Don’t think it’s all that uncommon. I’ve done it once or twice (and felt terrible afterward). It’s very common in academia.
With that in mind, as an organizer, the best way to make sure something happens is to make it as low effort as possible so that 1) it’s easier for people to do and so they are more likely to do it, 2) if someone pulls out last minute it’s still not that hard to find a replacement or do it yourself. Obviously, there’s 3) pay people well enough so that they have to, but that’s not open to us students.
Be careful also that, if the project is well-conceived, there will be people coming along throughout its development, with perfectly good intentions, suggesting that it should be improved in this or that way. Do not listen to them unless both 1) they can take care of the extra bit themselves, and 2) even if they fail, the project can still continue. Again, I have seen failures of this kind happen many times (including to my projects). It’s not like they’re trying to screw me over (hence I can’t get mad at them later). It takes a lot of time management skills that many students don’t have & don’t know that they don’t have to see something through.
With Wonder, my initial idea was simple: grad school application process is something that we all know now that we’re on the other side. We’ll just share it with students who haven’t crossed the bridge yet. And that will be helpful enough. We (myself and my co-organizers Jingyi and Stella) did end up doing a lot more research on various topics than the bare minimum. However, if we didn’t, the workshop would be of lower informativeness, but it would still happen. We ended up running very tight time-wise because Stella was ill and I had another huge deadline and so Jingyi had to take over all the logistics. Knowing that it doesn’t have to be perfect to be impactful was very good for my stress levels. Once it’s up and running, we can improve it in future years.
As I kept saying to everyone who helped out: I’m aiming for a solid B here. A solid B is infinitely better than it not happening at all.
Logistics is the central part
Even though I tried very hard to keep the workload a minimum, it still ended up being more than I expected. There are a lot of basic, unavoidable logistics: getting the key to the room, telling participants how to get to the room, ordering food, cleaning up, returning the key, etc. While I’m generally good at getting things done, I’m pretty bad at delegating or staying organized beyond the capacity of my mind. In this regard, Jingyi was like a Godsent. She has more large-scale organizational experience than me and was willing to take over these logistics. Thinking back, given how much I was caught by surprise with the amount of logistic work, it would’ve gone much more poorly had Jingyi not stepped in.
This made me think that, really, logistics is at the heart of events. If space and food are readily prepared and the relevant people have been gathered (because advertisement and travel subsidies have been properly taken care of), the part where you go in and share your perspective on graduate school or mental health or how to succeed is actually the easiest and most rewarding part. Most people don’t mind doing that much.
Then it dawned on me (note: I’m pretty slow and so get dawned on pretty frequently): logistics really is the invisible labour that is the core cause for success. It’s kinda like housework. It’s not that difficult and you don’t need special skills, but it is a shit load of work and it’s tedious and unappreciated. (note2: my partner does most of the housework and so I don’t have that good of a perspective there either.) When you attend an event, you’ll notice the person who’s been emailing you, who very often is the organizer who first conceived of the idea and later secured funding for it. That’s not easy but also not that hard. You’ll also notice the speakers who have been invited. They sometimes do a great job and that’s great. But they get the most attention & appreciation for doing something that might be hard for you but isn’t that hard for them. You probably don’t even know who set up catering or who are staying behind to clean up. But, really, those are the people who make things happen. (So, special thanks to Helen, Margaret, David M, and Adam, all from LPS, for making Wonder happen!)
Consistent with all the literature on invisible labour, none of the volunteered helpers is a white-man. So, this really is advice for people who are not members of a minority, who want to help and don’t know how: take on the invisible labour. Take on the food and booking and reimbursement.
Who should do what things?
As probably is true for every philosopher of minority status, I have been warned against service. Some come from general “advice to the profession by someone who’s incredibly successful” such as a recent Philosopher’s Coccoon post on work-life balance (Holly- I loved your comment!); others come from well-meaning mentors who are concerned about me.
Many of the things I do, I can do them because they don’t take a toll. Realistically speaking, it’s not because I think these are especially important, more important than other things I could be doing, but because I get a sense of satisfaction out of them. In fact, there are many things (e.g., a lot of what Stella and Jingyi have done) that I think are very important but can’t bring myself to doing.
Related to the above two points, what this says is that who can afford to do what does not really depend on who think what is important, but on other, less exciting, factors, such as who has better time management skills or enjoy talking to people or don’t mind writing emails. Similarly, the success of the event does not depend so much on the passion of the organizer as the organizational skills involved.
In that sense, Wonder is an odd project that I hope to do more of in the future — it is not at all close to my heart. I am not a first-gen student and I never really suffered anything near a financial hardship. Sure, I had no clue about philosophy graduate school when I finished undergrad (as are most people) but my master’s program gave me a ton of support during my applications. I’m also a not-very-minority minority according to this series of super cool infographics.
What I did have was something to offer — something that would be low-effort for me to offer. I was very careful not to say things I don’t know about (e.g., what it’s like to be first-gen), but that doesn’t stop me from bringing in people who can say things about that. And because I took care of a lot of the planning, it makes it easier for those who have things to say to be able to say them. It’s still overall positive, and it’s still better than nothing.
So, this last lesson is also for myself. It is easier to specialize in a kind of project than a topic of concern. It is easier to bring experts on board if logistics have been taken care of. Very little of an event-organization actually involves expertise in the topic of the event. Of course, one should be careful about projects that one does not have expertise in, but one can still carefully finish them. You really don’t have to be a member of your target audience to lead fruitful projects that serve that audience. These projects might not be perfect, but they are done, and that’s better than nothing.
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this is great. I like your rules: helpful suggestions only if they can do the extra bit themselves, and if them failing to do that doesn’t derail the rest of it. Endre has an effect he calls “or we could have a barbeque!” . You get partway through planning, details are falling into place, and then someone suggests something totally different instead. And then the discussion has to be about what we should do the original plan, instead of the barbeque (or whatever), and some people want a barbeque and others are frustrated because why are we now talking about a barbeque? and then the meeting time is up and the original plan has gotten lost. A well-intentioned suggestion at the wrong moment in the planning process can derail it so nothing ends up happening. Rampant in academia.
and thanks for the shout-out!
Ha! I like that! I’ve found it more common in times where no one feels entitled to take charge (such as deciding where to go get dinner after a conference) and I’ve gotten good at rangling people.