So many questions

[Imaginary]

I'll start with three.

 

What do we put on our business cards, profiles, etc before we reach candidacy?

 

What are some good part-time and summer jobs for a Humanities student in a PhD program?

 

Does having a lot of adjunct experience harm or help a tenure-track application? I am, unfortunately, leaning towards "harm," especially if that experience is post-PhD.

[fuzzylogician]

1. How about "PhD student in X, Y University"?

 

2. Good like helpful for your CV? Research assistantships or some teaching, especially of the kind where you create your own syllabus. Good for your bank account? Whatever you can find.

 

3. Having teaching experience helps when you go on the job market, especially if you apply to LACs or schools with large undergraduate programs. If all you do is adjunct for several years after you graduate, and especially if this means that you don't have time to publish, then that will not look great on your CV. I think it's not so much the adjuncting by itself that looks bad, but the lack of research that this tends to cause. In general, if you spend more than a few years drifting from place to place doing anything, that won't look too good on your CV. But a couple of positions at good schools, or a prestigious postdoc and a visiting position, sound better to me than the equivalent amount of time spent at whatever small school where you are the only one doing your kind of research, teaching a 4+4 load.