"Impostor syndrome"

[woolfie]

Anyone else experiencing this? I have only been in school for a week and a half but man, I'm feeling very intimidated right now. I don't so much feel like an impostor as I just feel constant fear about my inadequacy.

I'm in an English graduate program so all of class time in my seminars is devoted to discussion. I had no problem participating in undergrad, in fact, I was annoying in how much I talked. I was confident and didn't overthink and second guess all my ideas. Now, I can barely force myself to speak, and when I do, it's very obvious that I'm nervous and its rambling and incoherent. My program doesn't seem to have levels of difficulty in the seminars, so one of my classes has me in a course with 3rd level Ph.D. students while I'm the only first year MA with no graduate experience in the class. So I just feel completely lost and sometimes I have no idea what people are talking about. I managed to summon the courage today to ask a basic question and I just ended up feeling humiliated afterwards.

Luckily I am not teaching this year. If I were this would all be way worse as it's a fear of being public and on display that's bothering me. But I'm finding myself slipping into a depression and feeling avoidance tendencies. I am starting to dread class and I don't spend much time on campus because of this dread. I don't want to start out this first year being completely withdrawn as it is a huge department and I know I will get lost if I do. Since I'm not teaching, I wasn't in the TA class that everyone seems to have made friends in. I know that I will eventually get to know people, but not with this avoidance behavior that I seem to be developing.

Tomorrow I think I'm going to try and go to student counseling as a start, but basically I was just wondering if any strangers out there can commiserate with me. I know that the feeling that everyone else knows what there doing and I don't is completely false, I just need to hear it from another person. Suggestions for completely getting rid of this self-consciousness and focusing on the issues would be great. Or we can just complain together

[mandarin.orange]

I saw the PhD comic movie (which I HIGHLY recommend BTW) recently, and there's a great moment where the newbie labmate confesses to feeling like an imposter...only to hear that EVERYONE in the program feels the same way.

The first thing they told us at my dept's orientation was that the faculty strove to maintain academic rigor...by constantly reminding us of the holes in our education. I am certainly deficient in a few prereq's I either haven't had, or it's been 15 years, and I am working like a dog to understand and re-learn a lot of basic concepts. My dept's pretty collegial and non-competitive, but as I gradually learn of how accomplished everyone actually is, I am daily astounded and humbled. There's a sense of REALLY needing to stay on top of my game with current events, course prep, and journal readings, in order to bat in this league.

Are your seminar discussions based on a common text? How are you prepping for classes? How much are you talking to your classmates? I tend to show up to class early (before the prof) and ask the people around me if they understood such-and-such or what they thought, etc. You could go to your prof's office hours, mention you are struggling, and ask for recommendations on how to approach the reading or if there's background info you can pursue. The counselor sounds like a good idea.

At the end of the day, remember that your dept choose YOU based on accomplishments and potential.

Edited October 7, 2011 by mandarin.orange

[setekh]

Hey man, I must say that this is my third year in graduate school and I still feel inadequate every day. And I hate it. I went into Meteorology for graduate school even though my bachelor's was in mathematics. I had no background in the field at all except a few research projects I did during summer internships (which have absolutely nothing to do with class material) so it didn't help me at all.

My first semester of grad school was terrible. I had no idea of what anyone was talking about and I was always intimidated and afraid in class.'Classes had no structure at all and we had three textbooks but none of the Professors followed the order at all, so I couldn't prep beforehand (I don't think that would have helped me much though since the material is so complex when you're seeing it for the first time). I became very depressed as I saw that no matter how hard I worked I was not doing well in class because I just couldn't even understand the questions that were being asked during exams or the general lingo during seminar courses. Like you, I always disappeared from the building as soon as class was over because I just hated everything in general.

Everyone else in my classes had a meteorology background so they didn't seemed phased at all about anything, which was seriously irritating. Like you, I felt like I had the obvious disadvantage. I was always used to being the hard working top student in class during all my life up to grad school. It was incredibly frustrating to feel like the dumbest person on earth despite the fact that I know I worked 10 times as hard as anyone else. Professors didn't seem to understand the fact that it was hard for me because I had no background either. I was be afraid of asking the Professors anything because I just didn't want to be embarrassed by asking them dumb questions.

Now on my third year, I still feel inadequate to be honest. I feel that I have tons of knowledge gaps because the classes and instructors here just suck and don't care about teaching. They just care about their research and that's it. (that's top school Professors for ya). I originally wanted a PhD but not anymore. I'm tired of busting my hump for no purpose because no one besides my advisor appreciates my work. Grad school has pretty much made me a bitter person that just hates the field. So I really don't know if the "impostor syndrome" will go away at all because in academia you're always surrounded by people (Professors and students) that think they know everything and always need to open their mouth to prove their brilliant-ness. I really wish you good luck. At least you've been in the field for a Bachelors and can at least make some sense of what people are talking about. I think professors would be more understanding and willing to help you than in my situation, where I felt that the only questions I could ask would be comparable to what a freshman undergrad with no experience in the field would ask. You can at least ask your classmates since they were probably in your shoes once when they started their Masters. My classmates would have NEVER understood my situation because they have not switched fields.

[supplicant]

It comes every now and then, usually when my schedule is getting tighter, but I just accept it and get back to work. The readings don't make any sense? That's fine, they're useless for my research and they probably don't make sense to anyone else anyway. My funding proposal is garbage even though I talked to the program coordinator and went to a workshop to figure out what I should be doing? Now I at least have some concrete feedback to work from and I also got some really good ideas I hadn't thought of yet out of it as well. Getting my adviser (or anyone really) to reply to my e-mails is an ordeal of biblical proportion? Screw it, I just go by their offices until I see the door's open and ask them about it in person.

I think it helps that I was hit with a really embarrassing failure in my last semester of undergrad, right after I was accepted in my MA program. It reoriented me towards a field of research I'm much more excited about and helped me put things in perspective.

[dimanche0829]

I'm not technically a grad student since this is my last semester of undergrad, but I do take grad courses and am expected to perform graduate level work. I can completely relate. I didn't talk in class for most of last semester because I was terrified and somehow managed to convince myself that my being there was part of some cruel joke of the faculty to show me how much I didn't belong. Completely irrational, but that's what I thought.

I didn't want to end up being that creepy silent girl in the corner (which is so not me), though, so I finally gave myself some tough love and forced my hand in the air during class one day. My entire insides were shaking with nerves. I made up some new words as I spoke, and I don't think my statement actually had a valid point, but that was okay. No one laughed at me, and I was given the same consideration that the other students were given. I still feel like the dumbest person in the room sometimes, but I'm at least trying to be more active this semester. Baby steps.

[theregalrenegade]

I totally feel you on this, woolfie. I'm a Masters student in with all levels of PhDs. Those PhD students not only have a firm grasp of every text we read, but they reference other authors, methodology, and still manage to throw in brilliant insights on top of all that. I sit there wondering how I'm ever going to get through this.

I feel inadequate most of the time. I know I'm intelligent, but everyone else seems to be on a much higher level than me. A big part of the problem is that I'm a writer, not a speaker. I have a hard time expressing myself in front of fellow classmates or professors because I'm incredibly intimidated and all intelligent thought seems to go out the door when I open my mouth. I struggle for the right words and get obviously nervous. Unfortunately, in history, discussion is not only necessary in class, it's a huge part of your grade. It's also extremely important in teaching, conferences, and general presentations.

My advisor told me after a couple classes that I need to talk more. I have big dreams of going overseas to the UK for my PhD so I knew I needed to do something about my skills and this feeling of inadequacy. I joined my university's Toastmasters chapter, started grad counseling, and decided to force myself to talk more in class. It's scary, nerve-wracking, and hard, hard, work every single day. I'm still working through it all, but I'm engaging more in class. I'm not Miss Eloquent - yet - but I speak, no matter what. And it IS getting better and I'm hopeful.

My advice - just keep at it. Plug away and know that others are feeling the same way. It should get better, but you do have to put in the work and find the necessary support.

[StrangeLight]

we all feel the impostor syndrome eventually. while it's true that you wouldn't be in your program unless your school saw potential in you, it's also true that not everyone who gets into a program will make it through. we all feel inadequate a lot of the time, so that's normal, but if/when professors start telling you there's a problem with your work or progress, then you need to recognize that those conversations are not simply about "impostor syndrome." they're about your work. if you can learn to tell the difference, then the impostor syndrome stuff doesn't seem so demoralizing anymore, because it's not like your DGS is telling you that you need to step it up.

also, i think it's helpful to find your strengths and personal value in the world outside of academia. if you value yourself for something other than "being smart" or "being the best student" when a prof tells you that your proposal is crap, they're just talking about the proposal, not about you. but if you invest all your self-worth in your ability as a student or researcher, when they tell you that your proposal is crap, it feels like they're telling you that you're crap. if you make space for life outside of your work and you find joy there, then any problems with your work feel less serious, because they're not shaking your entire personal foundation. they're just problems with work, and that can be fixed. learning to not take work-related criticism personally goes a long way to reducing your stress over your work, which in turn goes a long way to increasing your happiness and helping you produce better work in the first place.

i don't know if any of that made sense...

Edited October 7, 2011 by StrangeLight

[runonsentence]

some colleagues of mine did some primary research for a conference presentation last year, in which they studied literacy practices of English grad students. just about everyone they interviewed talked about feeling inadequate, about worrying they weren't reading "right" (because their classmates took more notes, or fewer notes, or underlined differently...), worrying that everyone else writes better....

it's really common. some of it will fade, but it's also a matter of learning how to cope with it, in this profession.

[Behavioral]

Aversion to being perceived an imposter will also light a fire under you--embrace it.

Edited October 8, 2011 by Behavioral

[newms]

I think most, if not all grad students go through this at some point. I always like to look back at this article which talks about how important it is to feel stupid/inadequate in science (and I believe this is applicable to other fields) and to be able to deal with that feeling.

[Mal83]

I've been a grad student for 6 weeks now and I knew long before I started that I belonged at the school and in the program, that hasn't changed one bit...I'm really grateful for that. However, even despite my certainty that this is absolutely my program and field I still have those "everyone else understands more than me" moments. Every cornerstone class I'm reminded that at least a few others are able to express ideas that I didn't have of or couldn't find the right words for. Or just that many of them managed to get a lot more of the reading done than I did. I'm a slow reader so a book a week is a bit taxing and honestly I find it tough to get into a lot of them...and that's just one class.

But I don't think that succeeding in grad school or in a particular class necessarily depends on whether you've read and understood every single theory, idea, or sentence that's in the required readings, or even everything that your classmates are saying, it's more about understanding what's required of you to do as well as you feel you need to. I know that participation is a big part of my grade in this class, so I make sure that I have read enough to contribute a few things to the discussion, but I don't have much of a problem speaking up in class, I also have a similar undergrad degree so drawing on what I've learned before is very easily applicable. Not everything that everyone says is groundbreaking or an original thought, but they're speaking up so they get the participation grade and because it's really boring to just sit and listen to everyone else talk for 2-3 hours. This is a big class and it's 100% discussion, every so often the professor poses a question and we have to run with it, if you don't stick your hand up at least a two or three times your just sitting and listening to your classmates for all that time...boring. See I only care to a certain degree what I sound like to my classmates, all of whom I respect, but my objective is for the professor (who is also the program director) to know that I'm getting it and putting in effort. I don't need to dominate the discussion and I'm not the most active participant, but what I do say is usually something that hasn't already been said like 5 times and even on a few occasions the professor instead of just responding with "mmm hmm" and moving on to the next person has said something like "that's interesting because...." which absolutely made my day, like I actually sparked his interest for a moment. It can be intimidating, especially in the very beginning, but you have to get over what your classmates think of you because they're not giving you the grade, to the original poster specifically, a course of mostly 3rd level phd students seems a little inappropriate for your first semester of an MA program. Do you still have time to switch into something else? Did you have to get your course selections approved before you registered? Are there no course numbers attached to the levels? At my school Master's level courses are designated as 6000 level, but phD classes are in the 8000s, we can take a phD class or two but it's probably not advised to so in our first semester. If you dropped it and switched to a class of your peers you might be happier and less intimidated.

[TheSquirrel]

Yes-- I experience this every now and then. But really, there's little truth to the idea that we're "impostors" (the majority of us anyway). It's all in the head and if you keep telling yourself that you're an impostor, that anything you might say in class might sound stupid, it will lead to a snowball effect and soon enough you will find yourself even more afraid to talk, etc.

I did really poorly on a presentation a few weeks ago, because I was so scared of appearing stupid or saying things that were wrong, and ended up sticking to what I had written on paper. The prof (my thesis supervisor) called me to his office afterwards, and gave me a harsh critique that nearly made me cry in front of him (to be fair, he also told me that he was the one who was on the admissions committee and really pushed for my acceptance, because he liked my writing sample, and knows I am up to the challenge -- I think he could tell I was suffering from impostor syndrome). The whole thing got to my head for a few days. I had a second presentation the week after that, and I took a few days' break from that course, and when I started preparing the presentation, I told myself that I would do my best and if it's not good enough for my professor, there's nothing I could do about it. Prepared some point-format notes, went in, talked (instead of reading off my notes) for 15 minutes, got the class to pay a lot of attention (usually they just stare at you blankly or daydream while you present) and ran a 30-minute discussion afterwards. Got an A. Totally impressed and excited the prof.

All this to say, it's all in your head. Just do your best, don't be afraid of voicing your opinion, at least occasionally (I know it's easier said than done -- I have not overcome this problem either).