Hello Imposter Syndrome, my old friend...

[zombiekeats]

I've been out of the academia for a period of time, and while I'm excited for school in the fall (wherever I end up), I'm nervous about shifting gears back into Learnin' Mode. How do you all deal with the creeping feeling that everyone is going to suddenly discover that you're not really an academic?

Asking for a friend. 

the friend is me. 

[shoestofollow]

Wowwwwwww

I have only been out for just over a year and I feel this.

It's a struggle. I try to do some self talk to bring myself back to reality. Because the reality is you know some things, and other people know some things, and only some of those things will overlap. Like a Venn diagram. And you have to feel comfortable with the fact that you will never encompass all of knowledge, because nobody ever will. All you can do is do your best to fill up your little circle, and learn from others from theirs.

I hope that helps! I know it's kind of silly but sometimes (a technique I learned in therapy) what I have to do is think about what it is I'm really worried about, and take that to its extreme. So for this that's probably that I find out I'm really not fit to be an academic, I fall behind everyone else, I don't do well in grad school, and then I just... leave academia. And I have to remember that that is okay!!!

I think we put a lot a lot a lot of pressure on this, and for me it made it hard to read books because I was always asking myself "Am I enjoying this?" "Am I thinking critically?" "Do I want to do this????" But it helps to think about how ultimately being a professor is a //job//, and grad school is //job training//. Do I have to enjoy all of it? Do I have to feel like I fit in 100%? Do I have to be the same as everyone else??? No!!!!

Okay I will stop now I feel loopy

 

[urbanfarmer]

Aware that this is a bit cheesy, but I've found parts of it extremely helpful:

https://www.ted.com/talks/amy_cuddy_your_body_language_shapes_who_you_are

Although of course it's important to acknowledge your fears and challenges-- I've ended up becoming very comfortable with lot of things that naturally make me uncomfortable by applying this principle of "fake it till you become it." 

 

Edited February 24, 2017 by urbanfarmer

[zombiekeats]

23 minutes ago, shoestofollow said:

I know it's kind of silly but sometimes (a technique I learned in therapy) what I have to do is think about what it is I'm really worried about, and take that to its extreme. So for this that's probably that I find out I'm really not fit to be an academic, I fall behind everyone else, I don't do well in grad school, and then I just... leave academia. And I have to remember that that is okay!!!

This is something I'm trying really hard to keep in mind! It's difficult for me, because I nearly went down a very different sort of career path when I got out of undergraduate (well, actually, I did go down that path). I recently began to have more and more opportunities in that career after struggling in it for some time, and I turned them down because I got into grad school. I'm struggling with that decision. I know that grad school is something I have always wanted to do, and I know--I know--I have to at least try it, or I'd always regret it. But I'm upending a lot of things to do it, which is exciting, yes, but also very scary.

18 minutes ago, urbanfarmer said:

Although of course it's important to acknowledge your fears and challenges-- I've ended up becoming very comfortable with lot of things that naturally make me uncomfortable by applying this principle of "fake it till you become it." 

 

Thank you! I'm trying to do this. Things are hard!

Edited February 24, 2017 by zombiekeats

[orphic_mel528]

1 hour ago, zombiekeats said:

I've been out of the academia for a period of time, and while I'm excited for school in the fall (wherever I end up), I'm nervous about shifting gears back into Learnin' Mode. How do you all deal with the creeping feeling that everyone is going to suddenly discover that you're not really an academic?

Asking for a friend. 

the friend is me. 

I'm here to tell you a not so secret secret: 

Every last damn one of us is faking it 'til we make it.

Everybody's been here. I was at an international conference surrounded by brilliant people and I was feeling pretty good about myself, like, "Man, I've been brought into the fold, this is what it's about!"

And of course some other graduate student was there, too, and made this brilliant presentation, and then I ran screaming out of the conference, shrieking, "I'M A FRAUD!"

Ok, the last part didn't actually happen, but part of me thought about it. What's funny about this is that after the panel was over, that same person came up to me and very sheepishly told me how much they enjoyed my presentation and said it was so much more innovative than theirs!

Everybody feels this way, because we're all people with incredibly high expectations of ourselves. We wouldn't be here if we weren't. We can't see the peak, even when we're standing on it, because deep down, we all want to keep climbing. That restlessness is what academia is about.

I was four years out when I started my MA and am approaching three years out as I prepare to start my PhD. My advice to you is to read and write. I try to read a book or two a week, and I write essays on the readings. I also have discussions with people whenever I can--informal, impromptu seminars with former lit classmates. It gets your brain where it should be. 

[zombiekeats]

21 minutes ago, orphic_mel528 said:

Everybody feels this way, because we're all people with incredibly high expectations of ourselves. We wouldn't be here if we weren't. We can't see the peak, even when we're standing on it, because deep down, we all want to keep climbing. That restlessness is what academia is about.

I was four years out when I started my MA and am approaching three years out as I prepare to start my PhD. My advice to you is to read and write. I try to read a book or two a week, and I write essays on the readings. I also have discussions with people whenever I can--informal, impromptu seminars with former lit classmates. It gets your brain where it should be. 

Wow, thank you. That definitely hit home for me. 

It's funny you mention reading and writing more. I was struck by just how little I was reading books in the past couple of years I've been out of school (you think you'll get all this reading done once you don't have to read, and it ends up being just the opposite). I made a rule for myself recently to read at least 15 minutes a day, if I couldn't dedicate a huge swathe of time. Really getting back into critical writing might be my next task after that. Hopefully, this summer I'll have time to sort of reset and get myself into that headspace. 

[Dr. Old Bill]

21 minutes ago, orphic_mel528 said:

I'm here to tell you a not so secret secret: 

Every last damn one of us is faking it 'til we make it.

I have to admit that I don't feel impostor syndrome as acutely as others. That's not to say that I don't feel it  -- I do -- but for my own part, I think a bunch of years of non-academic life experience helps to put things in perspective. That being said, I figured something out a few years back that stopped those occasional "impostor" pangs from becoming...more than pangs (pangolins? Hmm...). That realization (which I think is important enough to bold) is that when you are daunted by another's scholarship, you are only daunted by what that person is demonstrating he/she knows; what you don't see is the massive gulf of things that person doesn't know. There's sort of a double-blind at work in academia -- your scholarship is defined by what you can talk confidently and write confidently about, and not what you know nothing about. Psychologically, however, we're naturally inclined to think that if we don't know something that another person knows, our knowledge is somehow inferior...when the truth is that the other person has gaps in knowledge as well...just different gaps.

The moral of the story is that impostor syndrome is completely natural, almost universal, virtually inevitable...and fundamentally stupid. This big blob of grey meat inside our craniums is an amazing thing, but sometimes it works at cross-purposes.

[HumanCylinder]

This thread is actually helpful for me too, as I'm finishing up my first year in my PhD program.  The utter and radical newness of my situation, environment, and position when I started the program kept a lot of these feelings at bay, but I'm feeling them more acutely now in my second semester. 

What I keep trying to tell myself, as cheesy as it sounds, is to just do what I do and not worry what others' work looks like too much (AKA: do you!).  I was accepted to multiple programs and getting accepted anywhere is so difficult that, it must be that the the committee saw promise in the ideas that you put forth.  Looking over your materials, people liked what you do and/or how you do it, so just keep on that path, working to improve on your unique literary goals and insights. 

I was out of school for four years between my MA and PhD, so I am aware that I am a little rusty at things, but not as bad as I thought and it didn't prevent me from doing good things in my first semester.  One thing I wish I'd done differently was in how I prepared the summer before entering the program.  I tried to cover gaps in my reading knowledge by reading random 18th c. novels, for example, but I wish I had just looked through and studied up on the modernist figures I stated interest in.  One thing I find, having been out of school, is that my working knowledge is not so great, and I'm finding myself having to revisit or look stuff up that I already knew at some point, even in my own time period. 

Edited February 24, 2017 by HumanCylinder

[Silabus]

I gotta echo @HumanCylinder.

I don't really suffer from Imposter Syndrome. I think the reason for that is I don't read other theories or listen to other folks' presentations and compare it to my own work. What I'm doing is very specialized to my particular set of interests and schools---so as far as I'm concerned no one is as good as me at my own scholarship. Maybe that comes off pretentiously, but oh well. The point I'm trying to make here is the same as that old adage about the fact that there's always going to be someone richer than you, better looking, smarter, yadda yadda, but it's self-defeating to compare yourself to others. Just do your own thing, the way you can make it work.

To quote Dorian Corey: "If you shoot an arrow up and it goes real high, hooray for you."

Ultimately, you're in literary studies for you. Because you find it interesting and worth putting your time into. In that way, you're the same as everyone else, you're just as qualified as everyone else. Taking yourself too seriously is one of the least serious things you can do.

[Tybalt]

This is one of the better, infographic representations of perceived vs. actual "imposter syndrome."  I found it useful when I first saw it, particularly in keeping things in perspective.