my profs’ advice/comments on impostor syndrome –
“i’ll tell you how i’ve learned to deal with this sort of thing. i didn’t develop a sense of joy in my academic study until i realized that what really matters is the work itself. it’s not about trying to impress anybody or trying to earn a specific grade. it’s all about loving the work, the reading, the writing, the critical conversation. and i think you do love those things, and you do enjoy your academic work when you can get out of your own way about it. now, where i’m at in my career, i have to think about what gets me up in the morning, and that’s not publishing 20 articles a year or seeking external approval. what it is, is writing, reading, and teaching about what I love, my own little academic world that i’ve created.” – prof c
“i wrote shitty papers in college, and i still got a phd. you’re not supposed to know everything yet! you’re still learning! you know what, write that on a post-it and stick it on your laptop. you don’t have to know it all yet. you don’t have to be perfect.” – prof s
“while i can assure you that you should not feel like an imposter, i can also confess that the syndrome is common at all levels of academia – so you should not think yourself abnormal to be experiencing it.” (x)
“i hate to say/write this, but it’s sort of true: that you having these impostor-syndrome reactions, these worries about disappointing those you respect … to me, that sort of signals that you do have traits common to many successful academics! even people who have masses of success behind them – and, come to think of it, particularly the people who have a lot of cred *and* outside affirmation of it – suffer from impostor syndrome *if* (and the if is important) they genuinely care about the quality of their work. so: if it’s possible to think of these feelings as symptomatic of a characteristic many good academics share, then please do. (…) the important thing is this: how counterproductive it can be for self-sabotaging people to think of themselves as being ‘born’ to do something. it makes any possibility of missing the mark immediately existential. academic work is something one chooses because one has a strong interest in a certain field of study, an ability to study and produce credible work (as judged by ‘authorities’ in said field), and a social possibility to choose to proceed in that direction. sometimes, i, at least, find it helpful to remind myself of the simple facts of this. (…) i do think it’s important to put the activating gesture of entering grad school very firmly in your own hands. you are choosing this. you are choosing it because you want it, others have said that you are capable, and you have the practical possibility of choosing it. this is enough. the work will be enough without the existential heft, and the existential heft will not make the work better.” – s
from my lit teacher’s wife, an english prof at ucb who graduated from yale – ”yes—i feel like this often—and so does every person i’m close to in academia, and every graduate student ever. the key is to just feel the fear and do it anyway, especially when ‘do it’ means ‘write.’”
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