I'm in my first real teaching position. I had bounced around adjuncting for 3 years after I finished my doctorate, but I landed at a nice place last year.The problem is, I feel like an actor, a fraud. Of course we all do a little of the Prufrock thing
, preparing a "face to meet the faces [we] meet," but my academic self is really not much like who I am in real life. (Even my TV watching reality varies from what I say I watch and don't watch.)I feel dumb at work. I act as if I'm above certain discussions because I don't know enough about the content to weigh in reasonably. I evade certain colleagues because I'm afraid they know more than I do about even my own specialty - which I must tell you, is not especially hot, but that is often taught in my field.
When I leave campus each day, and head for rest with real world pals, cans of beer, and trash TV, I feel as though a weight has been lifted off me. I like my students and the teaching. But I put on such a show for the "adults" at my college, that I'm simply not showing them the "real" me.
Q: Am I alone in this?
This one really resonates for me. On the one hand, I think lots of us feel like frauds no matter what we accomplish or know -- one can't know everything, and a sense of inadequacy is probably healthy. On the other hand, it really is true that some kinds of knowledge are more valuable than others in academe. I'm in a field that's easy to dismiss, and I never really feel like "the real thing." I keep my mouth shut a lot and tend to avoid those annoying "books I have read that you haven't" conversations.
ReplyDeleteThe other issue is class. I'm not sure what your background is, Watson, but the people I know who come from genuinely working-class backgrounds are violently uncomfortable in academe. Most people with Ph.Ds have parents with Ph.Ds, and it's a snotty little guild of people who believe they are actually smarter than other people as opposed to just interested in different things. I joined a church community to remind myself that smart people are everywhere, from every walk of life. I also don't live where I work. That affords me lots of opportunities to be myself.
Hang in there. You are NOT alone!
You've both stated how I feel much better than I could have. I especially agree with F&T's remarks about class. I'm from a working class background whose family barely made ends meet. I've noticed certain disconnects between my colleagues and me that aren't as much a matter of intelligence as class.
ReplyDeleteI'm going to "hear hear" the class comment.
ReplyDeleteAbout 99% of the time, who I am works. I make jokes, I tell funny stories, I'm pretty unapologetic about who I am. This doesn't seem to harm me in my department, and is supposedly one of the reasons that I got hired in my new one.
But when it's highlighted to me that I'm in a crowd that thinks it is BETTER than me, I clam up and freak the heck out. My best example was just a couple of months ago. I was at an after party for a conference and 1) there weren't a heck of a lot of people there and 2) at some point conversation turned towards our parents' education level.
EVERYBODY came from well to do families who had Master's degrees and PhDs but me. EVERYBODY. Then they looked at me and wanted me to answer that question.
My normal response would be to laugh it off and be like "My dad dropped out of high school and my mom flunked out of college! I have no idea where I came from!" but... this wasn't the kind of crowd you can even joke in. I shrugged, and without giving more detail said "I'm sorta G1-G1.5 myself." Silence.
The class thing is huge. I remember well how in grad school many of the other students made me feel that I was not in the club. Once, a guy actually said to my face, "what do you know, you're just some [insert classist insult] guy." A friend immediately stepped between us, and it was a good thing.
ReplyDeleteWhat I eventually figured out is that academia is like every other profession. It has a set of rules and a particular way of thinking about the world. It isn't about how much you know. It is just a matter of mastering a set of professional skills and knowing how and when to demonstrate those skills. The reason that the insider kids, especially the faculty brats, seem so clubby is that they arrive in grad school already knowing how to talk the talk. They aren't smarter than you and me, they are simply familiar with the rules of the game.
Once I figured that out, I stopped feeling like an outsider.
I'm so glad that you asked this. When I first started teaching, I often felt that it was just me who felt this way, and that everyone else was part of a secret club that I didn't know about.
ReplyDeleteI also come from a blue-collar, working class background. My mother is an immigrant with a HS diploma (in her 3rd language, I might add - now that is an accomplishment!). My father left college after one semester to join the service.
Now, 18 years later, I still sometimes have those feelings of not being smart enough bubble to the surface when I am around those who think that they are smarter than everyone else. But, I've found ways to avoid those situations when I can, and I found others on my campus who come from similar backgrounds. That has helped a lot.
Like F&T, I do not live where I teach, which allows me to just be Clara and not Dr. Clara. I also am a member of a faith community, which offers support and fellowship.
So, you are not alone! I suspect that there are others on your campus who would share your perspective. Once you find them, you'll feel much better. I know that I did.
Oh wow. Me too! There are days I'm certain uniformed officers will interrupt my class in order to cart me off as a fraud. I also teach a subject that is undervalued. I'm at a community college where we're all paid based on experience. I had a colleague, hired the same year I as, who told me I shouldn't be paid as much because I teach a nonessential subject.
ReplyDeleteNope, you're not at all alone.
You're absolutely not alone. I felt like this a lot, especially in my first year. It gets better.
ReplyDeleteFor me, I had forgotten a whole bunch of stuff I used to know, skills I used to have. Forgotten them so thoroughly that I didn't remember having them. But teaching helped that.
A good thing to do is to go back and read old correspondence with people from a time you didn't feel like a fraud. You're an expert at something! You just have to remind yourself what that is.
Hold on, let's all calm down here.
ReplyDeleteI agree about feeling inadequate. It happens to me all the time, and you've recognized a real worry among academics. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in a seminar or meeting and thought, "Am I the only one who doesn't understand a word this person is saying? Or is everyone taking the 'keep your mouth closed' approach that I am?"
So that's all well and good. But could we please not generalize about people for whom advanced degrees run in the family?
My dad has a Master's, and my mom has a Ph.D. Why does that automatically make me an elitist? They earned these degrees, not because they're snobby, but because they're smart and wanted to study these things.
And yes, it helped that they both came from middle-class backgrounds that afforded them this opportunity, and now they work in middle-class jobs and live in a medium-sized house in the suburbs. So what?
People aren't snobby because their parents have advanced degrees. They're snobby because they're snobby. I hate snobby people, too. So if we want to be accurate, let's keep the criticism focused on these people and not their stereotype, oui?
If you get along with your drinking buddies more than your academic colleagues, perhaps this explains why you are an adjunct. Many of the stories posted here appear to come from the bottom of the academic world. Maybe your fears are true.
ReplyDeleteSo, Watson, what are you going to do about it (besides running away and getting drunk every day)?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I definitely feel this too. "Impostor syndrome," as it's apparently called. If anyone discovers the cure, I hope they win a Nobel Prize.
ReplyDelete* I hope he or she wins the Nobel Prize.
ReplyDelete@Bubba
ReplyDeleteA little hostile, right? Who says Watson has to do anything about it, OR tell you?
@Watson
I know the feeling. It's common enough, I think, that you should at least take comfort from hearing others identify with what you're saying.
@midwestern_prof
I don't think he IS an adjunct. He used to be an adjunct. And you think adjuncthood is the penalty for getting along with your drinking buddies? Talk about a statement about class there.
@bubba and @midwestern_prof, why even comment? Isn't there some other blog where the top of the academic world meets for you to dump on?
ReplyDelete@watson, I hear you dude.
This describes every interaction I've ever had with academics. I don't think you're getting away with it. The pretense and misdirection at conferences makes my head want to explode.
ReplyDelete@Terry: Hey, my favorite meal is bourbon and... bourbon. I wasn't being judgmental; I was prodding Watson to share some hopeful words of wisdom. I stand by my question.
ReplyDelete@Ruby: Yes, I think the real concern here is for the poor upper-middle-class well-educated academics who are being generalized about. Good work!
ReplyDeleteI absolutely believe that class can play a role in this phenomenon -- for the simple reason that people who have experience with crossing class boundaries in the course of their academic careers tell me it does.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think the imposter phenomenon goes beyond class (or gender, with which it's also often associated). At the very least, it has multiple causes, many of them, like the class issue, structural, but some probably having to do with people from all kinds of backgrounds making narcissistic asses of themselves (probably in some cases, out of their own insecurity), and some having to do with individual personality/temperament.
I probably fall somewhere midway on the class/family background divide. My mother and father have an M.A. and a Ph.D. respectively (but neither made a career teaching at the college level). My grandfathers both came from working-class backgrounds, went to night school to earn what we'd now call associates degrees while working in what were essentially apprentice positions, then took rigorous qualifying exams that resulted in professional certification. They reaped the rewards of those efforts, though perhaps not as quickly or completely as they might have anticipated during the roaring 20s; the Great Depression hit just as they were getting established in their professions. One grandmother was the daughter of a not-particularly-well-off doctor -- sort of the city version of a country doctor -- who died quite young, leaving his wife and children on the financial edge; she had a 2-year-degree from a normal school, and taught in the public schools for 10 years before she married. The other grandmother actually came from a more privileged background (the 2nd or 3rd generation of a family of immigrants who made it well into the middle class through businesses such as importing, real estate investing and manufacturing without any college degrees), but nobody thought to send her to college (which she regretted; she did well in a demanding high school, and would have enjoyed it).
So, there's a family tradition of educational privilege, but not a long-established one, nor one in which education and financial comfort track neatly together (see Great Depression/early death; life is uncertain, and not always in our control, and education doesn't change that, though it may open up some additional options). I was also keenly aware that the one grandfather who survived into my childhood, and who was a voracious reader, was every bit as smart as his son (my father), and would, under other circumstances, have been equally capable of earning a Ph.D. I didn't know the other grandfather, but the presence of a well-thumbed set of Harvard Classics in my mother's childhood home suggested similar tendencies. And, of course, I knew that both grandmothers, had they been born a generation later, would have been just as capable as their children of finishing college. Maybe the one generation of college graduates seemed to prove something about the incompletely-realized capabilities of members of the earlier generations, but I think it was more that I assumed that anyone was capable of going to college (and grad school), and that opportunity, not ability, was the key factor. (continued below)
In high school, I was naive enough about the whole legacy thing not to realize that prep school classmates who received early admission offers from our mutual first-choice Ivy League college probably benefited from the fact that they had grandfathers and uncles, as well as fathers, who were graduates, but not particularly overawed when I got into the school myself regular admission, and headed off for my freshman year. My parents had gone to similar schools, and I'd gotten in, so I figured I belonged as much as anybody (and I have to say that I never questioned whether my fellow students whose parents hadn't gone to college also belonged; after all, they, too, had gotten into the place. Nor, through all the debates of the '80s and '90s about affirmative action, which were more or less concurrent with my undergrad and grad careers, did I ever find myself wondering whether someone of a race or class background that would have barred members of their parents' generation from the school really "belonged"; the bottom line is that Ivy League schools have their pick of both students and faculty, and they don't need to admit or hire people who aren't more than capable of holding their own in the name of diversity. I did, however, run into the occasional not-so-bright undergraduate, who invariably turned out to be a legacy).
ReplyDeleteI felt pretty comfortable as an undergrad, and as an early grad student, but sometimes felt, and can still feel, like something of a fraud when the talk turns to academic subjects, mostly, in my case, because my interests tend to be more empirical than theoretical (and theory was very much the going thing -- and the proof of high intelligence -- during my grad school years; while it hadn't yet made major inroads in the seminar room, it was all the rage among the most up-and-coming of my peers, who studied and drew on it on their own). These days, there's the added fact that I haven't published much, partly because I fear that what I do isn't "cool" or cutting-edge enough to interest anyone, but mostly because I've been so damn busy trying to make a living in an academic job market that looks very different from the one described to me when I entered grad school (the prognosticators were predicting a shortage of humanities faculty). Nor do I feel entirely comfortable when the talk turns to pedagogy; I think I give my students something of value, and even enjoy doing it, but I don't connect as easily with students as some of my colleagues who really want to focus their careers entirely on the classroom, nor do I get the same charge out of teaching as they apparently do. There are definitely times when I wish that my success in my job was also judged on the basis of my scholarship (untheoretical though it may be). (continued again; I appear to have unwittingly written a novel)
Nor does church (also my main beyond-academia community) entirely offer a refuge; despite (or maybe because of) the fact that most members are highly educated (the great majority who don't have at least a B.A. are either under the age of 22 or women over the age of 60 who dropped out of college to marry), I still occasionally encounter the belief that the Ph.D., or the Ivy League degrees, or some combination of the above (neither of which I advertise, but I've been a part of the community for a long time, and finally defended my dissertation several years after moving here, so they're hardly a secret either), makes me somehow smarter than the person to whom I'm talking (not at all my impression). It probably doesn't help, on either side, that pretty much all of them make far more money than I do (in a highly achievement- and credential-oriented culture, I sometimes feel like Banquo's ghost -- a reminder that sterling credentials don't always lead to "success," at least as it's conventionally defined. Or I feel -- perhaps quite inaccurately -- the presence of the unasked question: "so why didn't you make more of your brains and/or education?")
ReplyDeleteOverall, I'd guess that we all feel like imposters, or at least out of place, on occasion, though some of us may be more vulnerable than others for various reasons. I'm also pretty sure that people who seem to go out of their way to establish their intelligence and/or other bona fides are almost always acting out of their own insecurity -- and that sometimes, when it seems to us that others are boasting or showing off, it's our own insecurity talking.
So, Lex, maybe some sort of anti-insecurity drug would reduce the problem (and assholery in general)? If so, that would be to the good, though I'd still prefer a milk-of-human-kindness-based rather than Big Pharma-created solution.
Ugh, I can't even let this one go: "My dad has a Master's, and my mom has a Ph.D. Why does that automatically make me an elitist? They earned these degrees, not because they're snobby, but because they're smart and wanted to study these things."
ReplyDeleteIt isn't snobbery that separates academics whose parents have advanced degrees from those who don't. It's entitlement, savoir faire, and other very subtle senses of belonging. If you don't have them, you know it. If you do have them, you often don't know it at all.
And I speak as someone whose parents BOTH have Ph.Ds. I waltzed around grad school like I owned the place, without even realizing I did so, until I was humbled by a kick-ass working-class student from a public research institution. She didn't know how to work the ropes, but she was much smarter than I am. She is now more successful, too, but she took a lot of hard knocks along the way. She also entered a less-undervalued subfield than I did, because she didn't have the privilege of not choosing the major field.
As for me, nasty little midwestern_prof, I am not an adjunct, nor anywhere near the bottom of the academic world. I'm a full professor at a high-ranking public R1 with 2 books and a slew of articles under my belt and I edit the top-tier journal in my (undervalued) field. But I don't kid myself into thinking that's because I am smarter than other people. Because of my background, I knew how to take advantage of the many opportunities I was given, is all.
I don't go to church because I'm religious, either. I'm not, particularly. I go because it's one of the few places where they have to take everyone who walks in, including me. I feel like it helps me not be an asshole.
I also am a faculty brat and can easily acknowledge the privilege of knowing that you will go to college because that is how your world works. I can also acknowledge the significant benefit of knowing something about how graduate school works and having access to family advice about how to get through it. I can't agree to sentiments like this though.
ReplyDelete"I waltzed around grad school like I owned the place, without even realizing I did so, ..."
An I'm more likely to agree with Cassandra's rationale.
"probably having to do with people from all kinds of backgrounds making narcissistic asses of themselves"
Oh, and I mostly started "keepin' it real" AFTER I got tenure.
ReplyDeleteFrank, that would be hyperbole. Use of it does not make one a narcissist.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean is this: if your parents are academics, college professors are just nerds your parents had over for dinner. You're not intimidated. You know the lingo. And those skills go a long way in this profession. I didn't know that till I got to graduate school.
The end.
I'm not saying it's NOT "imposter syndrome" but I prefer the term "emotional labor" to describe the 'acting' that has to take place in the classroom. It's a term that is used in public relations and communication studies to refer to the 'face' and persona we use for the public and the kind of labor required of us (it's emotional, versus physical) to get through any given class. It is also the labor that causes us to want to shoot ourselves in the groin rather than face another dead-beat class.
ReplyDeleteI also think a lot of the 'pretense' takes place among a certain set of academics. Not everyone has to be part of that group. My SLAC is split in that some stand in the hallways spouting eloquent about theory and their multiple publications... and they thrive on that and students know to avoid classes from them because no one knows what they're REALLY saying. Others of us talk in a more accessible manner. We just have a different preference for what we talk about on a daily basis. It took me a year or two to figure out that it was a special kind of language being used by one set, and the kind of language I was comfortable being used by the other.
ReplyDeleteWatson, by now you realize that you're not alone. I'm late to this thread -- which has much wisdom and compassion, except for midwestern_prof -- but add my voice to the message that it gets better. Hang in there.
ReplyDeleteIn my case, getting therapy about a crumpling marriage helped a lot; I learned to give myself permission to be more authentic at home as well as at work.
You also said "I feel dumb at work. I act as if I'm above certain discussions because I don't know enough about the content to weigh in reasonably."
Is this about committee work? Department meetings about policies? *Of course* you don't know enough about the content to weigh in reasonably. Just say that! How refreshing. Your colleagues will respect that you're waiting until you have something substantial to say.
But why act as if you're above the discussion? If you have to "act", then why not act as if you're a grad student learning a new sub-sub-specialty? Take notes. Ask questions. ("What's the history of this policy?" often is useful to others in the room as well.) At the very least, feign interest. Works for me.