I wanted to write this blog post as a way to share my experience of impostor syndrome, and how I have found support at UC Irvine. For those of you who are not familiar with the term ‘impostor syndrome’, it is the feeling of not belonging in a (academic) community, because you have faked your way so far. This feeling is very common among graduate students, and it is often said to never disappear no matter how successful you are.
1) Graduate Division Counselor, Phong Luong
https://www.grad.uci.edu/spotlights/faculty/phong-luong.php
Phong is, by far, one of the favourite people I have met at UC Irvine. He is there for you to work with you through some academic and personal challenges. You can drop him an email or phone (pbluong@uci.edu or phone at 949- 824-0246) for a one-to-one appointment to discuss anything you’d like. He doesn’t only listen, but he also gives practical advice and recommends the resources available at UCI (and also teaches how to punch things…)
2) Sharing with friends and community
From my personal experience, I have found it to be helpful when I was able to recognise that feeling like an impostor was very common among others in the community. This meant that I was not alone in going through this, even some of the faculty members feel this way, and people still manage through their career successfully! But also, if your ‘friends’ and those in your community are not supportive, then you do not have to share your challenges with them.
When I share that I’ve been feeling insecure about my work or my ability, the reactions I receive from others really change the way I respond to my insecurities. I never find it helpful to hear another person comparing my situation to those who are less successful, thinking this would make me recognise what I’ve achieved. Well, I might have achieved these things regardless of what others did or did not achieve… THIS DOESN’T MAKE ME FEEL BETTER! So I have decided that these people are toxic for my mental health and I stopped talking to them about my insecurities.
Those I find helpful are there to share their own experience of going through their own feelings or are happy to admit that they do not know what to say. Ignorance about how to help or support is not a crime (surprise!).
3) Is Impostor Syndrome necessary or natural? The support can be found within myself.
Necessary? Definitely not.
Some people don’t suffer from it and they are happily going through their academic career flawlessly.
Natural? My answer is maybe.
As graduate students, researchers, academics and teachers, our job mostly consists of questioning, answering, observing and finding/developing new ideas or data. This is probably shared among all disciplines, but we are here to LEARN. For those of you not familiar with what learning is, it involves not understanding something, and then understanding it! …
We are surrounded by people who understand/know things that we don’t know. Not just the faculty members and academics, but our peers know things that we don’t know. It is natural that this is the case, because I know things that other people don’t know! (I am going to ask those philosophers who study epistemology to not say anything right now…)
When I see others who know things that I don’t know about, I start questioning whether I am good enough to be here. But in fact, if that wasn’t the case, I probably won’t be here. I am here to learn and ignorance is where that begins. I might feel like I don’t belong here because I don’t know the things others know, but that’s actually why I am here. This way of thinking is what got me through my first year of PhD program and hopefully it will help you too. It might be contradictory, but if you feel like an impostor, that’s probably because you’re not one.
P.S. for those interested, an impostorix is a female impostor… but impostors don’t really need to be gendered… https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/impostrix
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Stella MoonHome Planet: EarthSchool of Social Sciences
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