Imposter Syndrome

My colleague Will brought up the idea of feeling like an imposter in class, or having "imposter syndrome." That was a term I was introduced to while reading Brookfield's Skillful Teacher. I remember reading about that syndrome and thinking of the number of times I've felt the same thing; joining the Army, SF Pre-Scuba School, Ranger School, Best Ranger, joining the workforce and with each successive job opportunity. There have been few experiences where I feel I am not an imposter at the beginning of the journey. And my epiphany (if it can be called that) is that the longer we spend in the process the more confident and capable we become. 

The trick I find is to shorten that learning curve and shorten the process or the duration of the imposter part of the process. The faster we can become proficient in the system the less like an imposter. I'm sure someone has graphed this in some highly technical and imaginative way. Regardless, as epiphanies go, it's hardly earth shattering, but it does play a part. I find that it's not just the classes that I take that are helping me gain a sense of correctness of being in the situation or a lack of impostership, but it's also the work that goes into the process behind the scenes. Each article I've read, every paper I write, each research idea that I dream up, takes me a step closer. So, what I've been doing is decreasing the timescale by doing more reading and more writing on my own. Before the last class we took together I found and downloaded about 20 papers on emotional connection and VR (which was my area of interest for that class) so that I could be prepared bfore the class began. I not only read the books before the class, but also found two other books on memory to review as well. The more prep I can do for each class and toward this Ph.D. process the less likely there's a feeling of impostership (like I said, hardly and epiphany).

Secondly, and this one has to deal with writing, I have written and (self) published three novels. In every instance of writing those novels I was surprised by the amount of re-writing I had to do. Each book is 90K words long and based on the reviews I get, they aren't too poorly written. Each one may have started with a 50,000 word sprint to the finish in a month long writing challenge like National Novel Writing Month puts on, but they grew from that. Throughout all of that I've found it's never the first draft that makes the final cut. That novel I was working on before starting the program, I was on the 4th iteration. I've found that writing is more about re-writing and editing than the writing itself, but given enough time and attention, like anything else, it takes shape. 

What I'm impressed by with this process we are following is that amount of support we get from fellow students and professors. In just about every case I've listed above where I was challenged, I was pretty much on my own. This is the first challenge where I've had so many support groups, and that is what I've been leaning on. Those weekly meetings (even though I haven't attended as religiously as I should have) help me through tons of challenges with more ease than I could have handled alone. If you're going to feel like an imposter, best to have other imposters around you, right?

Brookfield, S. D. (2015). The skillful teacher (3rd ed.). John Wiley & Sons.