Why Would You Read This?

TLDR:

• Imposter Syndrome exists in all parts of society.

• In academia, Imposter Syndrome is extremely common.

• There are three forms of Imposter Syndrome:

  • Common (you are less capable)

  • Fearful (you are a fraud)

  • Late-stage (the institution should be burned to the ground)

• A poignant conclusion that you must read to uncover.

As someone who has written in many forms over many years, Imposter Syndrome (IS) is a good friend of mine. Whatever information you want to put into the world, IS asks you to think about why you should be the messenger. With its self-doubt and “inability to internalise successes,”1 IS may feel familiar to you and is found not just within academia but across all professions. What makes IS so stark in academia is that the currency of knowledge is ever-changing.

“I think there’s a bit of an acceptance that [imposter syndrome] is part of the deal, that this is part of becoming a researcher, this is part of becoming an academic” - Lydia Mantay for Taylor and Francis.2

Even at a postgraduate level (I am studying for my LLM), we are haunted by ‘grading criteria’ and ‘learning outcomes’. For some, a framework of exactly what you should achieve is extremely useful; for others, it is vague and unhelpful. While I try not to fixate on such guides, I often get caught thinking about that increasingly popular word: ‘flare’. In a 2022 paper in the Journal of Educational Psychology, Muradoglu et al. argued that the more a person (most commonly a woman) perceived their industry as requiring “natural brilliance” or “special aptitude”, the more likely they were to experience imposter syndrome.3 The feeling of “intellectual fraudulence” was pervasive amongst early career academics.4

In my understanding of my own IS, there are three key forms. The first is the idea that you are not as ‘good’ or ‘clever’ as your peers; this is the common or garden IS found in every walk of life. Other people seem happier/ more put together/ better than you, and you don’t exactly know what to do about it. If unchecked, this IS can wreak havoc on your mental health. The second type of IS is alluded to above- the feeling that you are a fraud and the resulting anxiety that you might be discovered at any moment.5 This is not exclusive to academia either, but in a field where rigorous examination and feedback is the modus operandi, it is unsurprising that many academics have reported this kind of feeling.

The third type of IS is a special formulation I like to call ‘late-stage’ or ‘abolitionist’ IS. This is when you don’t doubt yourself as much as you doubt the institution within which you are trying to fit yourself. Anyone anti-consumerist and/or pro-environmental will understand this feeling- you don’t fit into the world, but it’s the world that needs changing.

In academia, the air can feel saturated by the millions of thoughts and ideas that are being brought to life. Even those undergraduates who are only doing their degree because their caregiver told them to are brimming with passion and ideas about something. And something important at that. Once you get past thinking everyone is cleverer or has access to exclusive wisdom (they don’t) and you realise that your work is the same as anyone else’s and you are not the fraud, then what are you left with? In ‘late-stage IS’, it is the troubling understanding that nobody in academia is ever fully confident in themselves or their work.

So, why should you read this blog? The same reason we should keep reading other people’s papers (and books, poems, and memoirs)- because we have an interest in the human experience. Sure, maybe you’ve gotten this far and decided that you don’t give a hoot about any of this, it has not added to your understanding of the world, and that is precious time you’ll never get back, then I can only apologise. But if this blog has made you think about something or stirred some background cranial fibres, then you’ve understood what academia is all about. Sharing and creating knowledge.

This blog was written with no AI.