Why I'm unhappy with "Imposter Syndrome"

Written by The Questioning Aspie 

The author has kindly given us permission to re-post this article from her own website.  The original can be found here:

https://thequestioningaspie.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/why-im-unhappy-with-imposter-syndrome/

So, I may have mentioned that this blog is likely to be a pile of contradictions – and that I might end up changing my mind, or refining ideas about things as I go along.

Well, this is one of those times …

I wrote a blog recently about how I feel that my autism diagnosis makes having confidence in my ability to do my PhD really hard (it’s here if you’d like to take a look). In the post, I mentioned how frequently the term “Imposter Syndrome” was used to describe how often people don’t feel like they ‘fit in’ in academia – that they don’t feel good enough. I tried to explain how having an autism diagnosis, with all that this involves, makes this even more tricky.

Well, my blog was picked up and retweeted by Susan Oman, who is researching wellbeing, including in relation to PhD experiences (you can check out her work here). What was particularly interesting was that in retweeting the blog link, the phrase that Susan picked up on was “I feel like an imposter, but not just that, I feel like an autistic imposter.”

And this is really how it felt to me when I wrote it – like all PhD students experience ‘imposter syndrome’ but being autistic makes this even more of a problem.

So why am I questioning this now?

Well, since I wrote the blog, I’ve been thinking about, and speaking to others about how the notion of ‘imposter syndrome’ actually works, and it occurs to me that the phrase, and what it implies, might not be helping.

What I mean by this is that I had been thinking of ‘imposter syndrome’ as something that affects individual PhD students – and that my individual experience of autism meant that my version of ‘imposter syndrome’ was different/worse/whatever than that of others. Well, the thing is that I do still think this might be the case to an extent – and I don’t think that those who aren’t autistic can understand what it’s like, or can know about it. I do still feel that, but in the past that’s made me quite protective of it, and quite “parochial” (I guess) about the specialness of autism and of autistic experiences.

I didn’t want it to be lumped together with other types of individual experience because how could others possibly know about autism? (Which was my individual experience, and the overriding cause of my ‘imposter syndrome’). So it shut off my thinking about other types of individual experience – people who experience ‘imposter syndrome’ because they are trying to do PhDs and balance childcare commitments, because they have come to academia via a ‘non traditional route’, because they are older than the ‘typical postgraduate’ – or all the other hundreds of thousands of ways that people can feel that they don’t fit in with the model of what a ‘proper PhD student’ should be.

It set me apart from them because the term locates ‘imposter syndrome’ in the individual. It sets it up as an individual ‘problem’ for the individual to overcome.

But I’m not happy with that. Because locating the issue within the individual makes it into a ‘personal’ struggle and creates some kind of hierarchy (“my experience is worse than yours because I have autism” or “your experience is worse than mine because you’re from a Working Class background”). It also has the potential to locate the cause of the trouble in individuals – individual supervisors, individual departments. And this in itself is something that makes raising these issues very problematic for those of us who actually have good relationships with supervisors or with our departments. Indeed, this concern makes it feel troubling for me writing this now, because it feels like it would be so easy to infer from my attempts to absolve myself of any individual ‘blame’ for feeling like an ‘imposter’, that I am attempting to lay the’ blame’ on other individuals. But it’s absolutely not that. I have a really great supervisor and I like the department I’m in. The issue is a far deeper cultural one than that, and I think it goes beyond individuals and is historically and culturally rooted.

So I think that this individualisation of ‘imposter syndrome’ lets the wider systems and structures that lead people to feel that they don’t have a place within academia ‘off the hook’. And really, seriously, if this phenomenon is so widespread, across so many different types of student, different institutions, different academic disciplines – then maybe, just maybe the problem is not an individual ‘syndrome’ but a structural issue. Maybe the focus for change needs to be on the concepts and practices, the systems that are creating the conditions for people to feel like outsiders in a place where they have earned the right to be.

And I don’t feel that talking about ‘imposter syndrome’ really gets us to a place where that is our focus for change.

I don’t pretend to have definitive answers for change, but I do want to be part of something that makes change happen – that makes academia a more inclusive place to be, so that those of us who are ‘non mainstream’ can make meaningful, recognised contributions in a way that does not push us to the brink of breaking, or beyond.

My reasons for this are clear and unashamedly partisan – as an autistic woman, I feel that I need academia. I need to be able to go beyond my own personal experiences and understand how the world works around me. I need to learn, and I love to teach. I also feel that I have something to contribute. I’ve worked really hard to get where I am, and so many people have helped me along the way. But being part of a community means you have a responsibility to it, and to help to shape it, and that’s what I’m trying to do from my autistic perspective.

So the one thing that I feel like I can offer at this point is the suggestion that maybe we should reconsider the language of ‘imposter syndrome’ and begin to talk about something that locates the problem outside of individuals so that we can begin to work within and change a system that actually makes the majority of us feel like ‘imposters’ at some point. Maybe we need to shift our focus much more firmly to ‘hostile spaces’ or ‘hostile cultures’ in the PhD experience and in academia more widely (of which the PhD is a formative part). Because that’s where I think change needs to happen.

 About the Author

The author is an autistic woman, studying and working in academia.  She has lived and worked in spaces where the pursuit of equality and social justice are presented as ‘given’ priorities – in some university environments, in work and at the kitchen tables of family and friends.  She cares personally, deeply and passionately about equality for autistic people. Personal experience of hurt, stigma and troubled identity have led her to try with all of the resources at her disposal to construct a life that works to shield other autistic people from those experiences.

Coming back to work after a long illness

Written by Raul Pacheco-Vega

Raul has kindly given us permission to re-post this article from his own website. The original can be found here:

Coming-back-to-work-after-a-long-illness

If you followed my Twitter feed in the past couple of weeks you’ll know that I fell really ill right after my two weeks of fieldwork in Madrid. My family doctor says it was a combined influenza plus overexhaustion plus almost-pneumonia kind of illness, and he got me on a two-week course of antibiotics (one week of injections and one week of pills). I am barely finished with the antibiotics and have started feeling like a human again. The first week was terrible. I had to sleep 24 hours in a row, for two days in a row.

I learned a few things these past two weeks. The first one is that some people will not understand that being ill is not a choice, and that my main focus is, and should be on getting better, not finishing a chapter/paper/article. I think it is not worth working with someone who doesn’t understand the human aspects of academia. I don’t work weekends. I don’t work holidays. I don’t work when I am sick.If that doesn’t work for you, then I don’t want to work with you.

The second thing I learned is that I should trust my doctor when he says that I need to recharge my batteries and to choose my activities wisely. He said “you will have energy to do ONE thing per day. ONE. So, be wise about which activity you do each day while you recover”. That’s exactly what I did. For example, on Wednesday, I chose to promote the Bachelor of Public Policy program in Leon, where my parents live. It was exhausting and I needed to just keel over and sleep for an hour afterwards. On Tuesday, I chose to attend an important meeting with my CIDE colleagues. On Thursday, I chose to attend a meeting with our students. I didn’t worry about doing anything else. I only had energy to do ONE thing and I did it well. And then I went back to sleep.

The third thing I learned is that I should avoid forcing myself to do anything, particularly work, while I’m convalescent. Contrary to what many people may think, I have a very fragile physique. I have severe allergies (alcohol and lactose, just to start), and my immune system has been compromised since I was a child. I’ve had to take care of myself since I was very little, and while the past few years I was able to avoid falling gravely ill, this 2016 seems to have taken a toll on me way too early, and thus I need to rest even more, as my Spring semester is actually quite busy.

The fourth thing I learned is that I should only gradually come back to do my activities, instead of trying to Get Everything Done As Soon As I Feel Remotely Healthy. I have been doing one, two small things in addition to one big thing every day, and I feel much better.

And the fifth thing, which probably should be the first, is a reminder of something I already knew: no academic accolades are worth your health and your life. No matter how many papers you are supposed to publish per year, how many conferences, your health is and should be first.

About the Author

Raul is an Assistant Professor in the Public Administration Division of the Centre for Economic Research and Teaching (Centro de Investigacion y Docencia Economicas, CIDE, AC) based out of CIDE Region Centro in Aguascalientes, Mexico. His research lies at the intersection of space, public policy, environment and society. He is primarily interested in understanding the factors that contribute to (or hinder) cooperation in natural resource governance.

Metrics of Productivity

Written by Wanda Diaz Merced

During the month of September 2015, I was invited to an inclusion summit by the American Astronomical Society (AAS).  On my way to the summit I took a shared shuttle ride.  A very nice and talkative couple shared the journey with me.  Their destination was their house and mine the AAS office in Washington DC. Of course, we chatted all the time. I love chatting!

The lady introduced herself as a member of staff at the Fulbright Commission. We chatted and laughed all the way. The conversation reached a point where she mentioned her various trips to a country in Africa, to which I replied "I have been there many times too!".  That led me to explain why and to talk about my academic research.  It was very good to hear the “how do you do it?” question right after I told them about my work.

When we got to that point, being unemployed myself, I spoke about how some people’s disabilities lead them to make grammatical mistakes in their resumes, essays and in job application forms that are often not user centered.  I also spoke of technology like screen readers, which despite being helpful, do not prevent us from making mistakes that may lead to incomplete applications or unattached required documents leaving our applications destined for the rejection pile.

I had the same challenge when doing my PhD.  Because I did not ask for a proofreader, upon turning my thesis in I had a whole chapter inserted into the table of contents and during the viva the examiners asked me why I had not included a conclusion chapter.  I had written it but it never made it into their hands.  Beyond that, my examiners mentioned that paragraphs were repeated and pages were numbered twice among other issues.   Luckily for me, my university took action and paid a proofreader, who helped me to correct all the grammatical mistakes and my examiners understood the situation.

However, what about a recent graduate who has a disability causing the occurrence of grammatical mistakes who cannot pay an editor or someone to proofread or help with the job application process?  What about the mentality in scientific academia in the field of astronomy and computer science (I only know astronomy and computer science) of a productivity metric based on written publications?  What about the fact that people who are disabled are expected to perform like a traditional academic (I still use astronomy and computer science as an example) using the same interfaces and perhaps strategies.  As a blind person I have my own strategies; why do I have to be assessed against the established metrics if I have to complete an application that has been made only for sighted users, when I navigate the application with my ears?    How much more difficult is it to compete fairly for a job when your cv is destined for the rejection pile because a grammatical mistake potentially has more weight than your achievements, or because we just could not deal with the presentation of the job application?

I choose to use sound to analyze my data but I have to present anything I find in the data visually to my peers.  When my collaborators bring data to me no one provides a sound file for me to evaluate the data as a peer.  I have also failed to make them aware that I use sound to analyze my data because my performance is at its highest.  They provide a chart.  It is true that the chart may be embossed so that I can use touch to “read” it but in my case having access to the data behind the charts allows me to hear it and do a more thorough evaluation of possible features that may be significant.

I humbly think that while academia is affected by these sorts of inequalities, some are at a disadvantage.  There is no malice; it happens unwittingly but to me this is equivalent to suffer a death by a hundred paper cuts.  At the same time I believe firmly that evaluation metrics have to change to establish a heterogeneous environment in academia, that better awareness will decrease the bias of review boards and that we will be able to level the playing field.  I do not underestimate the effort this will take.  This is a situation that affects all people with disabilities in academia, those applying for post-docs and anyone with a disability who is job hunting.   This is robbing people with disabilities from equal opportunities to display our talents and dignified, meaningful work.  Anyone may develop a disability at any time.  Academics with and without disabilities from every background should unite and work towards leveling the playing field.  People with disabilities do things with our bodies that the able-bodied person has never thought of; if we are allowed to participate as equals, a new type of academia will emerge with people exploring, discovering and employing innovative coping strategies the able-bodied would never think of. 

About the Author

Wanda is a Computer Scientist and Astronomer with a PhD from the University of Glasgow in Scotland.  She is now affiliated to the Office of Astronomy for Development located at the South African Astronomical Observatory in Cape Town.