Back when I was just a slip of a thing, in my first year as 'assistant lecturer in government' at the U of M, I was sitting in the cinema with WotN one evening, watching a run-of-the-mill western - The Way West in fact - when I was suddenly overwhelmed by a sense of crisis. I had to leave, and being as she has a loving and sympathetic nature WotN left with me. What induced this sense of crisis was the dawning realization of how little I actually knew - I mean, faced with what I was now required to teach. Well, we made our way back to our flat on Barlow Moor Road, and I sat at the dining-room table and devised a detailed and intensive reading programme. The plan restored my confidence and following it through began to give me what I needed to teach on the basis of knowing at least something about what I was teaching.
This experience gives me a basis for being able to relate to the article here:
On a recent evening, Columbia University held a well-attended workshop for young academics who feel like frauds. These were duly vetted, highly successful scholars who nonetheless live in creeping fear of being found out.That's it - being found out. For a while there, watching The Way West, I thought I had a good chance of being thrown out of my job. It's now a recognized condition, apparently: impostor syndrome.
In psychological terms, that's a cognitive distortion that prevents a person from internalizing any sense of accomplishment.Even later in life, when I've held positions of senior responsibility, I've sometimes thought: 'Hey, this is a job for a grown-up. How do I come to be doing it?' I am most relieved to learn that I'm by no means alone:
70 percent of people from all walks of life - men and women - have felt like impostors for at least some part of their careers.Hold on. That's a lot of people, 70 percent. Maybe we're all impostors. And those other 30 percent, who do they think they are? Going about like that, without any self-doubt? Bloody impostors. (Via: A&L Daily.)