Not That Kind of Doctor - Imposter Syndrome

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01/11/2024 Added

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Imposter Syndrome - Ph.D. discussions with Nicholas Husbye and Guy Trainin. www.youtube.com/@tltenotthatkindofdoctor and https://mediahub.unl.edu/channels/42980

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[00:00:00.139](upbeat music)
[00:00:09.690]Leaving tomorrow for Atlanta, so.
[00:00:12.627]For LA, right?
[00:00:13.610]Yeah, LA.
[00:00:14.670]32 hours. (Guy banging table)
[00:00:16.380]Yeah. That's impressive.
[00:00:17.550]That's impressive.
[00:00:18.383]I don't know that I could do that.
[00:00:20.130]From what perspective?
[00:00:21.690]I just don't know
[00:00:22.523]that I'm going to conferences ever again.
[00:00:23.940]Oh, no.
[00:00:25.200]I mean, I will at some point,
[00:00:27.210]but right now I'm okay.
[00:00:29.640]Yeah.
[00:00:30.630]Totally, totally. I'm okay with it.
[00:00:32.880]Yeah absolutely.
[00:00:33.870]I had a six year thing when I went maybe
[00:00:36.840]to one conference every other year and it was fine.
[00:00:41.040]Nobody died.
[00:00:41.970]Kind of feels like the age that I am in.
[00:00:44.700]Yeah. Right?
[00:00:45.690]Yeah.
[00:00:46.800]But there is something interesting about like,
[00:00:50.340]because I have taken kind of a COVID inspired
[00:00:54.660]extended leave from conferences.
[00:00:56.700]There is this like, but are you an academic
[00:01:00.030]if you're not going to conferences and presenting?
[00:01:01.484](Guy laughing)
[00:01:04.200]And so that's been interesting to like-
[00:01:05.777]Yeah.
[00:01:06.610]Navigate because it does
[00:01:10.230]somewhat interestingly create a sense of,
[00:01:14.430]am I impostering, right?
[00:01:16.980]Within academia.
[00:01:18.300]Yeah.
[00:01:19.133]And I was thinking about it
[00:01:20.220]from the opposite way.
[00:01:21.330]And that is, I think that,
[00:01:25.440]which is a totally different argument than yours,
[00:01:28.080]but one of the places you can learn not
[00:01:32.640]to feel like an impostor is at conferences.
[00:01:35.490]Hmm.
[00:01:36.323]Yeah. I can see that too.
[00:01:37.560]I can see that too.
[00:01:38.430]So it's a cure,
[00:01:39.810]but it's also part of the problem.
[00:01:41.490]I don't know.
[00:01:42.420]Yeah. There's a lot there.
[00:01:43.470]There's an interesting symbiotic relationship there.
[00:01:45.516]Yeah.
[00:01:46.349]And that kind of helps us segue
[00:01:48.120]into what we're gonna talk about today
[00:01:50.700]on "Not That Kind Of Doctor",
[00:01:52.470]I'm Nick Husbye, I'm an associate professor
[00:01:54.570]of elementary literacy education here at UNL.
[00:01:58.200]And I'm Guy Trainin, I'm professor
[00:01:59.760]of education here at UNL.
[00:02:01.680]And I think every single academic
[00:02:06.750]that I know has been impacted by imposter,
[00:02:11.147]by an imposter phenomenon at one point or another, right?
[00:02:15.510]Like this idea of not really having
[00:02:19.740]a sense of being as competent as other people,
[00:02:24.345]as not belonging to certain spaces.
[00:02:29.400]Right.
[00:02:30.233]Which we talked about maladaptive perfectionism
[00:02:32.610]in our students in a previous episode.
[00:02:35.100]But when we're thinking about imposter syndrome
[00:02:37.290]for particularly grad students, right.
[00:02:40.980]And even early career, mid-career, late career.
[00:02:46.350]Yeah.
[00:02:47.183]Scholars, right.
[00:02:48.016]There's this self-perceived competence gap, right?
[00:02:53.520]That can make you feel
[00:02:56.370]a bit like I'm a fraud.
[00:02:59.040]Yeah.
[00:02:59.873]And it is self-perceived up to a point.
[00:03:04.020]I would like to argue that there's a lot
[00:03:07.800]that happens in academia that is consistently feeding
[00:03:12.052]that sense of being an imposter.
[00:03:15.630]Because academia has the original social media
[00:03:19.980]and that is the publication world is like Instagram
[00:03:23.340]in that you see people's best work,
[00:03:26.070]you don't see anything
[00:03:27.330]that never got published. Right.
[00:03:28.767]You just see the published,
[00:03:30.300]you see the things
[00:03:31.133]that were published after four or five,
[00:03:33.180]maybe more rounds of corrections
[00:03:36.342]and comments and improvements.
[00:03:39.270]So you're taking that
[00:03:40.647]and you're taking your manuscript you just sent
[00:03:42.660]in that just got rejected
[00:03:44.430]and you're always comparing it.
[00:03:46.680]So in a sense, the system is built with feeding
[00:03:51.836]that sense that we're inadequate
[00:03:54.510]because there's a lot of rejection.
[00:03:57.360]Most of the journals we submit
[00:03:58.950]to have a rejection rate between five
[00:04:01.920]and 20%, 20% is really a good number for us.
[00:04:06.600]Rejection or acceptance?
[00:04:09.240]Acceptance. Acceptance.
[00:04:10.290]Okay. Acceptance.
[00:04:11.123]So, you know, between one out of 20 to one out
[00:04:14.910]of five is where most journals fall.
[00:04:17.760]And one out of five is really good.
[00:04:19.260]But that means that even with that 20%,
[00:04:22.080]80% gets rejected, at least in first read.
[00:04:24.630]Which means that this is the normal state
[00:04:28.500]of affairs is to be rejected.
[00:04:30.120]But when you get that rejection, you feel it,
[00:04:32.490]you feel like you failed to a certain degree,
[00:04:35.070]you learn to deal with that.
[00:04:36.630]And that's part of growing in the profession.
[00:04:38.520]But definitely early on it feels devastating.
[00:04:40.860]I work with a lot of young scholars as I mentored them
[00:04:44.160]through first publications especially,
[00:04:45.960]we talked about this before
[00:04:47.370]through their dissertation work,
[00:04:49.380]and they get their revise and resubmit
[00:04:51.840]and the sense is, I have completely failed.
[00:04:53.760]What have I been doing?
[00:04:54.720]I need to find a different career.
[00:04:56.190]And the answer is not so fast.
[00:04:57.257]You've gotta revise and resubmit.
[00:04:59.160]That is the whole point.
[00:05:00.060]They're telling you they want to see it again.
[00:05:02.190]That is a win,
[00:05:03.426]but it feels like a loss. A loss.
[00:05:06.090]So the system, the system is really built to do
[00:05:09.000]that all the time.
[00:05:11.160]And we also have,
[00:05:13.170]and informally we've talked about it just recently,
[00:05:16.920]we also have a system that is very tiered
[00:05:20.490]there are top institutions that are really
[00:05:26.160]trying to create that separation.
[00:05:27.960]And we fight for students.
[00:05:29.220]So we do try to create a separation based
[00:05:31.530]on how highly you rated
[00:05:32.877]on some kind of ranking or another.
[00:05:35.220]And we can get into ranking another time.
[00:05:37.140]But there's definitely a sense
[00:05:39.447]of tears within the system
[00:05:42.060]and people placing them
[00:05:43.770]and talking about their institution,
[00:05:46.890]especially if they come from one of those top tiers.
[00:05:49.410]And they are really making those distinctions about
[00:05:54.510]where you work and what you do based on that.
[00:05:57.420]And that helps that as well.
[00:05:59.070]It's like, yeah, I'm in this conference
[00:06:01.500]with everybody else going back to conferences,
[00:06:03.840]but am I part of the in-crowd,
[00:06:06.810]even at the conference,
[00:06:07.920]it's easy to feel like you are on the out.
[00:06:10.530]And so,
[00:06:13.984]that's really always there.
[00:06:16.260]And I do believe that even
[00:06:18.030]the people who go to those main,
[00:06:19.650]to those big institutions
[00:06:20.910]and all of that have imposter syndrome at one point
[00:06:24.030]or another, because we all get rejected.
[00:06:25.680]We all have, all of these things happen to us.
[00:06:28.530]Well, and I think, I'm not in this situation,
[00:06:31.470]but like I remember talking
[00:06:33.150]to Jennifer Arousal about imposter syndrome
[00:06:35.730]and she was like, I feel like an imposter all the time.
[00:06:38.310]I have all of these articles,
[00:06:39.630]all these books, all these grants.
[00:06:41.460]I am endowed a chair, you know,
[00:06:43.200]et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:06:44.906]When do you stop feeling like an imposter?
[00:06:46.570]And I don't know that,
[00:06:50.044]I think there are certain things
[00:06:51.870]that you can do in order
[00:06:54.300]to negotiate those feelings of imposter syndrome.
[00:06:57.885]Yeah.
[00:06:58.718]Because there's a lot of structural stuff,
[00:07:00.060]there's a lot of social stuff that comes into play.
[00:07:02.220]Right, and even outside of academia, just writ large,
[00:07:05.910]when I was researching for this episode,
[00:07:09.270]I came across the statistic
[00:07:11.130]of 82% of people just writ large
[00:07:15.240]have imposter syndrome at some point in time.
[00:07:17.790]Right.
[00:07:18.623]Experience an imposter phenomenon.
[00:07:20.820]And so it becomes really,
[00:07:23.850]really important I think for us
[00:07:25.950]as academics for a variety of reasons to be aware of
[00:07:31.740]and think through how to negotiate
[00:07:36.030]when we experience imposter phenomena, right?
[00:07:40.290]Like what is happening there?
[00:07:41.815]When is that going?
[00:07:44.490]So I'm kind of, as I was preparing
[00:07:49.380]for this, I was thinking about like times where
[00:07:53.340]I've experienced imposter syndrome.
[00:07:55.410]I would love to know about times you've experienced
[00:07:57.413]imposter syndrome, 'cause there's probably multiple points
[00:08:01.920]in your career if you're like me.
[00:08:04.860]But you are perfect. (Guy laughing)
[00:08:06.000]So you're never an imposter.
[00:08:08.010]Well, I think that anytime you are fairly new
[00:08:13.380]to a situation, whether you get a new job
[00:08:16.470]or you take on a new role, for a while,
[00:08:19.590]you feel like an imposter.
[00:08:21.300]And I think that that is connected
[00:08:23.430]to how we behave inside the system.
[00:08:25.260]There's a language to this systems, right?
[00:08:28.140]So when you come to a new institution, all the people
[00:08:30.720]that are already there know there's just the local knowledge
[00:08:33.810]and you are new and that feels like you don't belong.
[00:08:36.510]And often, although it doesn't have to lead
[00:08:38.640]to an imposter syndrome, it can, right?
[00:08:42.090]Obviously I have not learned anything
[00:08:45.573]in my previous jobs that prepared me for this.
[00:08:50.340]And I feel like I'm pretending, right?
[00:08:52.920]That's at the heart of this.
[00:08:54.540]I'm pretending to be somebody I'm actually not.
[00:08:57.570]And that can drive you to a certain degree,
[00:09:00.270]but that can also be a very hard
[00:09:03.810]feeling to deal with.
[00:09:04.860]So that's one space.
[00:09:06.150]Every time you start something new,
[00:09:07.350]every time you interview,
[00:09:08.850]I think we talked a lot about interviews.
[00:09:12.180]You suddenly go back and say, I thought I knew my stuff,
[00:09:15.720]but now I'm not feeling that confident.
[00:09:18.540]And so that's another one of these moments.
[00:09:22.500]and definitely when you get a lot of rejections,
[00:09:27.060]which is again, powerful, the course,
[00:09:30.120]you are literally going
[00:09:31.950]to get more rejections than acceptances.
[00:09:33.900]It's just built into the system.
[00:09:35.640]But there's a moment where you're like,
[00:09:37.770]when it accumulates,
[00:09:39.300]sometimes it can feel that way.
[00:09:42.480]And those are moments,
[00:09:44.700]and I have lots of these moments as somebody
[00:09:47.550]who came from another country,
[00:09:48.930]there's that layer on top
[00:09:50.910]of this that is always there
[00:09:53.612]and,
[00:09:57.450]helps you negotiate this.
[00:09:59.370]I mean, there are ways to negotiate this,
[00:10:01.410]but there's always a certain amount of, for example,
[00:10:04.410]when I talk about, to talk about American culture
[00:10:08.040]and history, and we talked a lot about,
[00:10:12.240]when we talked about DEI
[00:10:13.920]and all of these things, we're talking about history,
[00:10:16.080]that isn't my history.
[00:10:17.940]So there's even a sense
[00:10:19.980]of being an imposter when you talk about these things
[00:10:22.950]because it's like, who is the us, right?
[00:10:25.860]Did we do this?
[00:10:27.300]We as a country definitely did.
[00:10:29.160]I wasn't here, my family wasn't here.
[00:10:31.200]So there's these moments where you feel like,
[00:10:35.970]how much of this can I take on?
[00:10:37.920]And that feels that there are moments there as well.
[00:10:41.130]So lots of that.
[00:10:43.012](Guy laughing)
[00:10:43.860]Well, and I think that like thinking
[00:10:45.930]through that DEI.
[00:10:46.890]Yeah. Perspective, right?
[00:10:48.000]I feel like that's something
[00:10:48.833]that so many people wrestle with,
[00:10:51.900]is this is a,
[00:10:56.104]DEI work is really wrestling
[00:10:58.719]with historical injustices.
[00:11:01.980]And so what is our role in that if given
[00:11:06.240]our contemporary moment?
[00:11:07.590]Right?
[00:11:08.423]Like I wasn't particularly
[00:11:11.910]involved in those injustices. Yeah.
[00:11:13.730]Yes.
[00:11:14.563]Right. So I feel like a lot
[00:11:16.860]of times there are those imposter
[00:11:20.220]kind of feelings around that's important work,
[00:11:24.810]but am I being an imposter?
[00:11:26.687]'Cause I'm not responsible,
[00:11:31.350]but responsible to adjusting
[00:11:34.830]and rethinking systems in order
[00:11:37.530]to ameliorate some of what's happened in the past.
[00:11:39.930]Right. Yeah.
[00:11:40.763]So there's that too.
[00:11:41.596]There's tons of ways.
[00:11:42.720]That you can feel like. To feel like an imposter.
[00:11:45.750]Points to academia.
[00:11:46.890]Yes.
[00:11:47.723]Right, like even we had recently on our
[00:11:52.140]Facebook page, I think it was, we were highlighting
[00:11:57.930]student teachers because our student teachers
[00:12:00.090]are finishing up.
[00:12:01.676]Yeah. It's the last week
[00:12:02.640]in November as we're recording this.
[00:12:04.290]So our student teachers are wrapping up their semester long
[00:12:08.220]student teaching experience.
[00:12:09.660]And so they were highlighting strong student teachers.
[00:12:13.200]And one of them called out my lit bloc class
[00:12:16.560]as like their favorite class in the program.
[00:12:19.740]And my first thought was,
[00:12:25.170]oh, she must not have been able to think
[00:12:26.580]of any other classes.
[00:12:27.796](both laughing)
[00:12:29.730]Instead of thinking I'm awesome.
[00:12:32.490]This was a foundational experience for them.
[00:12:35.580]Well, and the more I thought about it, like, so,
[00:12:38.790]'cause I think Jillian Harpster was the one who was like,
[00:12:40.560]oh, you gotta mention on Facebook.
[00:12:42.210]And I was like, I don't have a Facebook,
[00:12:44.880]I don't have a, I don't know what's going on.
[00:12:48.720]And so then I was thinking about it on the way home,
[00:12:50.430]on the bus, like, and I was like,
[00:12:54.900]I'm invalidating my student's opinion.
[00:12:57.270]Yes.
[00:12:58.103]I need to not do that.
[00:12:59.550]Yes.
[00:13:00.810]I don't have to be comfortable with it.
[00:13:04.710]'Cause there's some like.
[00:13:05.932]Yeah.
[00:13:06.840]Ooh, was it that great?
[00:13:08.040]Like I keep thinking of all the things
[00:13:08.873]that I could have done better, that could better.
[00:13:10.687]Yes. That semester.
[00:13:11.820]And I think that's just part of,
[00:13:14.790]it's part of the teaching.
[00:13:16.920]Yeah. Right.
[00:13:18.000]You always have things that you can do better,
[00:13:19.560]but you always have to keep them in perspective.
[00:13:21.690]And sometimes that perspective isn't difficult
[00:13:24.600]to support in your own brain,
[00:13:27.330]but like
[00:13:30.361]it was an objective measure
[00:13:32.940]that I just needed to take at face value.
[00:13:35.580]Yeah.
[00:13:36.413]And value it for what it was.
[00:13:38.228]Yes.
[00:13:39.061]I had a student who was of the opinion
[00:13:42.060]that my class was a highlight of her program
[00:13:46.003]and I need to be okay with that.
[00:13:47.814]And that connects to the fact that it is easier
[00:13:51.990]for us for whatever reason.
[00:13:53.640]We can go into brain research.
[00:13:54.840]But the bottom line is it's much easier for us
[00:13:57.240]to pay attention to the one negative comment
[00:14:01.260]or negative experience
[00:14:02.370]or the one thing we're like,
[00:14:03.840]we could have done this better
[00:14:05.550]versus paying attention to the overwhelming
[00:14:09.960]positive feedback.
[00:14:12.510]And I'm, now, I'm thinking about teaching and that is,
[00:14:15.930]I, and almost everybody else I know when they teach will pay
[00:14:20.070]attention to the one student who gave negative comments,
[00:14:22.920]but not to the 25 students
[00:14:24.810]who gave really positive comments.
[00:14:26.400]Right.
[00:14:27.233]It's like, how did I miss this?
[00:14:28.680]And we have this heavy feeling
[00:14:30.300]and am I really doing the work?
[00:14:32.745]And this requires
[00:14:35.640]that rethinking, it's like, why am I thinking this?
[00:14:40.410]How can I think about this differently without invalidating?
[00:14:43.620]Because a negative opinion is also something
[00:14:45.510]you need to validate, right?
[00:14:46.950]There's a student, I, for whatever reason did not,
[00:14:49.860]was not able to reach,
[00:14:51.630]and I need to think about this better,
[00:14:53.250]but I cannot let this
[00:14:55.260]become the only way I think about the class
[00:14:57.180]I just finished teaching.
[00:14:58.710]And the one thing I love
[00:15:00.270]about class, about teaching is in the moment of teaching,
[00:15:04.560]in that flow of teaching, those are the moments
[00:15:09.270]where I feel the least like an imposter
[00:15:11.790]because I'm like, oh, I do know some stuff,
[00:15:15.660]there's some knowledge there.
[00:15:16.890]I have deep knowledge in some areas that I can share
[00:15:20.460]with willing students
[00:15:22.140]and we can really bring them
[00:15:26.640]to what they need to know.
[00:15:28.200]So they are able to be,
[00:15:29.487]and in our case it's really fantastic
[00:15:31.920]because we're educating teachers,
[00:15:34.230]whether they're pre-service teacher
[00:15:35.520]or in-service teachers
[00:15:36.510]to be able to do something better
[00:15:39.150]with the kids they're working with
[00:15:41.100]and make their lives both easier
[00:15:43.260]and more complete and more
[00:15:46.355]and by that transfer to children
[00:15:50.370]and community, those moments I cherish,
[00:15:52.740]it's when you get that distance
[00:15:54.600]and suddenly you have a comment,
[00:15:56.670]whether it's in student evaluations or a random comment
[00:16:00.390]or that invitation, we have invitations
[00:16:02.850]to the students who appreciate you.
[00:16:04.800]And we get a parent award
[00:16:06.270]and all of these moments,
[00:16:08.040]those are moments to celebrate.
[00:16:10.020]But there's more distance it allows us to rethink
[00:16:12.900]and sometimes not positively.
[00:16:15.180]Yeah.
[00:16:16.013]Which is just fascinating.
[00:16:17.520]Something I've noticed about.
[00:16:19.530]Yeah.
[00:16:20.363]My own thinking around being an imposter
[00:16:25.080]and trying to negotiate that.
[00:16:27.660]and I think my sense of how
[00:16:34.920]I sometimes will construct myself
[00:16:38.100]as an imposter has shifted and changed
[00:16:41.250]across my career, right?
[00:16:45.570]Like- Yeah.
[00:16:47.262]If you're a grad student, of course
[00:16:48.270]you're, one of the things that you're trying
[00:16:50.970]to do is establish a professional identity.
[00:16:53.820]And so part of it really
[00:16:56.220]is kind of faking it until you make it.
[00:17:00.450]Yeah.
[00:17:01.283]Really. Yeah.
[00:17:02.300]And figuring out like
[00:17:04.320]what are the professional activities
[00:17:05.970]that you're engaging in and what kind of scholar,
[00:17:11.370]what kind of academic you want to be?
[00:17:15.810]And I think that is when it comes down to what
[00:17:19.560]kind of scholar do you want to be, what kind of teacher,
[00:17:22.860]what kind of academic, that's really important.
[00:17:27.150]That idea of, I hate to say this
[00:17:28.950]'cause it feels so kind of gross at times,
[00:17:33.300]but what's your brand?
[00:17:34.920]You know.
[00:17:35.753]Okay.
[00:17:36.619]Like what is the brand
[00:17:37.530]that you are trying to put forth in the world is really,
[00:17:42.810]really important in thinking through
[00:17:46.050]that imposter syndrome, right?
[00:17:47.760]Because when you think through, this is what I am about,
[00:17:51.780]this is what I want my career to be about then,
[00:17:56.370]and we'll talk a little bit more about ways
[00:17:58.020]to negotiate that later.
[00:17:59.728]But that branding becomes
[00:18:04.050]not only a tool you can use to figure out where
[00:18:07.440]to place your energy, where to place your resources,
[00:18:09.690]but it also gives you some sense of internalized,
[00:18:16.281]a set of metrics against which you can,
[00:18:20.340]when you're feeling like an imposter.
[00:18:22.950]Okay, but are you being true to who you are?
[00:18:25.260]And is that just a mismatch? Yeah.
[00:18:26.670]Right, like are you an imposter
[00:18:29.970]or are you just in a new space?
[00:18:33.330]Right.
[00:18:34.163]And I think also one of the things
[00:18:37.950]that I don't, I wish we did better,
[00:18:41.910]I wish we did this better for adult learners.
[00:18:44.880]Hmm.
[00:18:45.713]But giving people
[00:18:50.790]space and permission to suck.
[00:18:56.400]Yeah. At things for a while.
[00:18:57.790]Yeah.
[00:18:58.623]Yeah.
[00:18:59.456]Right, because-
[00:19:00.690]Because that's a necessary step.
[00:19:02.130]It's a necessary step in learning how
[00:19:05.610]to do anything.
[00:19:08.670]Yes.
[00:19:09.503]And as adults, we don't do that particularly well.
[00:19:15.150]I don't feel like we expect- Perfection from the get go.
[00:19:19.080]Perfection like right away. That's the go, yeah.
[00:19:20.903]Like what would the scarf look like if you
[00:19:23.070]started knitting right now?
[00:19:24.900]Yes. Right.
[00:19:26.040]So like part of people always ask me like,
[00:19:30.000]can you teach me how to knit?
[00:19:31.500]Yes.
[00:19:33.150]But it's going to take a year.
[00:19:35.070]Yes.
[00:19:35.970]And it's gonna be painful for while.
[00:19:36.803]You're gonna suck at it for a year.
[00:19:38.790]You willing to do that?
[00:19:40.440]And, there is a tool
[00:19:42.930]that I found really useful in my work,
[00:19:45.210]especially more recently,
[00:19:46.500]and that is I find that art is a great way
[00:19:49.110]to negotiate with that.
[00:19:50.910]Knitting would be an art
[00:19:53.820]because there's always, there are two aspects, that is,
[00:19:57.090]there's the picture in your head
[00:19:58.170]and then there's what happens in reality
[00:19:59.850]when it's a physical exercise.
[00:20:02.280]And I think the physicality
[00:20:03.600]of it is actually a really good metaphor
[00:20:05.850]because people get that immediately.
[00:20:07.620]Whereas in our brain, we should be able
[00:20:10.170]to teach a lesson perfectly the first time we teach
[00:20:12.091]it the way we saw it in our head.
[00:20:14.310]It never happens.
[00:20:15.270]Never happens.
[00:20:16.170]But you have that picture in your head.
[00:20:18.990]And so, and in art, much like knitting,
[00:20:22.320]it's exactly the same way.
[00:20:23.310]I know exactly what I want to create
[00:20:25.950]and then I'm working with a paper
[00:20:27.270]mache or whatever it may be.
[00:20:28.980]And it doesn't look even anything close to that.
[00:20:31.827]And there's something glorious
[00:20:32.777]about learning to accept that.
[00:20:34.950]And that again, connects to our previous,
[00:20:37.456]a previous episode about perfection, perfectionism,
[00:20:43.680]because that helps you deal with that.
[00:20:46.590]It's never going to look like what you want.
[00:20:49.923]And that's an emotion you've got
[00:20:51.990]to learn to deal with
[00:20:53.927]in order to move forward.
[00:20:56.670]And we've gotta give permission
[00:20:58.770]so it doesn't feel like you're an imposter.
[00:21:00.170]It just feels like you are trying things out.
[00:21:03.240]You're engaged in a process.
[00:21:05.010]And some of it is gonna suck.
[00:21:06.720]And by the way, just so we're clear,
[00:21:09.000]some of it is gonna suck forever.
[00:21:10.770]That is, some things will, you'll probably never,
[00:21:15.150]you'll try and you'll say, you know what,
[00:21:17.160]knitting is not for me.
[00:21:19.110]I'm not gonna invest enough time
[00:21:21.060]and effort- That's yes.
[00:21:22.800]To being excellent.
[00:21:23.940]There are other areas where I wanna put my time.
[00:21:26.700]And I think that you can get to that point only if you try
[00:21:29.039]and you allow yourself to fail
[00:21:30.690]and we allow each other to fail.
[00:21:32.610]Mm hmm.
[00:21:33.443]Yeah.
[00:21:34.320]No, and I think you hit on that notion
[00:21:36.690]of you can be good at a variety
[00:21:40.650]of different things, right?
[00:21:41.490]We hear a lot about growth mindset and grit,
[00:21:44.790]which can both get used in really unproductive ways.
[00:21:48.150]But really it's about thinking through that.
[00:21:52.740]If you devote time
[00:21:53.970]and energy into something,
[00:21:56.580]you can get better at it.
[00:21:58.230]Yes.
[00:22:00.253]You might not know it now,
[00:22:02.550]but you at some point will.
[00:22:05.160]Right, I keep thinking about situated learning communities
[00:22:09.030]and how you go from marginal participation
[00:22:13.800]into the center of that.
[00:22:15.720]And of course you're gonna feel like an imposter
[00:22:17.310]you're moving into and towards that center.
[00:22:21.570]But if it's a really well constructed learning community,
[00:22:26.070]like that those things are gonna be mitigated.
[00:22:29.130]Right.
[00:22:30.120]And I think the key word that you use there
[00:22:32.068]and I think is the most important solution
[00:22:35.190]on the way both systemically,
[00:22:36.930]because we talk often about the fact
[00:22:39.390]that systemically there are certain things that are systemic
[00:22:42.030]and we need to take care of them systemically.
[00:22:43.740]And not just individually,
[00:22:45.540]but also as individuals,
[00:22:47.250]especially at the beginning of our careers.
[00:22:48.720]We can't affect the system.
[00:22:50.280]It's not our role to affect the system.
[00:22:52.140]Our role is different.
[00:22:53.670]Our role is to survive and make a place for ourselves.
[00:22:56.730]And in that it's about finding your community.
[00:22:59.760]And I think that community,
[00:23:00.960]that right community is critical.
[00:23:03.420]I mean, we have a writing group we haven't met in a while
[00:23:06.030]and I'm aware, but we have a writing group.
[00:23:08.370]Whoa.
[00:23:09.203]The judgment that you-
[00:23:10.860]That was not judgment, that was self-judgment.
[00:23:12.900]Why are you, I'm not judging you.
[00:23:14.070]Why are you judging you?
[00:23:14.903]I'm not. Let's have a check in here.
[00:23:16.440]Why are you feeling judged?
[00:23:17.273](Guy laughing)
[00:23:18.450]Because I have not been a good
[00:23:19.920]colleague with that community.
[00:23:21.540]You have been a fine colleague,
[00:23:23.100]who is telling you that you're not a good one.
[00:23:24.330]'Cause it's not me.
[00:23:25.260]I understand.
[00:23:26.093]It's me.
[00:23:26.926]Stop.
[00:23:27.759]Okay.
[00:23:28.592]Gimme your hand.
[00:23:29.520]Stop. (Guy laughing)
[00:23:31.770]Okay, continue.
[00:23:32.603]All right. Now that I've.
[00:23:33.436]So now that we've had an intervention, but.
[00:23:36.350]Was that intervention?
[00:23:37.672](Guy laughing)
[00:23:38.505]It felt like an intervention?
[00:23:39.539]I think that was just me yelling.
[00:23:40.548](Guy laughing)
[00:23:41.850]Anyway, but finding the community
[00:23:45.090]where the people around you,
[00:23:46.050]especially when you're down, are telling you are,
[00:23:48.565]are helping you reframe that reality.
[00:23:51.510]Because sometimes,
[00:23:52.343]I mean, the solution is always to reframe
[00:23:54.630]and say, have I failed?
[00:23:57.930]Or as you just gave an example, right.
[00:24:00.690]Or eh, how do I feel about it and validating
[00:24:03.833]it and moving forward, right?
[00:24:06.630]But sometimes you need somebody else to help you reframe
[00:24:08.910]that is a mentor or,
[00:24:10.170]and I think communities
[00:24:11.340]are most helpful where they can say to you know, a check,
[00:24:15.780]I can think about a good colleague
[00:24:17.760]who once in a while would have this,
[00:24:19.830]what am I doing here?
[00:24:21.390]I don't belong here.
[00:24:23.670]Everybody is better than me.
[00:24:24.919]I'm just faking it.
[00:24:26.430]I'm not making it, kind of moment.
[00:24:28.240]And I, you would,
[00:24:29.986]and the moment is, you know, you have a PhD
[00:24:33.870]that's very few people in the world.
[00:24:35.670]You've got the position at a good university.
[00:24:40.620]That doesn't happen very often.
[00:24:42.480]Tenure line position, that doesn't happen.
[00:24:44.700]That's even rare.
[00:24:45.799]You are part of a select group and you deserve to be here.
[00:24:48.974]And you need that reframing
[00:24:51.840]from your community.
[00:24:53.040]And you need a mentor that will help you walk a mentor
[00:24:56.700]or mentors who will help you walk
[00:24:58.920]from the side of that community into the center, slowly.
[00:25:02.760]You don't have to be there.
[00:25:03.870]You don't have to be at the center.
[00:25:05.070]It's actually not useful to be in the center immediately.
[00:25:08.430]Yeah, no.
[00:25:09.263]Well, and I think too, it's the point where,
[00:25:12.630]there does come a point where you stop faking it.
[00:25:14.640]Yeah. And you're just-
[00:25:15.481]Part of it. Part of it,
[00:25:16.950]and you're doing it.
[00:25:18.120]and the trick is
[00:25:21.300]recognizing when that happens
[00:25:23.550]and understanding that it's going,
[00:25:27.990]you're going to encounter
[00:25:30.570]this imposter phenomenon at a
[00:25:32.610]variety of different junctures.
[00:25:34.200]Right?
[00:25:35.033]So if we're thinking about, oh my gosh,
[00:25:37.710]my university's adopting
[00:25:39.510]a new LMS, a learning management system,
[00:25:42.180]you're gonna start
[00:25:43.013]feeling like an imposter again.
[00:25:44.070]Like when you're pulling in new technology.
[00:25:45.393]I can't make this work.
[00:25:46.560]Right, like why can't I do this?
[00:25:48.570]Right?
[00:25:49.650]If you switch jobs,
[00:25:51.240]like there's going to be,
[00:25:54.570]having been at three different institutions,
[00:25:56.280]like there's some commonalities between all of them,
[00:25:59.400]but specific systems,
[00:26:01.830]I still feel like an imposter in certain systems
[00:26:04.740]as I push to understand them.
[00:26:06.269]Yeah.
[00:26:07.102]Right.
[00:26:08.790]And so it doesn't go away.
[00:26:11.580]It's not like you wrestle with it
[00:26:15.900]and then it's over and then it's done.
[00:26:17.610]Yeah.
[00:26:18.443]It's ongoing.
[00:26:19.276]And really I think for me it's about
[00:26:23.550]just getting a sense of
[00:26:28.560]who am I,
[00:26:30.750]what do I want my work to be about?
[00:26:32.430]How does it connect back
[00:26:33.690]to my institution, et cetera, et cetera.
[00:26:35.940]So that's like one way that I've worked to develop
[00:26:39.340]for myself some ways to navigate those
[00:26:42.750]kind of cognitive distortions, right?
[00:26:45.270]Like someone posts something on Facebook
[00:26:48.990]that's nice about my class, how do I not go
[00:26:50.610]to a stupid space?
[00:26:52.050]Right?
[00:26:52.883]Yeah.
[00:26:53.716]What are some ways that you find yourself
[00:26:56.880]setting up systems in your own head
[00:26:59.100]to negotiate that talk?
[00:27:00.900]What are some things you do?
[00:27:03.540]The external things and internal things.
[00:27:05.850]And so in external things I make sure I have a community
[00:27:11.370]around me of people I talk to on a regular basis.
[00:27:15.330]And inside that community I feel supported
[00:27:20.550]and I can bring that up and somebody can call me
[00:27:23.310]on it and saying, why are you going down that road?
[00:27:25.890]Don't go down that road.
[00:27:27.570]Right. (Nick laughing)
[00:27:28.403]That is incredibly helpful.
[00:27:29.940]And I have that professionally but also socially.
[00:27:34.290]So I have people in my life that are not part
[00:27:38.460]of my academic world that helped me check in.
[00:27:41.010]And that is important.
[00:27:43.020]And the third thing is that I do often
[00:27:47.520]very purposefully reframe.
[00:27:51.510]So when I get a rejection
[00:27:53.610]or when I have an interview that wasn't successful,
[00:27:56.400]or when I have another experience that triggers that,
[00:28:00.510]I then sit and work through not just my emotions.
[00:28:03.660]So I let the emotional wave kind of crest and rest
[00:28:07.470]because the emotional, at that emotional moment,
[00:28:09.990]there's not much I can do.
[00:28:11.310]I just need to feel the feels.
[00:28:13.440]And after that I do,
[00:28:17.160]I kind of analyze what did I do?
[00:28:19.170]What do I want to do?
[00:28:20.190]Is it even worth paying attention to?
[00:28:22.770]Or is it something that I need to say
[00:28:25.080]that it was a stupid feeling.
[00:28:27.300]We all get rejections.
[00:28:28.800]I got another rejection and it'll be just fine.
[00:28:32.370]And so that is a huge piece of my practice
[00:28:42.420]after any interaction.
[00:28:44.190]And the advantage and disadvantage
[00:28:45.990]of academic life is there's lots of opportunities.
[00:28:49.140]Every conference we apply to,
[00:28:50.760]every paper we send out, every book proposal
[00:28:56.460]or you know, class we teach,
[00:28:59.430]there's always the potential for negative feedback.
[00:29:02.040]And there's always something
[00:29:04.530]to be not super happy about.
[00:29:07.290]And so that ability to start having the practice
[00:29:11.040]of letting the emotions run through
[00:29:14.010]and then do an analysis
[00:29:15.390]of what is the appropriate response
[00:29:16.920]and what is reframing that within,
[00:29:21.480]you know, who I am, right?
[00:29:23.970]Going back to those who do I want to be?
[00:29:26.310]Is this, how does this play into that?
[00:29:29.610]And move from there, is incredibly useful.
[00:29:33.120]And also finding the positive
[00:29:35.340]and having the good feels about the positive.
[00:29:38.250]So for example, today I had a positive,
[00:29:41.010]it's a stupid positive, but it's a positive.
[00:29:43.045]Well, again with a judgment buddy.
[00:29:45.150]No, no, no.
[00:29:45.983]Because it's a little judgy.
[00:29:47.460]But I have a good colleague from a different university
[00:29:50.460]who is considerably more famous than I am,
[00:29:53.040]as in kind of world famous kind of thing.
[00:29:56.580]And he was interviewed on a podcast,
[00:30:00.180]I was interviewed on a podcast four episodes beforehand.
[00:30:03.510]So winning.
[00:30:05.081](both laughing)
[00:30:08.580]I told you it's stupid, but we gotta celebrate the stupid.
[00:30:11.370]That's not whoa, whoa, whoa.
[00:30:13.800]I did not make a value judgments on that at all.
[00:30:18.757]So I'm gonna- It's a little petty.
[00:30:20.132]It's a little petty.
[00:30:20.965]It's not petty, that's not petty.
[00:30:22.470]But I'm good with that.
[00:30:24.780]Like, we gotta celebrate the wins.
[00:30:26.280]A win is a win.
[00:30:27.150]Yeah, exactly.
[00:30:27.983]You know, and like, I think for myself,
[00:30:31.500]going back to your notion of like building that community.
[00:30:34.740]Yeah.
[00:30:36.689]That's important.
[00:30:39.450]and thinking through
[00:30:40.920]how you leverage that community.
[00:30:42.630]'Cause I'm not a good vibes only guy.
[00:30:46.500]Have you noticed?
[00:30:47.460]Yeah, I have.
[00:30:48.327](both laughing)
[00:30:50.088]But I.
[00:30:53.340]Even Dan is laughing.
[00:30:54.450]Even Dan is laughing. (Guy laughing)
[00:30:58.440]But I'm constantly leveraging
[00:31:02.880]all that angst. Yeah.
[00:31:04.230]In order to engage in work that changes the things
[00:31:07.500]that I am mixed about. Yeah.
[00:31:08.520]Is how I like to reframe that.
[00:31:10.230]But, as I'm thinking about imposter syndrome
[00:31:14.872]and the rejection that sometimes triggers that.
[00:31:19.860]One of the things that I have found really helpful is
[00:31:22.860]that I have folks where I can just make a statement,
[00:31:27.360]this rejection happened,
[00:31:28.950]I'm salty for the next 72 hours.
[00:31:30.882]Yeah.
[00:31:31.715]And you've gotta give yourself the permission.
[00:31:32.820]And like, and there's something about externalizing that
[00:31:39.960]and making it, not, making that rejection not
[00:31:43.650]reside just in me.
[00:31:45.420]And I don't necessarily need a response.
[00:31:47.280]Like, I don't need a response
[00:31:49.038]to this rejection happened.
[00:31:51.900]I'm salty for 72 hours.
[00:31:53.040]I don't need a, oh I'm so sorry.
[00:31:54.683]I don't need a- Yeah.
[00:31:55.530]I just need a- Yeah.
[00:31:56.880]Someone else knows.
[00:31:58.200]Yes.
[00:31:59.220]And like, that's just part of the process.
[00:32:05.730]And I'm going to be salty for 72 hours.
[00:32:07.830]Larry Nikoleski, one of my professors
[00:32:10.290]at Indiana was always like,
[00:32:11.700]you can be upset about a rejection,
[00:32:14.267]but you give yourself 72 hours
[00:32:16.080]and then you have figure out what's next.
[00:32:18.076]Yeah.
[00:32:18.909]Like what happens next?
[00:32:19.742]So for that one, I'm an hour 46.
[00:32:22.844](Guy laughing)
[00:32:23.677]Yes.
[00:32:24.510]I think, yeah.
[00:32:25.343]So I still got some time.
[00:32:26.700]I still got, you know.
[00:32:28.290]One of the advantage for me
[00:32:29.580]for with mentoring is you see
[00:32:33.180]a younger professionals, younger in,
[00:32:36.060]not necessarily in age,
[00:32:37.200]but in experience
[00:32:38.501]and you see how they're going
[00:32:40.200]through it and it helps me see
[00:32:41.970]and I am helping them refrain and that helps me too.
[00:32:45.720]Right?
[00:32:46.654]And I was like, oh yeah, we did get that rejection.
[00:32:48.660]It's fine.
[00:32:49.493]It was revised and resubmit.
[00:32:50.580]This is what we do.
[00:32:51.540]But you can feel the feels, I mean, again,
[00:32:53.340]giving the permission for them to feel the feels.
[00:32:56.250]Let's talk next week and think about next step.
[00:32:58.980]'Cause right now just sit with it for a little while
[00:33:01.620]because there's nothing,
[00:33:02.850]there's nothing you can do about it.
[00:33:04.716]Yeah.
[00:33:05.549]And so it's not like there's an
[00:33:07.140]appeal process for this, right?
[00:33:08.520]Like.
[00:33:09.353]No, there isn't there.
[00:33:10.186]There's mentally an appeal process.
[00:33:11.910]Like. Yes.
[00:33:12.743]Can I reframe this?
[00:33:13.576]Can I rethink what is, what is the,
[00:33:17.280]so as we're thinking about ways to combat
[00:33:21.000]this imposter syndrome, you know, one of the things
[00:33:22.403]that we can do is really think through
[00:33:26.970]what are the objective
[00:33:29.250]and measurable evidences that I was competent.
[00:33:32.730]Like if you get a revise
[00:33:34.440]and resubmit submit,
[00:33:36.090]that's an investment on behalf of that editorial board.
[00:33:39.822]In your writing. In your work.
[00:33:40.655]In your ideas,
[00:33:42.570]what are they asking you to do in order to elevate
[00:33:46.140]your writing, your ideas,
[00:33:48.000]the work that you're doing.
[00:33:49.317]Yeah.
[00:33:50.150]And even if it's a rejection,
[00:33:53.130]people still have spent time reading that.
[00:33:55.770]And as long as you have in full faith
[00:33:58.830]submitted something within the scope of that journal
[00:34:03.150]and not just, you know, you chopped out a pc,
[00:34:06.600]a chapter from your dissertation, which we've-
[00:34:08.550]That has happened compensation before.
[00:34:10.170]Right, as long as you've made a full faith effort,
[00:34:12.630]chances are you're going to get some actionable advice
[00:34:16.770]for how to turn that around.
[00:34:17.976]Yeah.
[00:34:18.809]Simply because, I mean it's journal
[00:34:21.240]publishing is kinda like
[00:34:22.073]dating, sometimes they just don't work.
[00:34:24.540]Sometimes it's just not a match.
[00:34:26.460]But you always get feedback around, oh,
[00:34:31.320]this person didn't work.
[00:34:33.150]I'm actually looking for this.
[00:34:34.320]Like, the same thing happens there.
[00:34:36.270]So what are some of
[00:34:38.963]the objective and measurable pieces
[00:34:42.120]of evidence that you can leverage
[00:34:44.700]in order to think about what you're actually accomplishing
[00:34:48.720]in terms of what you want your career to be about.
[00:34:51.618]And I wanna pick that up a little bit
[00:34:56.520]and say, we talked a lot about publishing
[00:34:58.740]because it's the thing that comes to mind
[00:35:00.420]where we get a lot of rejection.
[00:35:02.430]But publishing is not the only,
[00:35:03.954]it's not even the major part of our job.
[00:35:06.690]Neither of us. Yeah. No.
[00:35:07.923]It's a small important
[00:35:09.540]but less than 50% of our job right now.
[00:35:13.590]So the same thing goes for teaching
[00:35:16.505]or for anything else you do.
[00:35:18.900]And I once had one of my early mentors,
[00:35:22.680]informal mentor,
[00:35:23.640]not a formal mentor, but a peer at you know,
[00:35:27.120]once talked about is we created the reading center
[00:35:30.210]that still exists, not involved anymore.
[00:35:35.280]He said, one of the things he said is, you know,
[00:35:38.460]you've gotta think about it this way
[00:35:40.320]because the reading center is a center
[00:35:42.300]where we're teaching our students
[00:35:43.680]how to work with students
[00:35:44.790]who are struggling in reading and writing.
[00:35:46.740]And that's important work to teach our students
[00:35:48.870]and to help by proxy
[00:35:51.780]to help the community and to support kids.
[00:35:54.150]And he said something really interesting
[00:35:56.970]because we weren't generating a lot of,
[00:35:59.430]necessarily a lot of research out of that reading center.
[00:36:03.510]We were focused on the doing.
[00:36:05.851]And that was really important to us.
[00:36:08.104]But there was some pressure
[00:36:09.960]to produce some research based on that
[00:36:11.940]and be a little bit resisted.
[00:36:14.280]And he helped me resist that by saying, you know,
[00:36:17.490]there are lots of ways to produce impact
[00:36:19.680]and a journal article can help move research forward.
[00:36:23.640]But when you're really honest with yourself,
[00:36:25.320]sometimes it's like not every research
[00:36:27.810]article changes the world.
[00:36:29.130]Most of them don't, most of them get very few readers.
[00:36:31.950]Right.
[00:36:32.783]But when you are working there with a future teacher
[00:36:35.130]who will teach for 20 years
[00:36:37.500]and will know that much better,
[00:36:39.660]how to help struggling readers
[00:36:42.090]or when that child is being helped
[00:36:44.400]and is on the right track with reading
[00:36:46.740]and writing, that is real impact on the world.
[00:36:49.860]And so the only, so what I'm saying
[00:36:52.450]is don't narrow focus on research.
[00:36:57.060]Even if you have research as part of your point.
[00:36:59.190]And to remember we have lots of ways
[00:37:01.290]to make impact on the world.
[00:37:03.060]And some of it is very visceral and very, very real.
[00:37:06.180]Especially when we work with pre-service
[00:37:07.740]and in-service teachers.
[00:37:09.000]We really make a difference
[00:37:10.800]and we have to focus on that as well and elevate it
[00:37:13.901]and focus on the things we are successful even there
[00:37:17.280]because we can feel like imposters there as well.
[00:37:20.070]Well in particularly, as I'm thinking about,
[00:37:22.920]so I was in the reading clinic two weeks ago, subbing.
[00:37:25.620]Excellent. For a tutor.
[00:37:27.450]And one of the things that I continue to struggle
[00:37:31.410]with as I've moved out of running my own reading clinic
[00:37:37.110]and not having opportunities to interface
[00:37:38.910]with elementary children very often is like,
[00:37:43.380]can I do what I'm teaching my students to do?
[00:37:47.640]Right? (Guy laughing)
[00:37:49.650]Yes.
[00:37:50.544]And so,
[00:37:52.980]it was a really interesting experience to tutor.
[00:37:57.900]Yeah.
[00:37:58.733]A student who I had no connection with.
[00:38:00.990]That's hard.
[00:38:01.857]And did not, it actually really wasn't.
[00:38:04.200]Oh, okay.
[00:38:05.033]Like it really wasn't.
[00:38:06.330]And the interesting piece was
[00:38:11.190]I was surrounded by students I had taught.
[00:38:13.140]Students were who were in my lit block.
[00:38:15.330]Yeah.
[00:38:16.163]And so there was this sense of oh, so can, so yep.
[00:38:21.150]Rubber's gonna hit the road right now.
[00:38:22.650]Yeah.
[00:38:23.520]And you know, it was fine.
[00:38:25.830]It was great.
[00:38:26.663]Like afterward, my former student who was sitting next
[00:38:31.020]to me was like, you got through everything.
[00:38:33.570]I never get through everything.
[00:38:34.403]And I was like, yeah.
[00:38:35.236]'Cause we gotta move.
[00:38:36.540]Yes.
[00:38:37.373]There's certain things I need this.
[00:38:38.206]We gotta move and I always,
[00:38:40.530]because I want to make sure they don't have imposter
[00:38:42.930]syndrome as a result of seeing a seasoned professional
[00:38:45.570]is to say, just remember I've been
[00:38:47.700]in this profession when I
[00:38:49.140]talk about publication, for example, say to people,
[00:38:51.453]I've been in this world for 24 years,
[00:38:53.850]I've been writing for publications.
[00:38:55.500]You are in your first run at this.
[00:38:57.780]You can't expect to be here.
[00:38:59.580]This is one thing that my mentors
[00:39:01.170]did not talk to me about,
[00:39:02.460]which I now look back.
[00:39:05.670]And it's like, that would've been helpful
[00:39:07.860]because I used to look at, I worked with Bob Calfie
[00:39:10.830]and he would just write, he would sit
[00:39:13.102]and he would just write and it looked like magic.
[00:39:15.900]And I realized, and it wasn't magic.
[00:39:18.540]No. Don't get me wrong.
[00:39:19.380]It was not magic.
[00:39:20.400]It was just experience.
[00:39:21.780]He had 40 something years
[00:39:23.100]of experience writing for publication.
[00:39:25.230]It gets easier.
[00:39:26.400]I will tell you it does get easier.
[00:39:28.200]So once in a while you have to say, yes, I can do this
[00:39:31.890]and you will be able to,
[00:39:33.600]but remember I have a lot more experience.
[00:39:35.760]I've worked with thousands of students before you
[00:39:38.790]or I've written, you know, hundreds
[00:39:41.160]of things for publication.
[00:39:44.160]Not all of which have ever seen the light of day.
[00:39:46.860]And that's fine.
[00:39:47.880]But I've learned some things along the way
[00:39:49.440]and I'm happy to teach you.
[00:39:51.500]And here are some opportunities to interact.
[00:39:54.000]But we do need, when we model, we also need
[00:39:57.390]to remind people that we've been doing this
[00:39:59.460]a lot longer than they have.
[00:40:00.810]Well, and the most heartening thing to come out
[00:40:02.580]of that was that this particular student
[00:40:05.190]that I was teaching next to.
[00:40:06.023]Yeah.
[00:40:06.856]Was like, I saw things that you were,
[00:40:08.730]you had taught us.
[00:40:09.563]Like I forgot about that.
[00:40:10.800]Yeah.
[00:40:11.633]And you did that and now I'm gonna do that next time.
[00:40:13.800]Because it moved, it was, it enabled you
[00:40:17.340]to get your pace moving.
[00:40:18.630]Right.
[00:40:19.463]So like, and I'm trying to figure out why that piece
[00:40:22.230]of feedback was more fortifying than the Facebook
[00:40:25.320]shoutout in my head.
[00:40:26.850]And I don't have an answer there yet.
[00:40:27.960]But it's interesting.
[00:40:28.860]It's more concrete
[00:40:29.730]and very specific to actual performance.
[00:40:32.520]I would argue.
[00:40:33.353]I mean pause.
[00:40:34.203]It's really.
[00:40:35.036]Absolutely. Instead of.
[00:40:37.140]Yeah.
[00:40:38.044]I don't know, I'm gonna think that through.
[00:40:39.302]'Cause like. Okay.
[00:40:40.135]'Cause the other thing that I think we can do
[00:40:44.700]to kind of help when we're experiencing this
[00:40:47.760]imposter syndrome is to engage in that self-reflection.
[00:40:50.220]Like where are you experiencing those tensions and why?
[00:40:54.240]And oftentimes that comes back to,
[00:40:58.830]what are your core values
[00:41:01.170]in terms of the work that you do.
[00:41:02.700]And sometimes for me it's why do you care?
[00:41:05.700]So there are certain things I care about feedback from my
[00:41:07.860]students, but when somebody
[00:41:09.900]that is fairly random is making a, or I'm interacting
[00:41:14.190]and I feel like an imposter at the meeting,
[00:41:16.170]like university-wide or whatever,
[00:41:18.600]and I go, do I really care if I'm an imposter here?
[00:41:22.590]It's not one of my main goals.
[00:41:24.060]I'm doing some service I'm helping around,
[00:41:25.980]but it's not very important.
[00:41:28.140]So that going back, not just to values,
[00:41:30.450]but to your own goals
[00:41:31.530]and how you see yourself professionally.
[00:41:33.660]There are some places where I don't feel like I have a lot
[00:41:36.960]to contribute and I sit back and I contribute when I can
[00:41:41.070]and then I move on
[00:41:41.970]and I try to disassociate with, with that as part
[00:41:47.850]of my core identity.
[00:41:49.290]And because that feeling is always there right.
[00:41:53.790]In that new session
[00:41:55.110]or in a place where you don't know a lot.
[00:41:57.780]But part of that check is do I care,
[00:42:02.017]when I really think about it?
[00:42:03.307]Well, and also not only do you care,
[00:42:05.700]but are you giving particular things weight?
[00:42:09.120]Right? Yeah, yeah,
[00:42:09.988]Like if we're thinking about end
[00:42:11.190]of semester student evals,
[00:42:15.300]if we think about what we're told those measure versus
[00:42:18.900]what they actually measure,
[00:42:19.920]it's kind of two different things.
[00:42:21.073]Yeah.
[00:42:21.906]Because one is students' perceptions
[00:42:23.430]of their learning in your class,
[00:42:27.690]which is a, I mean I.
[00:42:31.500]Okay.
[00:42:32.333]I have a different perspective on the.
[00:42:34.350]What's your perspective?
[00:42:35.183]Tell me more.
[00:42:36.016]My perspective on student evaluation is
[00:42:38.196]it's determined about 85%.
[00:42:41.970]But how much they like you,
[00:42:43.440]which is not a relevant measure necessarily,
[00:42:46.140]they are not really evaluating how much they've learned.
[00:42:50.550]Right.
[00:42:51.383]It's not even their perception of
[00:42:52.410]how much learning happened, it's their perception
[00:42:54.720]of how much of a connection they created with you.
[00:42:56.910]I'm not saying that connection is not important,
[00:42:59.010]it's an entry point to learning,
[00:43:00.780]but it's not the whole thing.
[00:43:02.670]So I can, and I have seen very effective instructors
[00:43:05.940]who were not very well liked.
[00:43:07.620]And I have seen people that were very well liked
[00:43:10.350]and got very high evaluations,
[00:43:14.550]but really did not provide a lot of content
[00:43:17.370]and a lot of things
[00:43:18.960]that students could use in their whatever they
[00:43:21.060]were doing next.
[00:43:21.960]Well and so. And so and so that,
[00:43:25.620]we can do a whole thing about evaluation.
[00:43:26.707]Well, and I think you've hit on I think
[00:43:28.590]we're thinking of it the same way
[00:43:30.330]because I feel like in our student evals,
[00:43:32.310]learning gets confused with did they like me or not?
[00:43:36.390]Yes, absolutely.
[00:43:37.584]And so when I'm thinking about my teaching
[00:43:41.070]and I'm thinking about again, objective assessments,
[00:43:45.600]I'm careful to remember the limitations to that.
[00:43:50.070]Yeah. Right.
[00:43:50.903]And even in terms of the relationships
[00:43:53.340]that I build in my classroom,
[00:43:55.650]my evals don't really get at that.
[00:43:58.290]In fact, I'm doing a separate eval this year just
[00:44:01.170]to get at more,
[00:44:04.830]more actual actionable data.
[00:44:07.740]Yeah.
[00:44:08.573]For me to improve my teaching on,
[00:44:12.420]so not giving that as much weight.
[00:44:14.899]Too much weight.
[00:44:15.732]Because I know, I know some of my colleagues
[00:44:17.820]and my grad students who- Can assist.
[00:44:19.860]Get devastated.
[00:44:21.660]Yeah.
[00:44:22.493]And it's like, here's the boundaries
[00:44:24.150]for what this is telling you.
[00:44:26.580]Yeah.
[00:44:27.413]Here's what you can take from it.
[00:44:28.530]But the rest of it's not measuring
[00:44:30.960]what you think it's measuring.
[00:44:32.130]Yeah.
[00:44:32.963]And there are ways to disassemble
[00:44:34.710]and we can do a whole, a whole session about that.
[00:44:36.990]That might be an idea.
[00:44:38.580]How to make sense of your student evals.
[00:44:39.720]Yeah.
[00:44:42.284]How to not make sense.
[00:44:43.290]I don't know if it's worth the whole, I don't know.
[00:44:45.360]I've gone back and forth with that.
[00:44:47.760]There's some research about that.
[00:44:49.320]But. I mean.
[00:44:50.670]Suspect of all of this.
[00:44:52.650]I haven't found any research
[00:44:53.850]of them that are like,
[00:44:54.690]these are a great tool, they help us out.
[00:44:58.380]Yeah.
[00:44:59.213]Which is interesting that we are
[00:45:00.150]so institutionally invested in them.
[00:45:03.390]Well, less so actually our institution has gotten
[00:45:06.090]further and further away, but.
[00:45:08.070]I mean, kind of. Kind of.
[00:45:10.350]Not really.
[00:45:11.490]Like.
[00:45:12.840]Alright, that'll be for another time.
[00:45:15.090]Another time, another time.
[00:45:16.830]But like this does, so one of the other things
[00:45:19.560]that imposter syndrome can be mitigated by
[00:45:23.340]is DEI efforts.
[00:45:26.070]Yes.
[00:45:27.180]Because one of the things Very important.
[00:45:29.280]Around very DEI efforts are
[00:45:31.320]they're meant to make expectations
[00:45:34.980]of jobs, expectations of learning
[00:45:38.550]and access to being able to do that work
[00:45:41.190]or that learning clear and explicit.
[00:45:44.220]Yeah.
[00:45:45.053]Right?
[00:45:45.886]So,
[00:45:48.120]really thinking about
[00:45:51.210]when we're talking about
[00:45:53.820]mentoring grad students, what are we talking about?
[00:45:56.430]Are all of our grad students getting
[00:45:58.320]this bare minimum level of care.
[00:46:04.020]Yeah.
[00:46:04.853]Of mattering.
[00:46:05.790]And I think one of the discourses
[00:46:10.170]that often gets picked up around
[00:46:11.820]that is, oh, we need to trust our colleagues,
[00:46:14.850]trust my colleagues to do what, I don't know
[00:46:16.863]what I'm trusting my colleagues to do.
[00:46:18.840]Yeah.
[00:46:19.673]Clarity. You know.
[00:46:20.550]Helps.
[00:46:21.383]So it's not that I don't trust my colleagues,
[00:46:23.070]but I don't know what to trust them with.
[00:46:26.190]And so hat's one of those things where
[00:46:33.600]the lack of clarity, the lack of systemic support
[00:46:39.030]for that can create some imposter syndrome.
[00:46:43.333]Mm hmm.
[00:46:44.166]And DEI efforts to systematize
[00:46:48.540]and ensure that every student gets this
[00:46:52.530]bare minimum amount of care.
[00:46:54.761]Yes.
[00:46:55.594]And being clear about what that minimum amount
[00:46:56.910]of care is helps with that.
[00:47:00.300]And that again, going back to DEI, that people
[00:47:05.340]of color especially need a different
[00:47:08.220]kind of mentoring sometimes or additional.
[00:47:10.710]So it's not a system where it's one size fits all
[00:47:15.360]because systemically these have been less clear.
[00:47:21.000]Mm hmm.
[00:47:21.833]Right?
[00:47:22.666]So you need overall clarity,
[00:47:24.000]but then you need systems of support
[00:47:26.310]that makes sure that the clarity is carried through.
[00:47:31.290]That there is a sense that the institution
[00:47:36.210]and the systems are actually serious about
[00:47:38.880]that clarity because there's always that sense
[00:47:41.670]that there are unwritten rules
[00:47:43.650]that we have written rules
[00:47:45.660]and there's supposedly clarity,
[00:47:47.490]but there's a story behind the story
[00:47:49.470]that is not being shared.
[00:47:51.450]And so, and that's true of anybody.
[00:47:53.490]It's definitely true of students of color.
[00:47:56.550]It's definitely true of international students
[00:48:00.180]where culture is different.
[00:48:02.400]So you need that clarity just to make sure
[00:48:05.850]that there's a sense about what are the expectations
[00:48:09.240]and then what does it mean to meet them?
[00:48:11.820]What are the systems that are there
[00:48:13.020]to support you in meeting them
[00:48:14.940]and help you evaluate whether you're making progress.
[00:48:18.180]Right.
[00:48:19.013]And one of the things that's important about
[00:48:20.550]to keep in mind around DEI
[00:48:22.290]and imposter syndrome is what tangentially related
[00:48:25.920]to what you just stated
[00:48:26.753]is students who are of color, first gen,
[00:48:31.350]LGBTQIA+,
[00:48:34.444]who are coming from different socioeconomic
[00:48:39.540]backgrounds, like their experiences
[00:48:43.980]of imposter syndrome are more amplified.
[00:48:47.430]Yes. For sure.
[00:48:48.263]And more frequent. Yes.
[00:48:49.500]And if we're engaging in
[00:48:54.090]student centered or new colleague centered
[00:48:57.420]or just people centered ways of doing things,
[00:49:01.290]we have to be able to prep for that.
[00:49:02.790]We have to be able to respond to that.
[00:49:04.590]And part of that response is being aware of our own,
[00:49:07.500]when we are feeling like imposters
[00:49:09.060]and what are we doing to navigate that.
[00:49:12.540]Right?
[00:49:13.373]Absolutely.
[00:49:14.206]So I mean, given the statistics,
[00:49:16.320]82% of people at some point,
[00:49:18.870]regardless of whether they're in academia or not,
[00:49:20.490]are going to experience, you know, imposter syndrome.
[00:49:23.160]So it's something worth talking about.
[00:49:26.493]It's something worth thinking through and acknowledging.
[00:49:32.070]And only when we acknowledge it can we figure
[00:49:34.020]out how to work through it.
[00:49:35.670]Right.
[00:49:36.503]So hopefully in this episode
[00:49:40.050]we have given you some insights
[00:49:42.210]into how we navigate that
[00:49:43.650]and maybe some strategies that you can use in your own
[00:49:48.780]as you're navigating it,
[00:49:51.180]but, you know, take, take our advice
[00:49:54.330]for what it's 'cause we are not that kind of doctor.
[00:49:56.940]We are just two guys who
[00:49:58.860]talk about things that are important to us.
[00:50:00.690]Talk about the imposter syndrome
[00:50:02.490]and the phrase that.
[00:50:04.500]Oh no.
[00:50:05.429](Guy laughing)
[00:50:06.262]Again. And shrines that.
[00:50:07.095]Again. Again.
[00:50:08.280]Remember Josie Fox?
[00:50:09.510]Yes.
[00:50:10.343]This is my grandson.
[00:50:11.176]He's a doctor, but he is not that kind of doctor.
[00:50:14.280]It's where the name comes from.
[00:50:15.510]Yeah.
[00:50:16.460]I'm not being an imposter.
[00:50:18.330]I'm claiming, I'm claiming my space.
[00:50:20.190]Yeah.
[00:50:21.023]Articulating my boundaries.
[00:50:22.560]This is my branding.
[00:50:23.820]I am not a medical doctor.
[00:50:25.500]I don't have a psychology.
[00:50:26.790]No, that's a lie.
[00:50:27.623]I don't have a MD in psychiatry
[00:50:29.970]or a advanced degree in psychology.
[00:50:32.100]That's not me, so.
[00:50:33.897]All right. Thanks for watching.
[00:50:35.160]See you in the next one.
[00:50:36.451](bright music)

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Not That Kind of Doctor - Imposter Syndrome

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