Impostor syndrome is a by-now common phrase that
describes the feeling that, despite previous professional training and
achievements, a person does not deserve to have the job they have, or that they
will never truly be as intrinsically good in their field as other, more
successful-seeming persons. In a phrase, it’s the feeling that you “don’t
belong.” Numerous articles have appeared in the last five years on the topic,
from Forbes,to Psychology Today,
to, of course, The Chronicle of Higher Education,
many of which present strategies for overcoming this feeling.
For some of us, impostor syndrome can be paralyzing. In
academia, it is particularly insidious because so many of us equate our
internal, intrinsic worth with the ability to publish. In the field that
pioneered the idea “publish or perish,” not
getting published is equivalent to social, intellectual, and spiritual death. I
feel like I know so many people—primarily women—who have put off sending out
articles for fear of rejection, often based on a very real, very brutal
previous rejections. It doesn’t help that the peer reviewing process is
immensely flawed and its emphasis on anonymity means that foul-tempered
reviewers often let loose biased, unfair, and hideously negative (and
completely unwarranted) critiques that pass for a reader report.
My earliest experience with such a gut-wrenching reader
report was with my first ever article I sent out to a journal. The article that
was essentially a seminar paper written for an independent study. The professor
was very encouraging, however; it was really her idea for me to try to get the
paper published in the first place. So I did it; I sent in the article, and it
went out to peer review. (At the time, I didn’t even know it was possible to
get a “desk rejection,” i.e. a rejection from the editor without even having
the article go to peer review.) When I received the reader reports (it was a
rejection for publication), Reader A very calmly laid out all the missing
scholarships and gaps in argumentation; Reader B launched a vicious attack on
my writing, my lack of appropriate scholarship, and, worst of all, on the
central claim of the article, saying, “this argument cannot be made”
(essentially that was the message).
My first thought was, “OK, fine, I’m done; this was a
stupid idea. It’s just a seminar paper; I’ll forget about it and work on other
stuff.” But when I emailed the results of the reader reports to my professor,
she immediately wrote back and asked to see the reports; she read them and very
quickly got back to me that Reader B was a jerk, she probably knew who it was,
and I shouldn’t mind him. Instead, she told me to take the suggestions from
Reader A, revise, and send it to a different journal. I did just that; the
second set of reader reports, however, were similarly divided. Reader A
suggested a revise and resubmit; Reader B ripped me a new one. Again, it seemed
that my argument wasn’t valid for Reader B. This time, however, the journal
editors offered me a revise and resubmit; they told me to focus on Reader A’s
suggestions, and after I revised, they would send it out again to Reader A and
a new Reader B. This was an
incredibly generous proposal; and, eventually, my article was published.
All this is to say, is that a lot depends on the support
you have around you and the willingness of editors to go out on a limb. A
subsequent article I worked on, about beards and cross-dressing, received: a
desk rejection; a rejection after a vile one person peer review that was really
a desk rejection masquerading as peer review; a revise and resubmit that ended
in a rejection; and finally, a revise and resubmit that ended in publication.
For me, the worst part of that process was the R&R that ended in rejection;
based on my previous experiences with the first article I discussed, it seemed
to me that the editors of this second article were simply unwilling or unable
to keep working with me on refining the article. Luckily, eventually it found a home.
To keep going in
the face of rejection is probably the number one way to get published. It’s
difficult, though, and each rejection adds to the already awful feelings of
being an impostor. However, two things helped me put this battle into
perspective, both occurring not long after I received my doctoral degree in
2013. The first was in 2014 when, during a writing group meeting at a previous
job, one of the more advanced tenure-track professors let slip that she had
submitted her previous article to no less than eleven journals before it was published. Eleven! In comparison, my
attempts with 2 or 3 journals before publication seemed like a huge success!
And this was a person who was tenure-track while I, at the time, was a visiting
instructor of composition, barely a year out of my PhD.
The second thing that really put my impostor syndrome
into perspective was Devoney Looser’s article on the “shadow CV,” published in
the Chronicle in 2015. In this
article, she asks the question, “What
would my vita look like if it recorded not just the successes of my
professional life but also the many, many rejections?” I had never thought
about someone like Devoney, badass roller derby player, author of several books and articles, winner of awards, all around nicest person ever, as getting
rejected. But the truth of academic publishing is that everyone gets rejected. All the time. She notes that for every
article published, there are probably, on average, 3 rejections she received.
Reading that initially stunned me, but eventually it made me see that rejection
is not the end to an article’s getting published; instead, it should be
understood as only the beginning. In other words, successful people are
simply those who do not give up.
None of this is
to say, however, that impostor syndrome is easy to “get over,” to dislodge or
deal with. Let me share a particularly insidious example. A very close person
to me had a terrible experience with a dissertation committee member telling
her, post-defense, in a private
conversation, that she didn’t think her dissertation was very good and that she
shouldn’t have passed her defense. This was not
the chair of the committee, mind you; there was really no reason to say this to
my friend except to belittle her and her achievement. She was rightfully
stunned and hurt, and, worst of all, she
believed this professor. This person fed into my friend’s impostor
syndrome, encouraging it, watering it until it was a vine that paralyzed my
friend for years. Every time she received a rejection from a journal
afterwards, it felt like a confirmation of what that committee member had said to
her. Finally, she stopped sending out her work altogether.
Not too long ago,
though, this friend went back to a previous article that had been rejected and
asked me to help her figure out how to publish it. It was a joy to read her
work and, with some tweaking of the organization and finessing the language of
the argument, it became a very strong piece of writing that was accepted by the
first journal she sent it to: accept as is. When she shared the acceptance, we
both cried. It was such an amazing moment to hear that she had an article
accepted, that we cried from happiness….but I think we both cried a little too
to think of all the years my friend had wasted thinking that her ideas were
worthless and her writing unpublishable.
The people around
us have the possibility to encourage our writing or to thwart it; we have the ability to encourage or
thwart others. As instructors, we must be
encouraging in the best possible way, helping our students grow as writers
rather than shooting them down. Similarly, when I write a reader report, I
think about how to encourage a struggling writer rather than trying to thwart
them. I imagine that the writer is a peer whom I admire, rather than assuming
he/she is a graduate student (and even that that attitude that bad writing is grad student writing suggests just how poorly,across the board, graduate students are treated by many in our field. We must
do better!).
As writers, we
need to surround ourselves with people who will give us useful criticism—criticism
that gives credit where credit is due, but which also points out potential
sites for expanding, strengthening, or improving our writing. Cultivating such
people is an important part of the professionalization process, and, I
guarantee you, people are more generous than you can imagine. Become part of a
writing group; ask people to read your work; reconnect with past mentors; find
new mentors at the conferences you attend; communicate ideas and network on
Twitter; ask people to read your work and in exchange offer to read theirs; talk
to journal editors at conferences. #writingcommunity is real, and procuring the
support of other writers is the number one thing you can actively do
to help deal with impostor syndrome.
The other part of
impostor syndrome is you and your own attitude to yourself. You must cultivate
a no fucks given attitude towards the people who reject your writing, who
thwart you, who tear you down, rather than helping you develop and blossom. It’s
that old cliché: you have to believe in yourself. And when people tell you they
admire your writing, you have to believe
them. Let yourself believe them. Remember my colleague who sent her article
to eleven different journals. Remember that even Eminent Scholars have impostor
syndrome. Remember that negative peer reviews are a reflection of someone else’s
ego or else lack of kindness, generosity, or self-esteem. And just keep writing.
Generosity starts
at home. Do you want feedback on your writing? Send me a DM on Twitter
@kleinula and let’s start a conversation.
