Academic Publishing and Impostor Syndrome

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.