I have struggled with feeling like an outsider ever since I can remember. As a child, I went to a different school in a different language than my neighbors. At said French immersion school, I had to attend extra language classes because my parents didn’t speak the language of the school. As a preteen, I switched into a new school in 6th grade – notorious for being such a wonderful time for humans (sarcasm) – where I didn’t know anyone, and social groups had already long been established within the cohort who had been together since Kindergarten. In high school, I played sports year-round, making my downtime and social time with my school peers essentially non-existent. As an undergraduate student, I left my California hometown and moved across the country to the US Midwest, and after grad school I relocated across the world to Kazakhstan for my first academic position. While these experiences taught me that I am very resilient, adaptable, and amazing at packing, they have also left me feeling like I never fit in anywhere, that I don’t belong in situations, and that I don’t deserve certain accolades as much as others do. This feeling of being an imposter was particularly prevalent during my PhD in Second Language Acquisition, yet even close to a decade later I still feel like a fraud who bamboozled the system into getting my doctorate.
Growing up bilingual myself paired with my love of teaching French are what motivated me to pursue a PhD in Second Language Acquisition. However, I did not have the same formal background in linguistics that my peers did. There were times during my coursework that I went through the motions to make it look like I knew what I was doing just to get by unnoticed. However, the feeling that I didn’t deserve to be accepted into the PhD program worsened as I approached the dissertation stage because I did not know what I wanted to research. My immediate thoughts were that since I could not fake it anymore, that I would be found out for the imposter I was and my position in the program rescinded.
As I became more interested in my own feelings of being an outsider, I did some digging into the construct. What we anecdotally call Imposter Syndrome originated as the Imposter Phenomenon (Clance & Imes, 1978), and is also referred to as impostorism today referring when we “experience feelings of fraudulence, worrying that they are fooling others about their abilities and that they will eventually be exposed” (Cohen & McConnell, p. 457, 2019). Like many PhD students, I daydreamed about a non-academic escape plan, which was to open a bookstore/coffee shop/animal shelter in Paris. A peer of mine wanted to become a marine biologist and study sharks. No one said PhD students are rational. Thankfully, a professor who just happened to be in my chair’s office when I stopped by semi-jokingly suggested a research area in my field that I still love to this day (sociolinguistics).
Ironically, graduate school may have contributed to my perpetual feeling of non-belonging even as an academic professional. Vázquez (2021) interviewed university professors in the US on the emotional and psychological role that academic development plays, and she noted that “symbolic aspects internalized during graduate school enhanced the normalization of social isolation, impostor syndrome, and negative emotions […] across disciplines” (p. 495). Ding ding ding! That’s a bingo! Most of the time these days I can work through or at least sit with these uncomfortable feelings (because feelings aren’t facts!), but I’d be lying if I didn’t acknowledge how much I yearn to belong rather than feel like an imposter. To this day, it is challenging for me to put those two letters in front of my name: Dr. Alex Shaeffer. It also still stings that a well-respected professor in my PhD program told a family member of mine (another academic) that I wasn’t as strong of a researcher as them just days before my PhD defense. Yet, I do have my PhD, the dissertation I wrote almost a decade ago still gets downloaded every month, I have clients and students worldwide who put their confidence in me. If anything, experiencing Imposter Syndrome has made me a more empathetic, kinder, and supportive person when my clients and students reach out for guidance. At the time, I thought my lack of dissertation direction made me an inferior PhD student, but as a dissertation coach now I know how common it is. Over the past five years, Dr. Amy and I have repeatedly witnessed Imposter Syndrome among our coaching clients. Motivated and intelligent clients come to us because they need a helping hand to support and show them that they are not alone. Combatting Imposter Syndrome to promote that warm feeling of belonging is one of the reasons community is a core tenet of the Dissertation Collective. Check out our Community service or Group packages if you’re also looking for a place to belong in grad school. We can be imposters…together.