I should be making revisions to my dissertation proposal. Instead, after a several month hiatus and at special request, I have decided to blog again.
The past few months have been completely insane. And one of
the most insane parts of it has to do with graduate school. I’m at a point I
really never thought I would get to. I am about 99% of the way to being a PhD
Candidate, which is actually a really big deal. I’ll get to say I’m ABD (all
but dissertation), for the rest of my life (if I don’t end up actually writing
a dissertation. Which is highly unlikely because I don’t normally quit things.
I do TALK about quitting things a lot, but I don’t actually quit them, unless
there is a really good reason. But I digress. Can you digress within
parentheses? I don’t know, but I’m doing it).
If you had asked me back when I started this whole doctoral process,
in the fall of 2009, if I thought I would get through all the requirements for
candidacy, I would have definitely had doubts. It seems really insurmountable
when you’re just starting out. But slowly and surely I have made my way to this
point. And the thing is, I still feel like a total fraud. Or as one of my
committee members called me last week, an “accidental doctoral student” (a
moniker which, frankly, I love).
But, luckily, feeling like a fraud is completely normal in
this business! There is even a “medical” term for it: Imposter Syndrome.
Symptoms of Imposter Syndrome include:
-Attributing success to luck
-Feeling like a fake
-Discounting success
(source:
Michigan Student Affairs, retrieved from http://mitalk.umich.edu/article/graduate-students-imposter-syndrome)
I can safely say that, primarily during these latter phases
of achieving candidacy (namely the comprehensive exams and dissertation
proposal and defense process) I have felt all of these things. Simultaneously. But
that’s ok! We all feel that way! I don’t know if there is any good treatment
for this syndrome but if there is, I hope it’s covered under ObamaCare.
