Impostor Syndrome and a Sense of Self

I’ve been puzzling over this for years—what does it mean to be me, when me is a scientist and also a woman and also Indian? I cannot conform to all of the stereotypes of each of these identities, or the sub-identities they contain—they are, in totality, mutually exclusive. But I also cannot resist all of these stereotypes—that would leave no room to be a person.

I tried, for years, to resist all the stereotypes—don’t be nurturing, be more passionate, you can be a leader, be more of a nerd, be more sexy, you’ll never be a leader, why bother being sexy, be less of a nerd, be less passionate, be more caring…I kept maneuvering myself into smaller and smaller crevices between huge rocks, and suddenly found myself without room to breathe. But when you recognize the impossibility of fitting you—all of you—into such little space, into negative space even, you have no choice but to break the rocks down.

The impossibility I was living in became apparent when I saw women ahead of me on the academic ladder who managed to be their whole selves. They seemed to have fought off the weight of contradictions that I thought their identities must have imposed on them. There had to be a tunnel out from where I was, because these women seemed to exist in sunshine beyond it.

And so I began carving, claiming for myself the parts of my identity as a woman, as Indian, as a scientist, that felt truly mine, picking up so many shards of other identities along the way, some of which fit into the mosaic that is now mine. With the guidance of two therapists, I broke myself down and put myself back together, and still I arrange and rearrange. My sense of self, which had lived earlier in interstitial spaces, moves closer my center and gains strength.

Somewhere along the way, my academic impostor syndrome mostly disappeared. Its departure came on the heels of success-of-sorts, in the form of a paper rejection from a great journal, with thoughtful, considered reviews. Sure, they didn’t want my work, but being taken seriously felt better than I thought it could.

I found that while I enjoyed my newfound confidence, I didn’t know how to talk about it. I was a senior grad student with a postdoc lined up, about to enter the most uncertain phase of academia but also far along enough that junior scientists had started asking me for advice, mostly on being a woman of colour in academia. People like me are meant to be the definition of impostor syndrome. So in talking about my lack of impostor syndrome, suddenly the weight of identity came tumbling back. We are told that feeling like an impostor is what is holding us back, not that we are actually treated like impostors because of how our identities are perceived. We are told constantly that we need to battle impostor syndrome, but then we’re also told that if you don’t suffer at its hands then surely you are clouded by arrogance. This feels an awful lot like being shoved back into an impossibly small crevice, the sort I am working so hard to escape. Now that I know what that escape can feel like, I refuse to climb back in.

As advice goes, my take isn’t particularly useful—do the work of uncovering yourself from within the pile of stereotypes you’re expected to conform to, and maybe your impostor syndrome will disappear along the way. And it’s presumptuous—who on earth am I to say you haven’t discovered your sense of self already? And it’s definitely premature—what if my impostor syndrome comes raging back in a month or year or three? But for now, it feels like the truest thing I can say about a subject that comes up in my conversations with academics again and again and again. As always, I’m writing about it in the hope that perhaps it’ll resonate with a few of you.