You know the kind: learn a few terms and all of a sudden they're "part of the crowd." Sometimes I feel like I posture this way for my students, sometimes in grad classes, sometimes with professors, though all of these identities become more salient as I enact them. When I was personal training, I'd tell my clients to "fake it until you make it." They'd show up at the gym in their athletic gear (I had a rule that each person must own at least one "nice" coordinated outfit that made them look like an athlete), with their water bottle, their workout plan, and a list of goals for that week. Over time, these people who said that they would never consider themselves athletes or even gym rats would own that identity and accept it as one they could enact with confidence.
Wow, is academia just like that. Just use the words and the posture and the clothes and the inflections until you "get" wherever you're going. But getting assumes linear travel. Going assumes movement. Movement assumes leaving behind. Which circulates back to my diss (as most things do).
I haven't been actively avoiding blogging. I have enough to say to blog on the daily. I did, however, take a bit of a respite from work, spent some time on a beach somewhere, came back with an inner-ear issue and monumental vertigo. You haven't lived until you've been barreling down a rooty, wet decline on a mountain bike at maybe 10 miles an hour, and the vertigo hits. Pretty amazing.
But even more amazing, right before I left for my coastal ear-infection jaunt, I received 30 UT student IDs from the registrar. When I came back from said vacation, I had received 15 responses. (edit: now 16!) Our discussion in class has me a bit gun shy about coercion, but I do have to follow up with the list at least once. I'd love to share their open-ended comments, but I can't. Let's just say that they were overwhelmingly positive.
With all that said, I'll join the ranks of people who enjoyed reading Rapley. I like the Research Kit books, which my friend calls the Flick Series (after Uwe Flick). I like that name better: let me go get my Flick book now. Anyway, I found chapter 6 to be especially helpful as it outlines the various methods of analysis scholars can take in approaching a text. I am most interested in the lexical analysis, and I think my team members are interested in the some of the other approaches (like turn taking).
Things are moving right along! Who else is in Advanced Qual next semester? Am I the only one taking it?
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Because action is the antidote to anxiety
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About Me
- Casie Fedukovich
- Raleigh, NC, United States
- Assistant Professor. WPA. Writer. Teacher.
9 comments:
After talking in our group yesterday I think I am beginning to understand the various methods of analysis in which we can approach our script. I'm excited to try it out. I agree that we need to fake it until we make it. I just need to be immersed long enough in the culture to take a risk and try out the identity. I definitely am afraid of looking like an imposter, but I am comfortable in learning and being a student. I just get caught up in what other people think and feel like they are judging my incompetence in talking the talk. You've encouraged me to take more risks. I, too, am taking Advanced Qual next semester.
Tammy, I still feel like a fraud! There's a phenomenon they call the "imposter phenomenon," and it's exactly what you're talking about. A lot of academics feel it: that they'll be called out by their peers and "found out" to be a fake. I guess my take on it is that I know I'm not a fake. I know that I know a lot about qual and about writing studies and about rhetoric and about a whole host of other things. If people call me out on it, that's okay. I don't mind being corrected. However, I've found that the people who are so on fire to "call out" other scholars are those with the worst cases of imposterism.
I'm excited about Advanced Qual!
Casie, I think we all at some point during the day feel like frauds...it's like this negative psychic pattern that gets to us on occasion.In more positive psychic moments, I like to think of it as an English teacher who I esteemed highly used to frame it: "if you pretend you are who you want to be, someday you will be." At the time, it was great parlor trick for getting into car dealerships to test-drive Jags and Hummers, but now I look at it as "trying something on for size". You assume a position, a discourse, a particular "identity" to see if it resonates, to look at different "self-identities" from a different vantage-point. None of us are monoliths, and this playful "bricolage" (I know that's a loaded word, but that is almost the sense I think that this process has, at least for me) helps the learning process for some. What I find shameful is this desire to equate this learning process with inconsistency or "waffling", as we have seen in political discourse for longer than I care to think now.
Of course, it might just be that we're in the wrong discipline...I had forgotten about this...still makes me laugh:
http://www.guyrintoul.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/08/xkcd-imposter.png
Thanks, Doug, for your input! I agree with you on the ridiculousness of the term "waffling." Since when is it a bad thing to assume situationally appropriate discourses? Or to change one's mind after receiving more information? It's this sense of "Plant your feet, make up your mind, and don't let anyone sway you" American-dream individualism that I don't get.
I've done some research on the Imposter Phenomenon, most recently with working-class writing teachers. I have to say, it's a real and pervasive psychological experience, and one that I'm excited to explore further when I've wrapped up my diss. (How about that optimism right there?) :) :) :)
Wait a minute...have I (we) just been sucked into a meme?
http://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/confessions_of_a_community_college_dean/imposter_syndrome
http://lesboprof.blogspot.com/2009/10/imposter-syndrome.html
Yeah - what Doug said - I saw those posts along the same time that I read your post, Casie.
Your feelings may just be a sign of your awareness of this nartual part of the learning process. One possible explaination is given by Alfred Whitehead (his works should be part of the educational cannon).
Whitehead described education in terms of a 3-fold process: romance, precision, and generality. First we must want to learn, if learning is to take place. What interesting questions have we been presented to us that make us "fall in love" with a topic?
Then comes precision. It's not until we have an understanding of the process (i.e. the vocab, many examples, etc. ) that we can then move to understand how the topic at hand fits into the larger more generalized picture. Notet: Some students never get to the final generalization stage.
This very simplistic model is one way of viewing learning. For teachers, it focuses our attention on 3 major milestones in the learning process.
Since we are having these feelings of being a fraud, we are still in the precision stage. We are still "ventriloquating" (see Wells article). We are not comfortable with the general picture...only with a few disparate pieces.
This is one interpretation among many. Take it for what it's worth.
Just reciprocating the Blog love,
RJMR
References:
Whitehead, A. (1929). The Aims of Education and Other Essays. MacMillian Press.
DAGUMIT! This thing won't let me correct typos! That sucks!
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