Amy Shaw, Academic Developer in the Researcher Developer Team
Hello, I'm new here! My name is Amy Shaw, I've just started as an Academic Developer in the Researcher Development team here at Sheffield. Firstly, this blog is full of *so much* good stuff, I urge you all to look through the back-catalogue because there's gold in them there archives, I tell ya. Secondly, the fact there is so much good stuff here did mean that I broke into a cold sweat when it was my turn to bring wisdom to the table. However, that moment of feeling intimidated was, in itself, worthy of writing about.
My plan was to write a post just saying hello, a bit about me, my background, the new role I'm doing, my daily struggle to walk to work instead of relying on the world's most unreliable bus etc. etc. but then I thought… would anyone want to read that? Why would anyone care about the vagaries of my life to date? People come to this blog to be inspired and informed, Amy, they don't want to know about your trials and tribulations with public transport. But then… maybe there are people reading this blog who also have to perform mental gymnastics to put themselves out there, too. There might be other people who got past all that to get where they want to be, only to find themselves overwhelmed with the result.
Bus-chat aside, you might be new here, too. Or you might be new to a team, a project, or even a phase of research - and feel like everyone else is absolutely bossing it and you're… not. At least, not yet. That's okay - I'm not there yet either. The more I talk to people, though, the more I realise that we're not all smashing through glass ceilings and racking up influencer sponsorship deals. Mainly, everyone is trying to do their best and take the opportunities to make positive changes where they can. Imposter syndrome seems to stalk many of us - particularly women - and quite frankly it needs to be banished to the ends of the earth. It's a little imp. See what I did there? Imp-oster - imp - ah, forget it. I do find the characterisation helpful though. A little imp that is entirely unhelpful. It sits on your shoulder, pulls your hair to make you doubt every move, jabs its fingers in your ear so you can't hear praise, covers your eyes so you can't see what you're doing. I'm writing this blog at the end of the summer holidays so you might think I'm referring to my children here but I assure you I'm not - for better or worse, my kids are still young enough to have absolute faith in my ability to sort everything out for them all the time, which, although exhausting, is a confidence boost at least. Having said that, the effect of trying to write this while they tear each other apart over a game of whack-a-mole in the next room is similar to grappling with a little demon.
My brilliant colleague Yara Alagha recently told us about 'trespasser syndrome' - the idea that you can be confident in your skill set and your abilities, but feel as though you are trespassing into a particular context or work environment because people of your background are underrepresented in that space. This speaks to hundreds of years of entrenched inequality and is something that Yara and her colleagues in YCEDE are working to overcome, specifically in the context of Doctoral Education.
For me, my little imp manifests as second-guessing, overthinking, self-sabotage - with a good deal of 'Who the heck am I to tell these people anything?'. After many years of working part-time and of the reassuring presence of my job-share partner, coming back to work full time and flying solo has felt like the first episode of SAS: Are You Tough Enough? Where they make everyone jump out of a helicopter into the sea. This is in spite of having the most supportive, brilliant team and managers who have given me the best start - it is entirely in my own head. Confidence is something we all need help with from time to time, but if self-doubt becomes chronic it can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. So, any of you reading this who are inclined towards self-doubt, every time you hear that little imp question your abilities, tell it from me, its days are numbered. You have every right to be here, just as I do, just as everyone does. Bye-bye, little imp, time's up.
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