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[Milton]

I'm lifting a decontextualized quotation from the mom's on sabbatical thread and starting a new thread because it is not really the same topic.

In that thread, Ullalay said:  "I firmly believe that this translates into the myth of academia as "special," and that we should be so grateful for our jobs that we should permanently feel unworthy."

Ullalay is not the first person I've heard say something like this, and this is not meant as a dig at Ullalay.  But I wonder if that is really everyone else's experience, feelings of unworthiness.  I.e., do you personally and/ or the colleagues who share their feelings with you struggle with feeling unworthy?  Even years or decades into your job?

Interestingly, there are plenty of successful academics who seem genuinely to have internalized complacent feelings of worthiness, even glibly assuming that their success is fully deserved while others' failures are equally evidence of meritocracy.

And of course there are no doubt formally successful academics whose successes are driven by their own anxieties.

But I'm envisioning, say, a tenured English professor who knows that a bit of luck was involved in getting his job when so many worthies fell by the wayside, and yet who feels fully worthy to hold the job he holds; who, moreover, understands that some of the people at the Ivies are brilliant beyond words while others are no more deserving than he himself, so that if he had somehow landed at the Ivies he would have been fully up to the job.  In other words, someone who knows he is better than some, worse than others, luckier than some, less lucky than others, and has accepted that this is how the world works.

Where does the "median" academic jobholder fall-- feeling unworthy, feeling superior, feeling "just right"?  

(This is separate, of course, from the fact that by some objective criteria someone may actually BE unworthy or superior).

[tamiam]

Well, I don't know about other people, but I certainly would be unworthy of being a humanities prof because I have no idea what you just said!

[Milton]

tamiam wrote:

> Well, I don't know about other people, but I certainly would be
> unworthy of being a humanities prof because I have no idea what
> you just said!

Seriously?

I'm just commenting on the range of comments that other people have made on the Chronicle Forum over the past several months.  Surely I'm not the only one who has noticed that the "unworthiness" motif "superiority" motif both appear frequently.

[tamiam]

I was being flip, and certainly didn't mean to hurt your feelings or insult your writing style. I'm just a little thick when it comes to philosophical arguments.

As for feeling unworthy, my Mom has a self-help book called something like "if I'm so great, how come I feel like a fake?" It seems like that was what you were asking about. If so, I would say that this is by no means confined to academia.

Everyone else, please proceed to comment intelligently.

[OAP]

I've felt chronically unworthy, from every merit scholarship through all my fellowships to now.   What's worse, is that criticism, while it rings true, stings like hell.  Do I feel academia is special and thus I feel unworthy?  I don't know.  I just keep waiting for someone to catch on that I am not as smart as I have been told.

[anon]

This type of feeling, either superiority or inferiority, is more likely in fields where one's "worth" is not quanfifiable.  Those in commision based sales or athletics, for example, can fairly easily determine the level of their performance.  In fields such as the humanities, where there is no quantifiable criteria for securing a position other than getting someone to hire you, there are many more people who believe they are either over or undervalued.  This feeling seems particularly prominent in the fluffier areas of the humanities, especially English where the reward structure of the entire field is arbitrary. I haven't met very many people in the sciences who or heavily quantifiable fields who have these sentiments.

[Ms. Collegiality]

I don't know how others measure worthiness or unworthiness, but I know that I put in a lot of work preparing for my classes and grading them; I have years of experience; I had extensive pedagogy, and I keep up in my field.  I like to think I'm a caring and thoughtful instructor.  

It has not occurred to me that I am unworthy of my good job.

[geobabe]

i'm in the physical sciences and i feel unworthy all the time.
so far today i have (mentally):
attributed my forthcoming job interviews to generous supervisor letters
attributed my recent publication in a top journal to a lucky discovery anybody could have made
attributed my scoring a talk at a major meeting to my advisor's good name
and generally found alternate ways to explain any good news, other than that my performance as a researcher or teacher warrants recognition

feelings of unworthiness, i suspect, have little to do with actual performance.

even if the results are "scientifically quantified", the perceived value of anybody's work is... well...  a construct.  in fact, faulty social science, misused within the scientific community, is the only metric by which i think scientific accomplishments might appear to be objectively ranked. (over-rated value of citation #s, for one...)

this comment applies to the everyday minutia I work on, of course there are standout works of obvious value which everyone agrees on.  I suspect this is true across all fields...

[s]

My main feeling is: "is this it". So long aiming to climb the social ladder. First a university degree as first in the family, the the Phd, now the assistant prof job. It was remarkably easy. I used to see the professorship as the ultimate intellectual aim, 10 years ago. But now I'm there, and looking around, I don't feel myself all that smart, and I do see many around me who shouldn't be there in the first place. I came to realise the professor thing is just a career path as any other, no more, no less, just as eg. becoming a management trainee or carpenter apprentice(compare to phd student?) to become an investment banker of cabinet maker (professor) later. But then, I'm always surprised at how people look up to professors. I then always think: they should not...

[superman]

Here are my comments at what "S" wrote
s wrote:
> My main feeling is: "is this it". So long aiming to climb the
> social ladder. First a university degree as first in the
> family, the the Phd, now the assistant prof job. It was
> remarkably easy. I used to see the professorship as the
> ultimate intellectual aim, 10 years ago. But now I'm there, and
> looking around, I don't feel myself all that smart, and I do
> see many around me who shouldn't be there in the first place.

I think it's normal for reasonably intelligent people to not feel they are the smartest individuals on the planet.  Some of the smartest people I know keep saying the following about their success: "In the land of the blind, the one with one eye is king".  But that does not necessarily correlate with the fact that there are other incompetent people in the world.

 I
> came to realise the professor thing is just a career path as
> any other, no more, no less, just as eg. becoming a management
> trainee or carpenter apprentice(compare to phd student?) to
> become an investment banker of cabinet maker (professor) later.
> But then, I'm always surprised at how people look up to
> professors. I then always think: they should not...

I think one has to be careful putting these two things together.  Sure, the path of becoming a professor is just like any other path.  But the fact that people look up to professors it's a whole different story.  You have to accept that situation, once you become a professor, and feel responsible.  An investment banker, if she makes a mistake, she may get fired.  If the jobs are to be no different, it follows that when a professor makes a mistake, she should be fired.  You can't change that people look up to professors.  But I think you have the responsibility to EARN that.  Don't let people down by underevaluating your job.  That will not make you a better professional, or a better person.
On the other hand, you may be sure that if you screw up, people won't look up to you anymore! :)
The job of a professor IS special.  You are in the business of PEOPLE.  You can't resign from the responsibility, by just saying "it's not special".  Cheer up!  This job is as special as you make it!
Supermanx

[%sig%]

[s]

waaw. Great comment superman. thanks.



(I do indeed often use 'in the land of the blind....')