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Imposter syndrome and victories: My journey to the professoriate

Leah Geer Zarchy

@drz.csus

@leahcaitrin

leahgeer.com

19 February 2021

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RIT/NTID has been part of my journey!

1 Oct 2015

Future Faculty Program

Rochester, NY

6 Jan 2016

TISLR 12

Melbourne, Australia

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Palgrave Handbook on “Imposterism in Higher Education”

Chua - USA

de Meulder - NED

Geer - USA

Henner - USA

Hou - USA

O’Brien - UK

Kubus - Germany

Robinson - USA

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Look for our chapter and blog!

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With that, let’s get going...

Destination: 3rd grade

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Just waiting for the beeps...

I saw this meme modified to be in a sound booth. Of course I didn’t think to save it and then I couldn’t find it, so I had to recreate it on my own and I’m not a photoshop master. So let’s imagine Bernie in a sound booth for a hearing test.

We’ve also just flashed back to when I was in 3rd grade. My class lined up to go have a hearing screening. We went to a part of the building no one ever went in. I remember feeling strange going to that mysterious part of the building but also excited to see it (maybe a weird thing to be excited about but…). It was finally my turn. I went in the little room with a window. I sat down and the adult explained that I’d put the headphones on, then she’d go into a different room and play a series of beeps through the headphones. When I heard a beep I should raise my hand. Seemed simple enough and I wanted to show I was good at following directions. So I affixed my headphones and sat down. Soon the beeps started coming and I raised my hand and it was all fine. But then the beeps stopped and the woman gestured to me through the window to mash down on my headphones, so I did. She came back into my room to remind me to raise my hand when I heard the beep. I hadn’t forgotten. Again she gestured to squeeze the headphones on really tight. I did but I still didn’t hear a beep so I didn’t raise my hand. Finally she mouthed through the window “raise your hand when I tell you”. I was 9 and she was...older and I wanted to obey but also that seemed kind of fishy but she’s the adult and I’m the kid so she’s probably right and I’m probably wrong so when she raised her hand, I copied. With that she gestured to remove my headphones, She signed a paper and gestured for me to come get it. I did and she sent me back to class. I don’t remember what happened after that. I don’t remember telling anyone about that but years later, it seems I did tell my babysitter or my parents, I can’t remember….we’ll get back to that.

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Fast forward now to 2008 when I was about to start my MA degree at Gallaudet. By that point, I’d suspected that I was hard of hearing and I’d recall that 3rd grade hearing screening and various other stories. For example, I ran cross country in high school and because I have asthma, I’d always run with an inhaler. For something to do, I’d click the cap of the inhaler. One person on my team told me once that she liked running with me because that sound was soothing, grounding to her. I thought “hmmm that makes a sound?”

Anyway, in 2008, I was on my way to gallaudet as a hearing graduate student even though I suspected I was hard of hearing. That summer I fell horribly ill with, among other things, an ear infection, so I couldn’t fly to DC as planned. My dad and I rented a car and drove instead. After that, I started having these stabbing ear pains. It would feel like the pressure from flying but it would just hit all of a sudden, hurt for a short time -- up to 30 seconds, I’d say, then stop. A new friend and 1st year audiology student eager to practice new skills, offered to have a look and do a hearing test. So we did and after that he said “I think you should come back to the clinic and see a real audiologist”. So I did and the test confirmed that I was hard of hearing. I immediately flashed back to that 3rd grade hearing screening and wondered if this test was consistent with what that screening had found. I wondered if I’d been kind of borderline at that screening and the person was in a rush because she was testing the whole school and clearly I’d heard a lot of the tones and she just wanted me out of there, so that’s why she rigged the test and sent me on my way? We’ll never know.

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Linguistics MA graduates, 2010

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An impostery transition...

After Gallaudet, I started a PhD at The University of Texas at Austin. I still felt like I couldn’t claim a hard of hearing or deaf identity but I struggled in my first year at UT, despite arriving with an MA in linguistics. So I felt this feeling of not belonging both because I thought I would excel in school but i didn’t so I wondered if I belonged in a PhD program, but I also felt like one doesn’t just become hard of hearing and get accommodations etc. I remember in one class, the teacher said something I didn’t catch and everyone laughed or something and I asked him to repeat himself. He said something like “do you want me to say it exactly the same way or do you want me to explain it differently”. Taken aback I just said “i didn’t hear you”. That afternoon, I scheduled an appointment for a new hearing test and found out that my hearing had changed again, which would account for the increasing difficulty in passing as a hearing person. At the same time, my dad was taking my grandmother to and from audiology appointments because of her own hearing changes. He sent me her audiograms, his, and when compared to my own, showed a similar pattern, or so the audiologists said.

Despite this new information, I still felt like I couldn’t claim a hard of hearing or deaf identity, regardless of my involvement in deaf communities because I didn’t grow up in deaf programs. It wasn’t until I started to meet other people with similar hearing histories that I realized I wasn’t alone and while the timing of everything -- being at Gallaudet -- is certainly odd, it’s by no means unique for people in their late teens, early 20s to start experiencing hearing changes. The difference was I already knew ASL and had for years.

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Coming to terms

“Why I Do Not Read Lips”

by Christine Sun Kim

I slowly stopped resisting my new reality. I always used either CART or interpreters for classes and presentations. I started to prefer visual forms of communication, like writing or typing with those who don’t sign, and it seemed that the more I initiated this method of communication, the less I was expected to read lips.

I remember at some gathering, back when people could gather without worry about contracting a horrible illness, another deaf graduate student asked me, when I mentioned that I’d transitioned into only using ASL for presentations and using voicing interpreters, if I was concerned about losing control over my message. And I acknowledged the privilege of having that choice -- to speak for myself or to use an interpreter -- but said that it’s worth it to have people be more accommodating overall, more willing to use visual communication.

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PhDone!

Newly minted Drs Kyle Jerro (Essex) and Cindy Blanco (Duolingo) with me, after surviving 6 years together, from start to finish.

Dr. Lina Hou (UCSB)

I finished my PhD in 2016. And like we can say about so many things, it took a village. The two friends on either side of me in the image on the left started and finished with me. Another good friend, and one of the few other deaf PhD students, was a constant source of support.

I couldn’t believe it when i graduated. Looking back, it’s kind of funny to think about because I think i started on this adventure, of getting a PhD, and kind of didn’t think about that experience as coming to a close. Like I would just indefinitely be a graduate student. I graduated with a job offer -- which is something many equally and even more qualified new PhDs don’t have on graduation day (part of getting a job offer is luck -- truly) but I still had this feeling of imposterism...I knew how to be a student, but did I belong at a university as a professor?

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Anderson Center Deaf Artists Residency

The Anderson Center “Dames”, as we called ourselves: Dr. Jennifer Nelson, Kalen Feeney, Kaitlin Mielke, and Adrean Clark

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Moving to Sacramento

Pictures from my first visit to Sacramento (for my job interview)

1. State Capitol (left), 2. campus entrance (right),

3. Guy West Bridge (bottom)

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How we got here

We benefited from social, �institutional & political changes
Post-WWII rehabilitation policies that expanded social participation of disabled people
Field of sign language interpreters professionalized in the 1960s
Disability rights legislation in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s

As Millennials, we benefited from social, institutional, and political changes that allowed privileged deaf people to participate in higher education. The changes, specifically between 2010 - 2019 C.E., created a new surge of deaf academics, many tenure-track, who work in higher, i.e. post-secondary, predominantly hearing educational institutions (Smith & Andrews, 2015).

The specified changes are a combination of post-World War II rehabilitation policies in Europe and the US that expanded the social participation of disabled people. The field of signed language interpreters also professionalized in the 1960s in the US and Western Europe (Quigley & Youngs, 1965). Disability rights legislation in the 1970s, 1990s, and 2000s helped secure the right to access in higher education via signed language interpretation and computer assisted real time transcription services. More recently, developments in access technologies opened the doors of academe for deaf students (Lawson & Gooding, 2005; Scotch, 2001; Stiker, 1999; Stone, 1986). Our expanded participation was also made possible by the legacy of activism and policies that secured access for women, Jewish people, and nonwhite people in higher education. Our work and contemporary successes also rests upon the legacy and shared wisdom of feminist, Jewish, immigrant, nonwhite, deaf-disabled, and working-class activism.

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What caused feelings of imposterism?

workplace isolation
working with signed language �interpreters
emotional labor extracted by nondeaf/abled peers�
Our “belonging” is often mediated by access and cost

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Hidden & visible costs of access

We’re often seen as signing deaf people, not the roles we inhabit
Our primary value is often seen as the ability to teach ASL to nondeaf students, which benefits the university

We often have to defend our fields in each talk and manuscript we submit

At the end of [de Meulder’s] talk, the first question was from a language policy scholar who asked “are sign languages real languages? Aren’t they universal?”. Sometimes journal reviewers just don’t get why signed languages are relevant topics of study for the field of multimodal communication at all. In Deaf Studies publications it is also common practice to be clear about one’s own positionality, also being deaf when carrying out Deaf Studies research is a part of the methodology. But because academic researchers are almost always by default considered hearing, deaf scholars are often they only ones who position themselves as deaf while nondeaf scholars do not need or do not feel the need to ‘come out’ this way. It also leaves deaf scholars more vulnerable for being identified by journal reviewers.

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A shaky path to tenure

Our self-advocacy, training, management, collaborations etc take time away from our contractual responsibilities

Click image to read full thread

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1001 small victories

We always find ways to resist: we have networks, host meetings, organize reading/writing groups
We undertake studies on deaf ecosystems and workplace �challenges

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Wrapping up

This has been a story of my journey

things I had to sort out for myself
things I got to work through with others

Bottom line: There’s no right or wrong path, There’s your path, as individual as each of you. There will be bumps along your journey, so celebrate your victories!

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Imposter syndrome and victories: My journey to the professoriate

@drz.csus

@leahcaitrin

leahgeer.com

Thank you!

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Q&A

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Q: What are some readings on Imposter Syndrome?

Bothello, Joel and Roulet, Thomas J., “The imposter syndrome, or the mis-representation of self in� academic life.” Journal of Management Studies 56 no. 4 (2018): 854-861.

Hutchins, Holly M. and Hilary Rainbolt, “What triggers imposter phenomenon among academic faculty?� A critical incident study exploring antecedents, coping, and development opportunities,”� Human Resource Development International, 20, no. 3 (2016): 194-214 DOI:� 10.1080/13678868.2016.1248205

Cokely, Kevin, Leann Smith, Donte Bernard, and Ashley Hurst, “Imposter feelings as a moderator and� mediator of the relationship between perceived discrimination and mental health among� racial/ethnic minority college students.” Journal of Counselling Psychology 64 no. 2 (2017):� 141-154

Parkman, Anna, “The imposter phenomenon in higher education: Incidence and impact.” Journal of� Higher Educational Theory and Practice, 16 no.1 (2016): 51-60.

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Question:

You mentioned experiencing being viewed through your language, demographic, etc. rather than your role and value to an institution, resulting in a feeling of being an imposter in your work environment. Have you recognized any factors that are "look fors" for work or study environments that tend to reduce the imposter impression and value diverse employees as rich additions to the institution?

See full response on Twitter here.

In sum: Something to look for is situations in which you’re being pushed to research/work on something only because of your language skills and not because of what you want to pursue in your studies/work.

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Question:

If I may ask... Is there any time when you feel kind of ‘detached’ from the world, in whatever perspective you can think?

See full response on Twitter here.

In sum: When Zoom meetings are not accessible b/c of issues with interpreter visibility/captioning availability. I’m not alone in feeling this way.

More generally, when other internet content isn’t captioned.