Impostor Syndrome

Overall, teaching at a college level is challenging for so many reasons. Yes, there’s strong personalities to deal with and administrative processes that bog things down, but the giant, smelly elephant in the room is that I DON’T KNOW HOW TO TEACH. I may know what I know, but I readily admit, I am not an expert in anything. On top of that, conveying what I do know, requires a whole new set of skills. Determining what to convey, how to convey it, and then how to assess if I’ve conveyed it successfully is all an interesting conundrum for me. I would guess that I’m not alone in my inability to effectively sift through the information and determine what to present to the students.

For me, the lack of knowledge related to teaching pedagogy, partnered with the lack of PhD depth expertise in any particular topic, leads to impostor syndrome: “Impostor syndrome can be defined as a collection of feelings of inadequacy that persist even in face of information that indicates that the opposite is true. It is experienced internally as chronic self-doubt, and feelings of intellectual fraudulence.” (Caltech Counseling Center, no date)

When I expressed my fear of inadequacy to my Assistant Director recently, she promptly pointed out that Learning Designers are the people that bridge that gap for instructors. Learning Designers specialize in helping instructors determine what to convey, how to convey it and then creating assessments that adequately measure how successful the knowledge was transferred. I was nearly 6 years into teaching online, before I got a true taste of what it means to have a Learning Designer (LD) in my corner.

I have never taught in person, and I’ve only ever delivered courses that were in existence before I came on board. So the idea of creating content is daunting and creates feelings of anxiety that I’ve never encountered before. Not only do I have to put together information that is worth reading but I have to do it in a meaningful, interesting and relateable fashion. I have to write. And then revise. Then write some more. Then revise some more. Putting together each lesson is incredibly time consuming. On top of questioning if I am even qualified to create the lesson, then questioning if I’m conveying the right info, I also question my abilities in conveying it correctly. Is my grammar ok? Is the whole thing crap? What if my commentary comes across as preachy or self-righteous?

Impostor syndrome.

 

https://counseling.caltech.edu/general/InfoandResources/Impostor

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