Sunday, June 20, 2021

Journal Entry 2

The expectation for Week 4's first journal entry is to highlight ways the student can avoid the "imposter phenomenon/syndrome" and identify strategies to grow their mindset during and after the doctoral program.

The first part is directly referencing the reading from Parkman.  Which, after reading, makes me now wonder if I experience this in just a bit shorter timeframe than others?  I know I commonly feel like I am stretching myself / my skills at work and at the university.  However, I generally try to take the feedback I get as an accurate assessment of my performance and not that I was just really good at presenting my material. So, to address this point, I would encourage students to accept the responses they get from peers and others as honest measurements.  If you do poorly later, you will again get honest feedback and can use it to shore up whatever shortcoming you may have had the second time.  Second-guessing your own worth/skills does little to help with that "personal identity" I wrote about in earlier journal entries.

The second part is referencing the reading from Posselt.  In the article, it says that educators have a role in facilitating the growth mindset by promoting the idea that intelligence is malleable with work.  This is done by continuing to stretch our knowledge through experiences and academic work.  When we see our own growth, we can identify that we are indeed learning and knowing.  This helps to dispel the imposter syndrome.  So a strong takeaway here is to go forward and put out academic work.  It will get peer-reviewed and you will feel both validated as well as recognized for your true self.

Parkman, A. (2016). The Imposter Phenomenon in Higher Education: Incidence and Impact. Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice, 16(1), 51–60.

Posselt, J. (2018). Normalizing Struggle: Dimensions of Faculty Support for Doctoral Students and Implications for Persistence and Well-Being. The Journal of Higher Education, 89(6), 988–1013. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2018.1449080

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