I am struggling. I think coming to terms with how and why I am struggling has been a battle itself. I grew up feeling competent. Granted, I had a ridiculous amount of anxiety, but I felt competent nonetheless. Like most people, I have dealt with levels of imposter syndrome throughout my academic career. Never has impostor syndrome felt so burdensome and present, and every word out my mouth feels tainted with mediocrity. I look to my peers, and I am proud of them. I admire them. But, never has a classroom felt so alienating and not for me. Notes of seasoned prose and perfect articulation stream through the rooms, belonging to every mouth but mine. I hate class sometimes. Never because of my cohort or faculty, but because I can feel a border of my manifestations. I can feel my insecurities muting my voice. I wonder if maybe this place does not belong to me. For me.
My dad often says, if it was easy, everyone would do it. And I hold his words like a note in my pocket. By now, his words have been softened and worn by my frequent invocations and recall. I look at the reasons why I have stayed. I recollect moments where I felt present.
When I wonder why I matter here, in this institution, it is my connection to teaching that keeps me stable. Teaching has been one of the greatest rewards from graduate school (that's not to say I don't have moments where I am feddddddd UP with grading.) More than anything, teaching has led to my interrogation of the idea of winning and losing (Palmer, 1998). Palmer (1998) argued a lack of reflexivity within instructors unfairly centers students towards ideologies of success. So then, why am I afraid of academia? What do I lose if I am not perfectly articulate? How can I teach honesty without teaching honestly? I find it increasingly difficult to tell my students to find freedom within the classroom and speak without fear if I cannot extend these qualities to myself. Palmer (1998) writes, "the courage to teach from the most truthful places in the landscape of self and world, the courage to invite students to discover, explore, and inhabit those places in the living of their own lives" (p. 190). I argue that perhaps to teach with love, I need to embrace uncomfortability. To explore my space in academia without fear of rejection. And I realize my willingness to engage in the sort of suffering that belongs to "all that is unresolved in [my] heart" (Palmer, 1998, p. 89) is #ForThem and by them.
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