The first is always the hardest

During my time in academia, there have been a lot of firsts: the first day of classes, the first exam, the first research paper, the first day of graduate school, the first meeting with my supervisor, the first draft of the research project, the first sentence, the first chapter, the first talk, the first article, the first submission, the first academic job application, the first interview, the first lecture, the first grading…and on and on the list could go.  Now I am writing my first post for The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  The transformational analogy in the title of this blog seems most apt in circumstances such as firsts.  Each first brings about a transformation, of sorts. 

I have thought about many topics to start off my contribution to this blog—all of them accompanied by the anxiety created by firsts.  But, as I understand it, this blog is about helping new philosophers get through the firsts. 

One of the great things about making it through the first is that it takes the pressure off.  For better or for worse, it is done.  Even if you have to redo it, at least the first is done.  Pressing through the anxiety is not always easy, and it is often (though not always) proportional to size of the task.  You can study and prepare yourself for the first all you wish (which is also, I have found, a great procrastination tool), but it does little to alleviate the anxiety.

The root of this anxiety can have numerous causes, but for myself I have found two that affect me the most: not being sure of what I am doing and whether I am doing it right, and the imposter complex.  Both of these deserve a bit of discussion.

It is hard for me (and I assume many other people) to see doing something wrong as part of the learning process.  Nevertheless, at some intellectual level, I realize that this is the case. Sometimes (with strong caveats), you have to do something wrong to learn how to do it right.  I have long endorsed the folk saying, “Stupid people never learn from their mistakes; average people learn from their mistakes; and intelligent people learn from others’ mistakes.”  In fact, I attempted to drill this saying into my son’s head as he was growing up, with some success.  But watching him mature through the years, I realized that sometimes (again, with strong caveats), making mistakes is an important (if not necessary) part of the learning process.  Nevertheless, I often feel that one with my level of education should be exempt from this process.  I should be above mistakes.  Thus, when friends, family and colleagues point out my mistakes, my first reaction is to get defensive.  Over the last few years, however, I have been (attempting to) suppress this reaction—which is not an easy task to say the least. Instead, I have been making efforts to grasp why I made the mistake in the first place. 

I have made professional mistakes.  I have sent in job applications that had typos, and ones in which I mistakenly misunderstood one of the requirements, and ones in which I accidentally overlooked an essential requirement of the application process. I also strongly suspect that I have said things in job interviews such as exposing my prejudices toward certain topics and some individuals’ work.  In other words, I have put my foot in my mouth on a few occasions.  Through making those mistakes, and thinking about them, I have learned some valuable lessons.  It is inevitable that one will make mistakes.  I no longer fear them, defend them, or deny them (usually!).  Instead, I try to learn all that I can from them.

The imposter complex can be paralyzing.  It usually takes the form of “not only do I think that I don’t know enough about this topic to have much important to say, but who am I that anyone would care what I have to say in the first place?”  Discussions with two different mentors that I trust helped me to escape this paralyzing phenomenon.  Several years ago now, in talking with a highly regarded and prolific academic in my field, he asked me whether I had turned any of my masters’ thesis into an article for publication.  I responded that I had not because I was just a lowly masters student who felt like I was just getting my feet wet in the vast field of ideas I was taking on; and I did not think that anything I had to say was very important.  That is when he told me about a conversation that he had many years previous with one of his mentors.  His mentor, one of the top names in his field and beyond, had expressed much the same sentiments as he was preparing a new book (that went on to do very, very well).  My mentor said that he reflected on that conversation many times, and thought to himself that if even his mentor felt that way, then perhaps it was just a common feeling that everyone (or many) had to push through.  My mentor mentioned that he (my mentor) still feels that way as he begins each new project, but he has long since realized that the allowing the imposter complex to get in his way is the surest way to make sure no one is ever going to care about what he has to say because he is never going to say it.

The other piece of advice came from one of my dearest friends and mentors when I was preparing for my masters’ defense.  In preparation for this event, I had worried myself to the point of feeling physically sick.  We had long conversations in which I would run through every nightmarish scenario in my head, to which he would respond sarcastically, “yeah, like that is going to happen!”  I was convinced that these were very real and probable scenarios, nonetheless.  Finally, he said something that rang true and through, made sense (at least intellectually at first), and has proved itself in reality numerous times now.  He said, “I don’t know why you are getting so worked up, because after all, you are the expert when it comes to your own work.”  How true this has been since then.  I do know more about my positions, my arguments, and problems with my positions and arguments than anyone else.  Sure, from time to time someone does press a novel objection or comment about which I have not previously thought, but this is usually a rare occasion. When it does happen, I can usually feel fairly confident that I will have an intelligent response.

With this, I have pushed through my first post at The Philosophers’ Cocoon.  It was not as bad as I thought it would be, even though it took me much longer than I thought that it would.  I hope the readers have found something helpful in this post, and that they might express their worries and apprehensions about firsts that they might have encountered as their academic career has progressed. 

Thanks for reading, and now that the first is done, I hope that more will follow in a more timely fashion.

All the best,

K. Mitch Hodge

Comments

[Marcus Arvan]

Many good points to agree with here. You have to come to terms with the fact that you will make mistakes. The way that I accomplished it was by reflecting on all of the problems with even the greatest works. Almost all of the very best articles in recent memory have tons of problems. Heck, Kant's Groudwork is full of problems from start to finish, and it is a Truly Great Work. Once you realize that even the Masters said all kinda of indefensible things, you can realize it is absurd to expect so much more from yourself? Will any of your articles be so bad that it embarrasses you? Well, the truly bad ones are likely to get weeded out in the review process, so just forge ahead, do your best, and have the courage to live with your mistakes! And yes, also remember that we all feel like impostors from time to time...

[Kyle Whyte]

I agree that insecurity is a feeling that likely lasts throughout one's career. I assume this about most academics, and I feel it's a virtue to treat people in such a way that you're sensitive to that. But then I feel like there are so many folks out there I encounter who seem to try to cultivate the persona that they are not susceptible to insecurity. I don't think that's a good persona to cultivate, though I understand it as a defense mechanism that some people use. Perhaps I'm reading to much into this or this doesn't reflect others' experiences.

[Marcus Arvan]

Kyle: totally agree. It's often pretty obvious when a person is overcompensating. People who go out of their way to mention their own journal articles (particularly where their articles appeared), or how many interviews they received. This is something I want to make a post about at some point. It can be hard to avoid seeking out approval, particularly if one has worked very hard and achieved some manner of success -- yet I think, both first-person and third-personally, that it almost always comes off very poorly to others, manifesting a not-very-admirable kind of insecurity. This is not to say, of course, that I have not been guilty of this myself from time to time! I very well have been. But I think it's a very important issue to discuss and to think about -- for in my experience there are good and bad ways to manifest insecurities, and the bad ways (e.g. trumpeting one's own successes) tend to create enmity between people, and within the profession. Indeed, this is one of the main reasons I wanted to create this blog: to generate a more healthy way of supporting one another through our successes, failures, and insecurities.

[Kyle Whyte]

Marcus: I hope you do post some ideas on this as I'm curious to hear more about what you think. Building off of what you just wrote, here are some of the ways I've tried to make heads or tails of my own experiences. It doesn't appear to me that our field works in a succinct way in terms of our being able to have whatever our accomplishments may be at some point in time recognized without our having to tell someone about it. I think this is in line with what you were saying about it being hard to avoid seeking approval. You kind of have to, at one point or another, when you're hustling on the job market or trying to network within a philosophical community that you're new to, as well as other situations. So this puts us in this strange bind in which we have to express insecurities, and insecurities of several kinds, including what we've been talking about. I also think there's a general insecurity in our field that comes from the fact that, although we know that it's highly possible for one's article to get published and never get any uptake, it is nonetheless unsettling to have to have this reality on our minds. I think there are other insecurities like this that have to do with the fact that there's no precise road to recognition in the field (and I mean recognition just in a very modest and appropriate sense as opposed to in terms of "fame"). When you're fresh off the dissertation or fresh in a TT or non-TT job, this is precisely the time you don't want to have to now deal with insecurities related to this fact I perceive about the field, plus the insecurities you inevitably have about the quality of the arguments in your own work. Then you're confronted with this challenge, like you indicated, that there are better or worse ways to manifest your own insecurities, and you see other people who you think do it badly, and maybe make you feel bad. Nuts. I'd be curious what some good ideas would be for how to manifest it appropriately. I think that one of the strategies might be related to how we engage with other people on shared interests. For example, if I approach someone whose work I think my own work is related to, and may even contribute to, instead of announcing my beliefs (along with superficial credibility boosters) about this as the lead in, I should instead focus on asking questions about his or her work, and delving into a bit, and seeing if the connections come up naturally, without having to rely on boosters like, "You should read what I just published in xyz," or "I'm working on this paper with so and so to send to journal xyz," or any other expression that indicates I'm trying to make my work sound credible before I've even said anything about the arguments. By asking questions in a spirit of curiosity and mutual support, it seems like the conversation would then begin to reflect the mutual interests that may be shared, which will build intellectual respect without the other person's even having to know whether you've published something or not, work with this or that person, etc. Perhaps that's the best kind of respect and approval. Just rough thoughts.

[K. Mitch Hodge]

I thought I would post this blog entry regarding experimental evidence as to how people view their own performance from both ends of the spectrum (those who learn from mistakes and those who do not). It is interesting, to say the least. I also like the addition of the Russell quote (one of my favorites) at the beginning.

http://www.spring.org.uk/2012/06/the-dunning-kruger-effect-why-the-incompetent-dont-know-theyre-incompetent.php

All the best,

Mitch