Friday, May 2, 2008

Can you keep a secret?

Over the many years that I have spent as a professional student, I have uncovered a few secrets that no one tells you. I’m sure there is a law against actually speaking about them, but I didn’t read the full handbook, so I’m just going to plead ignorance if anyone asks. I think the public has a right to know.

Secret #1: The first year of grad school is not about teaching you anything. Nor is it about evaluating what you know. Or at least, that’s not the most important part. The first year of graduate school is really about seeing if you have the stamina and the confidence necessary to call yourself an expert.

It is a lot of work and very little sleep. You get to juggle huge amounts of reading with paid work and huge amounts of insecurity. All with the knowledge of fixed and looming deadlines just ahead. And you think “I can do this” and “I can sleep next year.” But, you walk through that first year, or at least you stagger through that first year, thinking no one understands. Everyone else seems to have it together. And if you are me, that means one thing. Fake it so that no one knows you are the only fraud in your cohort.

Then, when I became a PhD student, I decided that I wanted to help that one fraud that comes along each year. I wanted to give them the much needed support and empathy that I didn’t feel like I got when I was an MA student. So, I started a group for MA students, a place where they could come and talk about their concerns, share their work and get to know each other. I tried to be as honest about all my insecurities as I could. I wanted to draw out that one person, like me, who always felt like a fraud. To my surprise, the ones who didn’t seem to feel that way were always in the minority. Secret # 2: you are not the only fraud. Secret #3: If you band together with all the other frauds, no one will ever catch on. Secret #4: Confidence is just another word for faking it.

I barely remember the second year of my MA. I think that somewhere between the end of the first year and graduation, I did some research, wrote and rewrote a thesis and stood up in front of the judges and a jury of my peers and defended the damn thing. It isn’t because it was easy that I don’t remember it. It is because it was so traumatic. Here I was, having just survived my first year of classes, and my realization that I was indeed a huge fraud, and suddenly my supervisor looks at me and says “Now you are the expert. Go out and make knowledge.” No pressure. Secret #5: A year of graduate school does not make you an expert at anything. You immediately realize that admitting this to anyone will discredit you and they will probably send you back to do Year One over again. You keep your mouth shut. It’s all about survival, I tell you. Secret #6: They won’t send you back. Ask lots of questions. In order to hide my secret identity (Super Fraud), I asked lots of people one question each in hopes that they wouldn’t talk to each other and they would each only think I had only small holes in my vast library of knowledge. Yeah, right.

Probably the most recent secret I have learned, I didn’t learn until I was working on my PhD. Secret #7: You are not alone. No one gives you a list of potential friends when you enter ‘The Program.’ But trust me, they are all around you. Secret #8: This isn’t a competition, folks. No matter what anyone tells you. Over the last few years, I have been fortunate to have a group of friends who, not unlike a support group, are not afraid to tell me the truth and to hold me accountable. I try to do the same for them. I think it has made us all better students and maybe even better people. And all it took was a lot of honesty and a willingness to disclose a few secrets.

1 comment:

jacks said...

truer words have never been spoken lovely. i think i actually heart being a super fraud. secrets are so scandalous and delicious. thanks for sharing and thanks for your honest appraisal of me and much else.