Imposter syndrome

As a graduate student, I have become accustomed to introducing myself in an academic sense. When I was in Canada that went something like “Hey I’m from Newfoundland and I study Canadian literature because I love Canada so much”. Okay I never actually said that but I always found Canadian literature beautiful and moving. I still do.

Being a grad student in Scotland is a little different though, partly because I have been a grad student before. Now my introduction is “Hey I’m from Canada where I studied English, and now I’m studying museums”. Sometimes I feel weird admitting to people in my current program that I already have a master’s degree.  It feels like a betrayal of the “imposter syndrome” that most first year masters students go through together.  For those of you that don’t know- imposter syndrome is the persistent fear that you don’t belong. For me that was constantly checking my email for an email that said I was accepted by mistake. That never happened because I did belong, and I do belong in my masters program now.

I sometimes feel the imposter syndrome in a different sense in my museum studies program. I have gotten to the masters level in English literature with a specific academic mindset, and now I’m studying with people who have established themselves in the fields of anthropology and archeology. I learned that all UK students had to do a dissertation in their undergraduate degrees. That scares me little. They already know how to write a huge paper like that. In my degree I wrote a lot of long essays, but never took the thesis route. I haven’t had to read a novel yet in this current degree. I haven't had to analyze a line of poetry. That is different for me. 

I love doing something different though. I love being in the same university setting (albeit with more castle-like buildings) and studying something different. I love walking through the campus knowing that I am a postgraduate. I love talking with people who I probably wouldn’t have met had I not been open to studying something different in a different country. This isn’t a goodbye to my studies in English Literature. This is recognition that I can find academic thrill in something else and fulfill my longing for learning with something else.