by Korey Tillman
Five years ago, I was in an airport resting my feet on my guitar
case when a man walked by and asked, “Oh so you play?” I responded, “Yeah, I’m
just a novice.” Without hesitation the man sternly replied, “No you are
a novice.” From this brief exchange, I learned the impact of “just,” a simple
four-letter word.
Higher education revealed to me how harmful that impact could be during
the first year of my PhD program in sociology. In a closed door meeting with
prospective graduate students, a member of my cohort pointed to me and said,
“he’s just a master’s student,” before continuing to tell the group that
the reason I was able to contribute to seminars at my level of sophistication
was due to me reading a sociology 101 textbook the summer before entering the
program. The word “just” relegated me to a less-than status because of my
matriculation as a bachelor’s to PhD student, while simultaneously attributing
my intellectual abilities in graduate-level seminars to a single undergraduate
textbook.
Impostor syndrome is a product of how we understand ourselves
within spaces that continually encourage self-doubt, and cultivate interactions
that deny our self-worth. To challenge impostor syndrome and reshape how
scholars come to understand themselves and support each other, colleagues and I
are employing another simple four-letter word: love.
My greatest accomplishment was having a community who loved me
before I knew what love was—impostor syndrome disrupts your connection from
such a community. #SocAF, a double entendre meaning “Sociology Affirmations” or
“Sociology as Fuck,” is a Twitter-based movement to change how scholars come to
understand themselves in the field of sociology and academia broadly. Our aim
is to problematize and eliminate the idea of impostor syndrome, moving from a
deficit model of understanding ourselves and our scholarship, to a model of
self-love and communal affirmation.
There is no ideal sociologist or definition of success, yet the
culture of academia causes scholars to compare themselves to fictitious
standards, prompting feelings of inadequacy. The inimical wave of impostor
syndrome has washed over our discipline, only to recede and leave scholars
soaked with self-doubt and adverse mental-health effects. Faculty and graduate
students of color, who already wade through the marginalizing waters of
structural oppression and microaggressions, stand at the shoreline of their
careers with an incessant hesitation to set sail. Below, I outline the
objectives that guide our group as we navigate this movement to reconceptualize
our self-worth outside of an ivory tower buttressed by American Individualism
and painted with faded notions of meritocracy.
Deconstruct
the myth of the ideal type. If I was to ask scholars to entertain the question:
who is the greatest sociologist of all time? The debate would be longer than
the itemized budgets our departments request before conference travel. By
emphasizing success as amorphous, personal, and achievable, we begin to set
realistic expectations that assert our agency within the context of a publish
or perish paradigm.
Uplift non-traditional “wins.”
In our view, if a student gives you a compliment on your teaching, that is
equally as important as receiving an NSF or Ford fellowship. Prestigious awards
and accomplishments rest upon a zero-sum logic, promoting winners and losers.
Yes, receiving support for your research is great, yet in order to combat the
hierarchical logic of achievements, we must laud the everyday progress.
Especially during these precarious and daunting times of COVID-19, to clear
your inbox or to move that blinking cursor of Microsoft Word forward with
conviction is no small feat—let’s not treat it as such.
Reclaim our positionality. We
all have a story and sometimes those stories connect and guide us to engage in
fascinating research. I use my lived experience as a Black man raised in a
community flattened by mass incarceration to build abolitionist research
projects within the sub-field of radical criminology. Instead of shying away
from our embodied experiences, we can learn a lesson from women of color
feminists, and leverage those experiences while committing rigorous and
meaningful research.
The possible impact of #SocAF is immense. We envision the ivory
tower rebuilt with the “love ethic” expressed by bell hooks. We anticipate the
release of marginalized scholars from the shorelines of hesitation, to navigate
the uncharted waters of intellectual innovation and healthy productivity. We
foresee transformation.
Every Wednesday on Twitter from 1pm – 3pm EDT, our base of
scholars convene to post about their accomplishments from the previous week and
to uplift the accomplishments of others using the hashtag #SocAF. Below we have
placed our Twitter handles in hopes that you will join us in changing the
discipline, and academia at large, by demonstrating to someone else the impact
of a simple four-letter word.
The #SocAF
Collective
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