Confessions

In which a reader, writer, and scholar meditates upon a few of his many flaws and mistakes

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Imposter syndrome is ubiquitous in my line of work, and this is especially true for medievalists. We look upon our bookshelves and ponder the apparently superhuman accomplishments of the scholars of yore: William Walter Skeat, Erich Auerbach, E. Talbot Donaldson, Carolyn Dinshaw (who is very much alive and kicking), etc., etc. These people were (and are) so dedicated to their fields and seemed to be able to command vast bibliographies and multiple languages. Working medievalists in modern regional universities, slogging away with their heavy course loads and administrative duties, contemplate these geniuses with the same sort of awe that the weekend tennis player contemplates Roger Federer’s backhand.

But surely we have our own accomplishments, right? We have jumped through all of the hoops that academia has set for us: graduate school, the dissertation, the job market, tenure, etc. But it doesn’t matter. We still sense these giant shadows and feel inadequate. Rather than hide these feelings and pretend to be something I’m not, however, I thought that it might be cathartic to write them down: the reasons I feel like an imposter. So here are a few (of many) of them: my flaws and mistakes as a reader, writer, and scholar.

I am not a good linguist

This is probably the biggest one. When you are in a Ph.D. program in medieval studies, you get the sense that everyone in the field has a perfect command of Latin, Old English, Old French, Middle High German, Gothic, Old Icelandic, various forms of Gaelic, Occitan, Greek, and all of the modern languages. They don’t, of course, but that’s what it feels like, and it also feels like we need to learn all of these languages in, like, the next six months, or we will be found out. Someone will ambush us with a pop quiz on Occitan pronouns, and if we fail, we will be cast into the outer darkness.

This is, of course, ridiculous. But for me, the feeling of linguistic inadequacy is even worse. Lord knows, I’ve tried. I have poured over grammars, glossaries, workbooks, and ancient texts my whole career in the hope that one day, it will all click. The results: I can puzzle things out in simple Latin; I can deal with Old English, with heavy help from the glossary; I am proficient with Chaucer and most Middle English. But my college French and German have long since left me. I have never come close to mastering Old Icelandic, despite my deep love for the sagas. I am married to a Spanish speaker, but I have learned mostly the expletives. It is simply not a talent that I possess, and this fills me with shame.

My reading holes

I have read a lot, but there are so many great books that I haven’t read that I need to read—as in, I should have read before I finished graduate school. For example, I’ve never read Dostoyevsky (though I have listened to an audiobook of The Brothers Karamazov; does that count?). And many of the books I have read have long faded from my memory. I can truthfully say that I read Moby Dick, but I read it in graduate school, more than thirty years ago, in about three days, and I remember almost nothing. There was a whale, right? Something about squeezing sperm? The same goes for Vanity Fair, Madame Bovary, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, and Absolom, Absolom. Read them; no memory of them.

I can’t finish writing projects

I have begun and abandoned multiple book projects. I have unfinished drafts of chapters going back twenty years. I get a good idea; I develop some momentum; I get about halfway through; and I completely lose the plot. I don’t know why. I go back and try to revive them, and they seem like gibberish. I currently have a book project that I’m working on, and I have a contract with a publisher. This time, I’m considerably more than halfway through, so I have some hope that I will finish this one. But the ghosts of abandoned manuscripts continue to haunt me and erode my confidence.

My reading for pleasure has dwindled to a sad paucity

I used to get lost in books, spending hours without realizing how much time has gone by. I used to look forward to rainy weekend days, so I could have an excuse to stay inside and read. Trips to the library and the bookstore were joyous anticipations of potential reading pleasure. It was, quite simply, my favorite thing to do.

This is no longer the case, and this fills me with despair. Yes, I still read—a lot. But I read books that I need to teach, taking notes, looking for things I need to emphasize in the classroom. And I do it in short increments, in the hour before class. And I read for my academic writing, and this is even worse, because the books that I used to read for pleasure now seem like work. I love Hilary Mantel’s writing, for example, but writing about her is making me sick and tired of Thomas Cromwell and that asshole Henry. It’s hard to remember what joy these books brought me when I first opened them. I’ve read through all of Patrick O’Brian’s novels multiple times with great pleasure, but now that I’m writing about him, it seems like a task I have to complete. It also makes my work seem incidental. These are such great books, I want to tell people: just read them. Why would you care what I have to say about them? Read their writing, not mine. (Clearly, I didn’t major in marketing.)

I used to read before bed—one of my favorite rituals—but now I watch inane YouTube videos. When I do take up a book on the nightstand, I’m asleep within twenty minutes.

It feels like a part of me has died, and I don’t know how to get it back.

AI makes me think that my job is now impossible and irrelevant

I don’t need to outline the reasons for this, do I? You know them, and I’m sick of talking about them. Most semesters, I have at least one upper-level undergraduate or graduate course that I can look forward to, but this fall I will be teaching general curriculum courses, and so I know that most of my time will be taken up dealing with AI. It makes me tired to think about, and I am dreading it. This isn’t what I signed up for.

I experimented with AI last summer, and it made my work harder, not easier

I hate to admit this, but this is, after all, a confession. Last summer, I decided to see what would happen if I integrated AI into my workflow—not to write any of my prose, but to help with feedback and organization. What a fucking disaster. It stripped away everything that was original about my work and set me back at least six months. I didn’t realize it at the time, but when you use it, you almost immediately develop a dependence, and you can’t see what is valuable and unique about your own voice and your own ideas. Now the whole episode fills me with shame and regret.

Ok, I have to stop now, or the self-loathing will click into high gear, and I won’t get anything done for the rest of the day. That’s only scratching the surface of what I need to confess, so perhaps there will be a part two at some point.

Thanks for reading, from my fancy internet confessional to yours.

Photo by Grant Whitty on Unsplash