OMG YES. And this has happened to me a ridiculous number of times. Because I’m female and short and young things I do are “cute” and sometimes people don’t take me seriously. This has been happening since early elementary school when I was the super-shy kid and teachers didn’t expect much out of me — then I would completely surprise them by getting the best scores in the classes on a regular basis. This isn’t such an issue in graduate school,as I do find that the professors in my department take me seriously (I’ve just had one incident where a fellow student didn’t, but I don’t have to deal with him on a regular basis, so it doesn’t concern me), but it sure as hell happens outside of academia. I’ve learned to adjust my language to counteract this to an extent, and when I can prove someone wrong it feels oh-so-good. It just shouldn’t be happening in the first place, because goddammit, I’m reasonably intelligent and competent and I respect the opinions and abilities of others.

Surely, nothing we say has merit in the Smarty Pants world, because uteruses block the absorption of Stunning Logicks.

That sentence is made of win. I’m sometimes stunned what people think of as logic. There are a lot of people who take their own opinions, place the label “logic” on them, and then skip over the whole “critical thinking” part. You know, the part that’s supposed to be such an important component of our education, and that every intelligent person should be able to do.

Mine is pretty mild, but it’s totally there. For the most part I know I’m smart and feel like academia is HOME. But, I wonder if it’ll get worse in grad school, where I’ve always reckoned all the geniuses hang out. I don’t consider myself a genius. Above average, certainly, but not genius. I just like to learn. And talk about learning and knowledge and ideas and thinking. And write. And stuff. I mean, look at my conversational writing… mostly goony… maybe the Smart People are just more pedantic? Who knows.

I have a pretty good general idea of how I got The Syndrome: people treating me like an idiot!!!! Even my own family are frequent culprits here. Now, not in the “brains” sense, in that they tend to overestimate me, they think I’m this super-genius brilliant person who knows everything in the world. But I had five or six years of being the baby before my lil’ sis came along, so everyone except the baby was used to treating me like the baby, and since my younger sister died a few short years ago they’ve been worse than ever at babying me, plus I lost the only one who looked up to me.

I also had the “luck” of getting a particularly bad team of classmates in terms of their bullying and social backbiting, and since this was small-town USA, I graduated with the same kids I played in the sandbox with. I was (cough, am) an odd one, didn’t really fit into any norm, and as such I was a frequent target for torment, which often came in the form of nobody ever took a damn thing I said seriously. Except the teachers, but how often do you hear anything from them compared to how often you hear from the kids? Coupled with that I was a “smart kid” so it was a real shock when I got to college where everyone was as smart as me and quite a few were “smarter”… LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, I AM NOT SPECIAL ANYMORE. STILL WEIRD, BUT NO LONGER SPECIAL. GROWING UP KIND OF SUCKS.

With nobody to take me seriously, and a real problem I had with the disturbing trend of pessimists and naysayers who call themselves “realists” (consequently, I believe true realists never identify themselves as such, and I bet they’re few and far between too… optimists don’t live in the “real world,” remember that– only bad exists! Good isn’t “real!”)… well, heck, why the fuck be serious? I took to being pretty silly. It started as a defense mechanism, but when I found out it was also fun and felt a lot better than being all gothic poet-y (which I had a tendency to be sometimes… still do when I’m in the mood for it but now it doesn’t last for days usually), THE SILLINESS ENSUED.

Now, when people don’t take me seriously when I’m talking to them, I start getting ridiculous and making with the jokes. And OH, MY GAWDS, does it ever piss them off. That’s satisfying to me in a sick way. I can be very passive-aggressive, because I’m a really passive person with a lot of anger! And one of the things I hate is being treated like I’m incompetent, or silly when I’m not being silly, or like I don’t know what I’m talking about concerning my own damn feelings and opinions, and I feel powerless against it… trust me, try to have a grown up conversation explaining why my views don’t need to be dismissed as completely idiotic, and I’LL just be dismissed as a fluffheaded kid, if it’s my family, or girl, if it’s my male friends, or sometimes even my boyfriend, who’s supposed to know better. And it’s funny how I keep ending up around people who treat me the same way my family does, and it makes me wonder if part of it is something I project or what, but come to think of it, all the friends I’ve had that weren’t my little core of awesomefriends treated me that way too… why does it take me so long to dump these people?! The thing that really cracks me up is that my family hates any time my boyfriends do that. HA HA THE IRONY.

And of course, lately I feel dopier than ever. I’m going through another “mindshift period” (I had one near the end of high school too, so maybe it has to do with big life changes). When I start going into “student of the universe mode” I question everything, and of course people around me take it upon themselves to answer, so then I become the know-nothing again. But let’s face it, there are more questions than answers. Generally, I tend to feel a lot freer when I don’t feel like I know everything. But most others seem more comfortable when they’ve taken a solid position on something.

Anyway, that got about as rambley as I figured. Imposter Syndrome, probable cause: Most of us here are WIMMINZ. Nobody takes us seriously. If we don’t say anything about our skills, nobody notices them. If we do, we’re bragging, pretentious, pedantic bitches. If we make a mistake, the world is there to rub our noses in it like people who still believe dinosaur wisdoms of dog training instead of modern behavioral theories. Surely, nothing we say has merit in the Smarty Pants world, because uteruses block the absorption of Stunning Logicks.

BTW, I hate the word “logic.” Especially because it mostly doesn’t mean what people seem to think it means. “Logic” is shorthand for “I don’t want to explore why I’m so adamantly terrified of or pissed off or disgusted with whatever you just said, and I need a way to explain this so things are your fault, or so I otherwise come out on top, and also, an excuse not to listen to you.”

People don’t know what weight looks like, period. See the BMI Project and try to guess the weights without looking at the numbers. Hell, my own father, who is a physician, guessed my weight at 125; I weigh 152. That’s a big difference at 5’4″. There’s this whole culture of certain numbers of weight being “officially bad” and it’s ridiculous.

And looking at living400lbs, I definitely wouldn’t have guessed you at 400lbs, like it sounds most people don’t. And it looks like a great blog — I’ll try to check back again!

Ah, grad school. I’m another one of the grad school people on here. I should be finishing my MA this term. I just have to finish my master’s paper.
RE: The GRE — It’s really not that big a deal. I get the impression that schools really just look for a decent score and that it’s not generally a dealbreaker either way. I studied for a few hours and ended up doing pretty well. I am still kind of weirded out that I pulled off a 780 on the math after not taking any math for 4 years (I took it my senior year of undergrad just to get it out of the way), though the percentile for that was only in the 80s (lots of people get perfect or near perfect scores in the math).

RE: Imposter Syndrome — AHHHHH! I’ve gotten better over the past two years of grad school, but it’s still a problem sometimes. I’ve begun to detach myself and do my own thing in regards to my own progress and my research, because if I don’t compare my accomplishments to those on a different trajectory (which really, in grad school, is everyone, because everyone is doing her own thing), I feel more confident about my work and seem to do better as well. I have a friend who has Impostor Syndrome FAR worse than I do, too, and I am so sad sometimes because she is brilliant and her professors tell her this, too, and she still has trouble seeing it.

Also, I think it’s really interesting and telling that Impostor Syndrome is far more common among women than among men. I think that women are taught to downplay their accomplishments and devalue their own work and that this plays a huge role in the development of Impostor Syndrome. Anyone else have any thoughts regarding this?

True that, @Becky. If they know me as a person, they assume I’m “normal” (whatever that means ;)

I wonder how much of that has to do with people just having no idea what 400 pounds looks like. The way you hear the number “400 pounds!” being thrown around, I think people imagine it as unfathomably huge rather than just… person sized.

And I know tenured professors who still have those kinds of feelings.

*headdesk*

DRST

Yes, it’s amazing how different folks wear their weight differently. If you’re wearing constricting clothing, that can have an affect too – my belly didn’t droop as much when I lived in jeans that fit tightly around my belly :)

I’ve been told, many, many, many, many times that I don’t look my weight and that I “wear it well”. I think it’s a bunch of things:
– I’m about 5’9″ in my usual sneakers
– Shoulders and hips are proportionate
– Boobs are proportionate to my shoulders and stand out from my belly
– Curly hair makes my head fit the shoulders better
– Decent posture (could be better)
– I’m generally comfortable moving around, not stiff

All that aside, I think the people who know me see me as a person they know, not “one of THOSE fatties”. And thus I must be “normal”.

http://shihtzustaff.wordpress.com/2008/08/28/the-inmates-have-taken-over-the-asylum-the-littlest-one/