I'm neck-deep in my busiest semester of the academic year and I opened my computer today to check mail and saw a calendar invite for "Professor Doug McAbee". I think I was having a moment because I looked at the words and lingered longer than usual.
That's me. "Professor". I'm a professor.
I've had this title officially now for 15 years and I still remember vividly the day I moved into my first academic office and saw that title and name printed on the room label. I couldn't believe I was finally a professor. An actual professor.
I was working full time as a graphic designer while earning my MFA. There were a lot of sacrifices during that time and a lot of worry too. I hoped to get a teaching job after graduation but there was so much uncertainty surrounding that idea. I lived in a county with at least 5 colleges and a couple of art departments but I already knew that those jobs were coveted and even if you waited around until someone died, there was a line of people waiting for that one job. I knew that if I got lucky and landed a good job, I'd almost certainly have to move and then there would be so much more change. I didn't like change. I didn't like new situations. I had a lot of fears and a lot of anxiety.
Some of that anxiety was about school. I saw myself as an average achiever from a small town. I did ok in college, but I was mostly taking classes I loved so it was easy to do the work. I knew I had artistic ability and I knew my professors were good. I was confident about that while in undergrad, but grad school seemed like a whole other thing. I didn't know a lot of people with graduate degrees. I would be the first in my immediate family to earn one and among my friends, only the religious, seminary ones were getting grad degrees and, just between us, I didn't even think that counted. No shade to the friends.
Grad school was going to be high level classes with professors who were experts. I was going to have to make an impressive body of work but I was also going to have to write a 20+ page thesis document to accompany the work. I'll just be honest with you here, I feared I wasn't smart enough to do it. I mean, I don't know that I wrote 20+ typed pages total in my entire K-12 and undergrad years.
In hindsight, making the work was difficult but not nearly as difficult as the writing. I can write you a funny story on command but writing in an academic style and citing physical references for all my points was not something I enjoyed or had any interest in beyond that thesis. In the way that worked for me, I put it off as long as I could, buckled down and wrote the bulk of it in a weekend (at the beach) and then spent a couple of months making it good enough to get the signatures of my committee members.
I couldn't believe it when it was over. I was thrilled. I graduated and was already teaching part time at that institution while continuing in my full time graphic design job. I immediately began applying for teaching jobs and waiting for someone to be interested in hiring me.
That lasted 7 more years. Every week I would scour the internet looking at a huge list of individual .edu websites for job postings. Every week I'd apply for the jobs I was even remotely qualified to do. This was back in the days of mailing actual applications too, so it was a bit of work.
I'm not sure if you can imagine what it's like to apply for a fairly specific type of job for a total of 8 years and month after month, year after year get zero interest. Every few weeks I'd get an email or sometimes a stamped letter with the word "unfortunately" in it. And those were the nice ones, many places weren't even organized enough to send you the rejection letter. 7 years of rejections.
This process was made a bit easier because I had a full time job. It would have been much worse if I hadn't had that. I feel sure I would have given up hope.
It was the struggle that made the success worth appreciating. I mean, can you even begin to imagine the hope and anxiety I felt when I got an interview? The weeks of waiting on the decision to be made. The happy dance I did when I got the job offer over the phone? The long, anxious wait between that offer and the contract arriving in the mail?
Even after signing the contract (and taking that cut in pay) I worried that the deal would somehow fall through before I arrived on campus to see that sign on my office with my name on it. I had an official email address and had been looped into so many email conversations about the upcoming academic year and still I worried. Was I smart enough? Could I really teach these classes at this level? Were they going to hate me at this new place? Where would I live? Where would my kids go to school? How do I act at the new faculty afternoon social?
Even when I saw the sign on my door, there was a voice in my head that corrected the sign and said that I wasn't a professor yet. I was technically "Assistant Professor". I didn't know if I'd be able to meet the requirements to be promoted to Associate Professor and eventually to Full Professor but that was still years away. I decided to focus on each year, each semester, each class as it came.
Slowly I discovered that "imposter syndrome" isn't really a thing. That feeling of wondering if you can really do it, if you're really an artist, if you're really a teacher, if you can really do the job...that's just called being human. The people who seem to just automatically assume they're smarter and more qualified than everyone else, those are the ones with a syndrome. They're not normal. They're also not smart. No shade. Ok, a little shade.
Good things may not come easy. I can assure you that they will not come without a ton of help from the people in your life. I can tell you stories about how many people who are not me are really responsible for me having this job. Knowing you persevered and knowing you had people to help you will make your eventual success more satisfying.
