Imposter syndrome is widespread in academia. Resident blogger Ebba gives her perspective on what’s actually going on in those moments when you feel like what you’re saying is marking you out as a fraud, when you can’t make your way into an academic discussion, or plainly when you start to harbour a secret suspicion that you’re not smart enough to do a PhD.

Many of us have an underlying feeling of not being good enough. This belief is sometimes ‘activated’ in particularly vulnerable moments. I argue that feeling stupid is always a sign that you’re actually feeling something else. Below, I give some answers to the question ‘What does it really mean when I feel stupid?’, hoping that one or more answers will resonate with readers who experience this kind of intellectual vulnerability.

That you’re angry

If, say, during an academic talk you’re not given enough context by the speaker to understand their argument and end up not being able to ask questions or engage with them meaningfully, it would be strange not to feel at least a little frustrated. In many discussions taking place within academia, you’re unlikely to have a good enough understanding of topics outside of your field to suddenly offer an insightful question or comment, and if others don’t take the responsibility of giving you enough context to chime in, allow yourself to feel frustrated or even angry. In my experience, unprocessed anger often turns into embarrassment, self-doubt, and even shame.

That you’re smart

Feeling stupid can be a result of growing hyper-aware of what you don’t know. This is a valuable feature of your personality and a sign that you’re progressing in your PhD: an undergraduate-level student can get away with thinking that they’ve understood everything there is to know about an issue, but a researcher must be aware of the complex nature of knowledge. You know what you don’t know – just don’t forget all the knowledge you acquired in order to get to that state.

That you’re in the reading/archival phase

If your PhD currently involves reading other people’s ideas for a literature review or looking at the archival material that you will use for your PhD, you can’t be expected to have a fully fledged analysis of what you’re seeing or reading. When you come across people who harbour such expectations, it makes you feel insufficient. Be aware that their expectations are unrealistic.

That you’re with the right people

I believe in the saying ‘If you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room’. If people around you are introducing you to ideas you weren’t familiar with before, challenging your views, and not taking what you’re saying for granted, this is a luxury. Try to get yourself to feel lucky that in a world of lazy yay-sayers, you’ve come across some brilliant minds that will help you bring your own thinking further.

That you’ve been isolated for too long

After a week of working alone in my room, I always start to feel much more self-critical than I usually do. You sometimes need the company of people who care about you to feel grounded in the world and like you have something useful to say.

That your knowledge doesn’t fit neatly into traditional categories of scholarship

Some PhD projects (and students) are more intuitively understood than others by the majority of academics. You may be someone whose knowledge or learning style produces a lot of blank stares when you try to explain your project. This doesn’t say anything in particular about you or the quality of your project, just that others need more time to understand what you’re doing.

That someone benefits from you feeling stupid

The world is strange and counter-intuitive. Our online lives are ruled by an algorithm that thrives on making us want to change through the goods, services and ideas that we’re supposed to consume. Additionally, the economy is bad, unemployment is up (especially in academia), and young people are being told that if they just work ‘hard enough’, they can get exactly where they want to go without any structural changes taking place. Ideas of constant self-improvement and belief in the unlimited agency of the individual turn us all into hamsters running faithfully in our wheels because we’re promised we’ll get a treat at the end. Someone’s benefitting from you thinking that you have to try harder, that you’re not enough as you are – and the person benefitting is not you.