Authenticity in academia is a big topic. A google search brings up millions of results, including peer-reviewed papers. So, this will be the first of probably several posts on the issue. I’ll start with the personal challenge.

When are you most authentically you? is my third blogpost on the topic. Let me know in its google survey form!

Yesterday, in my personal blog (neither research nor horses!), I talked about my cousin Heidi Jandel‘s Authenticity challenge: “Each day ask yourself how you can show up more authentically in one small area of life that day.” In my blog, I pointed out that the True Challenge of Authenticity was not expressing your authentic self, but rather knowing who that self was. What does authenticity look like, really?

Defining authenticity is a matter for philosophers (Varga & Guignon, 2014, in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, on the topic). I might get into that later. For the moment, I’ll provide a basic definition that I believe reflects what my cousin is getting at. Authenticity consists in acting in accordance with one’s innermost desires, goals, and motivations. To act authentically, one must express one’s true self.

How did I show up more authentically in one small area of life today?

Because this is my research blog, I’m going to rephrase that: How did I show up more authentically in my academic life today? Or perhaps I should say, In what way was I more true to my academic self today?

No, that’s wrong. The idea is that my innermost self, the me behind and beyond all the “areas” of my life, show up in my academic life. Because who’s to say that my academic self is authentic at all… Or anyway, that it’s more authentic than my horse-self or writer-self. I’m not saying it isn’t. Just that I don’t know. And I don’t think that’s Heidi’s point.

Today was a good day to consider whether I showed up authentically in my academic life. I met with Dr. Jen Barnes, my supervisor and, once upon a recent time, dissertation chair. We talked about the many research projects we are working on. Because I am leaving in May, we need to wrap them up. Or try to… it’s not going to happen. As I have said many times, if I lived in a shack on the beach for the rest of my life starting in May, I could publish two papers a year for the next two decades. Without collecting any more data.

Jen said something like “That sounds like heaven to me!” It does to me too.

To get to this point, that we could both honestly say that it would be not only acceptable but great for me to do something that wasn’t a tenure-track job (in a leading research institution), was a triumph of authenticity. Because that job, for someone as focused on research as I have been, is the ultimate goal in academia. To admit that I would be happy not doing it–and for Jen to show it was fine with her too–we had to get past a lot of assumptions. The main one being that success in academia = tenure and research. (Alex Danvers on success in academia)

So yes, I think that counts. I showed up authentically when I admitted that I’d be happy not doing research.

Is this authentic?

Don’t get me wrong–I love research! I will really miss it if I do completely leave academia, even if I can and will be writing up existing data for 20 years. But my happiness does not depend on it. There’s a big part of me that would prefer to write novels and ride horses. In fact, if I could choose between publishing fiction and publishing academic papers, I’d choose fiction every day of the week. Maybe some day I will be brave enough to try that.

The authenticity comes in because it is not easy for someone successfully “doing academia” to admit that they could be happy outside of it. Yes, I am successfully “doing academia” as long as you don’t think too hard about my failure to find a tenure-track position. But that’s probably entirely my fault and not on topic… Well. Unless it’s the authentic me that refuses to jump through the necessary hoops.

Why authenticity may make success in academia difficult

The short list as regards the personal: Why showing up authentically–if this means revealing your inner self–can be problematic.

1. To be a good academic, you have to be aware of your biases and you have to combat them. Your biases are (arguably) part of the authentic you. For this very reason, they color the way you interpret information. They determine the questions you ask (and in turn, the answers you receive). But good science demands impartiality, and the effort to introduce as little bias into research design as possible.
2. You might not be able to study what the authentic you wants to study. Starting in grad school, you will need to carry out research that is in line with your supervisor’s area of expertise. If you are lucky (I was very lucky), your supervisor will let you choose what hypotheses to test and how to do so. But to be effective they must be knowledgeable enough on the topic to give good advice. Ideally, you will have targeted a potential advisor whose interests aligned with yours when you applied to grad school. However, your focus may change, or you may become passionate about an entirely new subject. (see my post on Expertise and Risk-Taking in Grad School)
3. When it comes to getting a job, you probably won’t be able to live where the authentic you wants to live. This is my main problem. I’d rather live in California, near my family, than live in most other States. I’d rather live in the country or within easy access. Oh, and I’d rather have horses… you can see my problem here.
4. You most definitely have to respect diversity in all forms. (That means political diversity too, social psychologists!) Hopefully you already do, but you may find yourself being more tolerant than you would like. The Institute for the Study of Human Flourishing had a great book discussion last fall on the limits of civility. With Amy Olberding’s The Wrong of Rudeness as a starting point, we discussed how difficult it was to know when incivility was not only justified but morally required. Classrooms can put you to the test.
5. We won’t touch on issues of cultural appropriation, trigger warnings, and hypersensitivity. Not now.

The very personal?

1. When I was doing interviews (and failing to get hired), I was told that I should dye my hair. Yeah, it’s got some grey in it. Mostly resulting from my first tenure-track job hunt season (coinciding with dissertation completion). Ageism is a thing… not that search committees are necessarily purposefully ageist. But they might take grey hair as a sign of less flexibility and willingness to adapt to their department. They might calculate return on the investment of hiring in years till retirement.
   But I do not dye my hair. Period. I’d rather work in Starbucks.
2. We won’t talk about business suits and lipstick. Thankfully, academia is somewhat flexible when it comes to clothing. And lipstick is so traditional gender roles.
3. And then there is ambition. I find I do not have enough of it. Oh, I love to do research and I’ve published a lot in a short time. But I don’t feel competitive about it.
   Of course, I feel this way about all possible jobs. Except writing.

When it comes down to it, I guess academia is not so very different as far as personal authenticity goes…

With the exception of the need to really watch your biases, and be very careful with diversity, I suppose authenticity in academia at the personal level is not so very different. Authenticity–meaning acting in accordance with your innermost self–is a privilege. Mostly, in all occupations and even hobbies, we have to suppress parts of our inner selves for the good of smooth interpersonal relations. In some ways, academia allows you to be more authentic. You have a flexible schedule. You have access to a world of knowledge. If you get tenure, you have great freedom to investigate all those questions your authentic self wonders about.

And yet… it is a challenge to “show up authentically” in the academic area of my life. Perhaps because it is by no means a “small” area. For me, and I suspect for most academics, academia is most of life. That’s potentially a real problem.

What about impostor syndrome?

Impostor syndrome, or the feeling that you are not capable of fulfilling your duties or meeting the expectations of those around you, is common in academia. Many if not most doctoral students will feel like a fraud at some point. It’s a common topic at most academic conferences. I suppose it is intimately connected to authenticity. Perceptions of the authentic you–wrong or right–will determine the extent to which you experience impostor syndrome.

My own occasional feelings of impostor syndrome haven’t usually had to do with any doubt about my abilities. Well.. at least not my abilities to do research, write, or teach. I can do all that. And yet, I have often felt like I didn’t belong at academic conferences. I hate networking. Sometimes I find myself thinking the topics of symposia are meaningless and silly (sometimes they are). Often I feel a sort of psychological reactance to talking the talk, dancing the dance, jumping through the hoops. Then I feel like I’ve been an impostor these last several years. I’ve led everyone to believe that I am an academic at heart, whereas really…. I just want to ride horses, write books, be in the mountains, and drink wine and eat cheese. Or beer and cheese. Or margaritas and tacos.