According to Sarah Burnside, the contemporary world of writing has made a shift from writing essays to pieces or thinkpieces. Rather than tangle with the pressure of an essay--which seems to require the need to prove something about the world--writers are relying on the term "piece" to denote critical essays written for online webpages, news, and media sources. This jives with what Anne Helen Peterson writes in her article "Leaving Academia for Buzzfeed-6 months later". She went from writing peer reviewed articles in journals locked behind a pay wall to writing just as thoroughly researched pieces for Buzzfeed.
No wonder so many of us have imposter syndrome.
Despite being perfectly competent, even exceptionally competent our work itself is not enough to get us positions. So the work itself can cease to be fun and exciting as it is eclipsed by the anxiety of the need to prove ourselves to be worthy of titles like "essay", "doctor", and "professor." I like the switch to pieces. I hope to produce many and more as I continue to engage with ideas. I hope to continue working and interacting with both the academic and the outside worlds. So I upload this thinkpiece.
Peterson writes "I'm good at not being an academic because I spent so much time trying to be one." The skills that Peterson honed while working as an academic became the very things which make her perfectly suited to write pieces; the icing on the cake being that rather than try to prove herself through a lengthy interview process at a university, her existing work was more than enough to get her hired at buzzfeed.
It's a novel idea--to be hired because your work is excellent, especially in academic circles. The politicking, personality tests, resume combs, and pool of potential applicants are daunting even without the excruciating interview process. The relief of being hired because someone is not only familiar with your work but wants you to continue that work is quite astonishing to me. As a fourth year PhD candidate, I have been browsing the job market and dipping my toes in. It feels like a cold and impenetrable world in which employers overask on their job postings as if they want to discourage the rabble--the thousands of us who are looking and needing full time employment to pay off our loans. The fact that we have accomplished a dissertation is no longer enough--experience, publication, broad areas of expertise, commitment, and general messiah-hood are all in the asking.
No wonder so many of us have imposter syndrome.
Despite being perfectly competent, even exceptionally competent our work itself is not enough to get us positions. So the work itself can cease to be fun and exciting as it is eclipsed by the anxiety of the need to prove ourselves to be worthy of titles like "essay", "doctor", and "professor." I like the switch to pieces. I hope to produce many and more as I continue to engage with ideas. I hope to continue working and interacting with both the academic and the outside worlds. So I upload this thinkpiece.
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