Back-to-school impostor syndrome

Laetitia@Work #50

Hi everyone,

The French have the best word to describe the beginning of a new school year and all its associated rituals: la rentrée. It may be because there’s no other culture that treats August so broadly like a sabbatical month. French people accept that you can’t expect to get anything done in August. And they’re fine with it. A lot of people go on holiday and/or work less and all the children in the country are on holiday.

But the price to pay for this cherished yearly reprieve is extra anxiety and doubts when September comes. I used to experience this with particular force when I was a teacher getting ready for the beginning of the school year. EVERY year in late August I would have the same beginning-of-the-school-year nightmares. They marked the end of the holiday with clockwork precision.

These dreams, I found later, are quite common among teachers. For example, they find themselves half naked (or completely naked) in front of their students. (I would often dream that I only had panties and a t-shirt). Or you left your computer/pens/class preparations at home in a different bag and you must completely improvise your classes. Or you’re terribly late on your first day. Or you must pass the same exams as your students and find yourself incapable of it. 

There are many variants of the back-to-school nightmares. What’s funny is that you keep having them after years, even decades of teaching! And they’re not specific to teachers. Many professionals find themselves ridden with doubts about their skills and abilities to perform after the summer break. They wonder whether they can still do what they used to be able to do with ease before their break.

In this newsletter I’ll share a few thoughts about back-to-school impostor syndrome and its surprising virtues.👇💡

To teach or not to teach, that is not the question

After three or more improductive weeks, I always go through back-to-school impostor syndrome, even though I’m no longer a full-time teacher and there is no school to go back to. After I quit teaching 7 years ago, my back-to-school impostor syndrome started mutating and taking new shapes and forms. For example, I wonder whether I’ll still be able to write an article or speak before an audience. Am I going to be able to do it all over again? Can I still do what I did with relative ease a few weeks ago? Am I still the same person? Who is that (productive) person I used to be?

This summer I was determined to stop writing for a whole month after a year of (near-burnout) constant writing which included completing a book about the dangers of submitting yourself to the diktats of productivity 🤔 Without fail my body tells me September is fast approaching. And I have some of these doubts again.

This year I’m prolonging my holidays into September but the French rentrée continues to rub off on me. The novelty is that I find myself observing it from a distance with more amusement. And I’m more inclined to see its upsides…

👉 My new book (in 🇫🇷) deals with the many limits of productivity. You can order it online: En finir avec la productivité 📚

On the beauty of new beginnings

Like January, September is a month of new beginnings. So it makes you feel like a beginner. Beginners lack expertise and confidence but they embrace novelty with gusto. What if you could reframe back-to-school impostor syndrome as an opportunity to fuel your beginner’s mindset, do things differently and find sufficient distance to reassess your life and your work?

Last year, I was very impressed by Tom Vanderbilt’s book, Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning. I can’t resist the urge to give you this quote to ponder:

There is magic to the early stages. In the beginnings of a love affair, we are in what has been called an ‘extreme neurobiological stage’: the brain is jacked on a supersized hyper-caffeinated energy drink of dopamine and stress hormones . . . Learning a new skill is curiously similar. Your brain is in a state of hyperawareness, bathing in novelty . . . As you plunge into learning some art or skill, the world around you appears new and bursting with infinite horizons. (Tom Vanderbilt)

September (like January) is a period uniquely conducive to that fertile mindset. But to feel like a beginner, you must first feel like you don’t know anything. Here’s what I wrote about Vanderbilt’s Beginners (in this article):

The zero-to-one stage is fantastically fertile. The learning curve is steep because your progress is fastest at the very beginning. The gains made early on usually exceed those made in later stages. The steepness of the curve is closely associated with the embarrassing status of the beginner. “For most of us, the beginner stage is something to be gotten through as quickly as possible, like a socially awkward skin condition.”

This “awkward condition” of the beginner comes with open-mindedness and humility: when you know you don’t know, you’re open to novelty. Therefore there are many psychological and philosophical benefits to being a beginner. The author wants to encourage his readers to preserve, even cultivate, the “spirit of the novice: the naïve optimism, the hypervigilant alertness that comes with novelty and insecurity, the willingness to look foolish, and the permission to ask obvious questions.”

In this I see the value behind the insecurity and foolishness of back-to-school impostor syndrome, a fertile “hypervigilant alertness”. If you find yourself unable to do things the way you used to do them, then perhaps it means you're ready to innovate!

On the importance of seasonal rituals

We seem to have largely become out of touch with seasonality. Global warming is forcing us to pay more attention to seasons and climate. But by and large our consumer society has sought to erase seasons. And our modern work culture values continuous work. The industrial revolution made human work repetitive and reliable. Output was to be steady and even, the rhythm of work artificially dictated by machines.

There are many reasons to rediscover the virtues of seasonal rituals. Few of us are involved with harvesting but that doesn’t mean we can’t put seasonality back into our work. Creativity is seasonal. So is our strength. We’re sensitive to seasons and hormonal cycles. We’re not wired to work steadily and constantly.

So back-to-school impostor syndrome may not be such a bad thing after all! It reminds us of the seasonality of creativity. Before new beginnings there must be a period of insecurity. Our confidence is cyclical. Why not embrace it and invent new rituals to accompany it?

🌊🐎🏊‍♀️ Back to school in Bavaria is mid-September so I now have 2 extra weeks of workation. My son and I will enjoy a week of swimming and horse riding on France’s west coast…

📚 My book En finir avec la productivité was released in the spring. I’ve recorded several podcasts to discuss what’s in it, among which this one with Alison Taylor and Jerome Taggert: Power dynamics in the office (in English) 🎧 ; and this one with Anne-Laetitia Beraud (20 Minutes): Pourquoi la productivité, notion phare de l’économie et du travail, est-elle antiféministe ? (in French) 🎧

👩‍💻 Before the summer break, I reached a record number of 207 articles published in French on Welcome to the Jungle!!! and 87 articles published in English. Among the most recent pieces are: in 🇬🇧 The authority gap: why women are taken less seriously than men and in 🇫🇷 La falaise de verre : quand les femmes grimpent les échelons en temps de crise…

🎙️ Nouveau Départ, the podcast I launched 2 years ago with my partner Nicolas, will also begin a new season this September. Subscribe to receive in your inbox the first podcast of the new season (September 8)! We’ve got great new interviews and conversations in store for you! (all in French)

Miscellaneous

🇫🇮 Why So Many Women Relate To Sanna Marin, Kim Elsesser, Forbes, August 2022: “Female leaders who consume alcohol may face a gender double standard. While drinking alcohol is acceptable for men, women who imbibe are perceived as more masculine and may face backlash. One study found that even men and women who strongly believe in gender equality were more judgmental of women drinking than they were of men.”

🍼 Maternal Instinct Is a Myth That Men Created, Chelsea Conaboy, The New York Times, August 2022: “The notion that the selflessness and tenderness babies require is uniquely ingrained in the biology of women, ready to go at the flip of a switch, is a relatively modern — and pernicious — one. It was constructed over decades by men selling an image of what a mother should be, diverting our attention from what she actually is and calling it science.”

🇰🇷 Korea Shatters Its Own Record for World’s Lowest Fertility Rate, Sam Kim, Bloomberg, August 2022: “Korea is the world’s fastest-aging nation among economies with per capita GDP of at least $30,000, according to United Nations global population projections and World Bank data. By 2100, its population will fall by 53% to 24 million, up from a 43% decline forecast in 2019.”

Until next time, I wish you all a fertile September 🤗 Don’t let insecurity get the better of you 💪