Post-grad Paralysis

I’m experiencing this to a high degree.

I feel like I’m living in a weird in-between. There is no way to say this without sounding more like Holden Caufield than I’m comfortable with, but I have so many different possibilities in front of me that I’m feeling a mix of restlessness and melancholy. Mostly, I guess, I’m nervous about making mistakes, or about not being capable enough.

I watched colleagues graduate and enter the field with impressive titles (and salaries–though to be fair, any job that doesn’t pay by the hour seems really impressive to me), and I am working in a position that a high school student could get (and they do. I mean, I actually work with them). I have ideas about what I might want to do, but I worry, excessively, about so many components.

What if I apply to PhD programs, and they all decide that while I have a likable amount of moxie, the fact that I have virtually no research experience means that I’m sort of a bad bet?

What if I try to write a CV, and it ends up looking like this:

Nicole Lanphier

-Hard Try-er

What if I actually get accepted to a program, and then I don’t live up to it?

What if I get accepted, and find out that I’m capable of doing the work, but then it makes me part of a world that is so far from how I’ve always identified that I lose something in the process? A sense of self, a sense of connection, an approachability/relatablity? Something about staying in jobs that pay only a little, and require the same, makes me feel grounded in a comfortable familiarity. I’ve never had any desire to propel myself up the socioeconomic ladder–or if I have, it’s been fleeting. Belonging to academia seems to mean expulsion from wherever it is that I’ve inhabited so long.

And yet…

I can’t help but feel like if you have an idea for making the world easier for people, and that idea can be amplified by higher education, there is a social responsibility to get over your insecurities, and do whatever you can to actually make that idea a reality. So, tonight I’ll try my first pass at a CV.

I’m really impressed by everyone out there who hasn’t been startled into stillness by worry, insecurity, sheer vastness of opportunity/potential, and extreme impostor’s syndrome. Thank goodness you guys exist as role models and examples.