Academics and self doubt

According to The Chronicle for Higher Education, self-doubt and the nagging suspicion that we got to where we are by bullshitting, not brains is rife in academica.

"By many accounts, academics — graduate students, junior professors, and even some full professors — relate to this only a little less than they relate to eye strain.

The idea quickly struck a chord with scholars from the working class, along with other beneficiaries of the social mobility that infused higher education in the 1960s and 1970s. Those new academics bristled at the old guard's sense of entitlement. But they found themselves crippled by a stubborn inability to feel the same. Meanwhile, scholars who came from academic legacies — the children of the old guard — had feelings of unearned privilege to contend with."

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