Impostor Syndrome

Ever since I had children, I have dreaded the innocuous question, "What do you do?"

It bursts the damn and lets flood every doubt I have about the way I spend my time, the professional decisions and compromises I have made, and my sense of letting the world down.  I let that insecurity give the answer, flushing crimson and awkwardly trying to justify the hodgepodge of parenting and self-employment that has been my norm ever since I decided not to become a professor and ditched my PhD program in favor of the masters, and then, just weeks after graduation, was thrown into a year of heavy grieving.  It is way, way, way more than the poor wretch who inquired about my job ever wanted to know.

This year, I decided to ditch the baggage and stick to the simplest possible answer.

"I'm a personal tutor."  I say with a light, neutral tone and a little smile, as though it was the best idea I ever had.

In many ways, it was.  For the past several years, I have been able to earn just enough money by working very few hours doing something I truly enjoy.  Tutoring stretches my brain, keeping calculus and chemistry and physics nice and fresh all of the time.  It exposes me to interesting kids of all ages.  It gets me out of the house when I feel that being a toddler mom is going to drive me insane.  It's a fantastic job.

Seriously, not everybody can do this.

When I tell people I tutor (as opposed to vomiting my insecurity all over them for 15 minutes), they respond really well, and just seeing their positive response has helped to feed the sense that what I do really is good enough, and so am I.

I raised my prices.  I got even more clients.  I am absolutely booked solid.  It's great.

One day, out of the blue, I got a heads-up email from an old client.  She said that my student was now at a very good private school, and that she had passed along my name to them for a part-time math position they were looking to create.  A few interviews later, I was helping create a brand new teaching job for myself at this same fine school, and I've been working there two mornings a week as a supplemental math teacher ever since.  It's a fantastic job.  I have been helping with enrichment, remediation, and whatever else the core group of math teachers needs to do their job better.  I absolutely love it.

They have made me a job-offer for next year, and I think I'm going to take it.  Both of my children will be in school, and, once again, so will I.

The insecurity is still there.  I suggested the idea that, perhaps we should get an aupair to solve the end-of-the-school-day problem I'm going to have.  Hub looked at me and said,

"If we're going to get an aupair, then you should probably get a real job."

"This is a real job."  I reply.  "Teaching full time is a real job."

"You know what I mean."  He says.

In that moment, I finally understand.  I have that same voice in my head, the one that says that tutoring isn't a real job, teaching middle school math and science isn't a real job, but engineering is.  I finally understand that "real" isn't about real work or real meaning or filling a real need.  It's about the kind of work you can do when you are not a parent, or the kind of work you can do if you have a someone to run your home for you.  Traditionally speaking, what makes a job "real" is that it's a man's job.

I'm no man, but I do real work.  Feeding and bathing and clothing and raising my children is real work.  Helping the kids in the rich town next-door understand their homework and study for their tests is real work.  Passing mathematics along to the next generation of adolescent teenagers is real work.  Making the internet faster and safer (Hub's engineering) is real work.  It's ALL real work.

I'm working on living with that little nagging doubt.  I don't silence it.  I know to expect it, and I let it say its piece.  But I don't give any extra power anymore.  I just think, "Yes, I hear you."  And then I smile, and I say,

"I'm a middle school math teacher." As though this is the best idea I ever had.