Finishing Grad School, Taking Lessons from Our Kids

By Travis E. Ross. Until our son was born in November 2012—over Thanksgiving break, mercifully—going to graduate school was the most grown-up thing I had ever done. Up to that point, I thought of myself primarily as a student, albeit a graduate student, a modifier I emphasized by wearing collared shirts instead of hoodies on teaching days. Becoming a parent meant conceiving of myself in fundamentally different ways. First, I learned that the impostor syndrome that I shared with all graduate students had nothing on the impostor reality I experienced when we brought a newborn home from the hospital. More...