I found Wendy Pratt’s article insightful, but I fear it risks sending the wrong message (A moment that changed me: I quit my PhD – and left my severe impostor syndrome behind, 7 August). I am a PhD student (albeit in a science subject) at a prestigious university with a large international community. I grew up just 13 miles away from my university, yet I know very few other PhD students and academics who speak like me. It can be really jarring to be the only person in a room with my accent and to hear my own accent in a different way as I speak. However, I feel that university communities benefit from more diversity, not less, and I refuse to let my voice bother me.
Impostor syndrome is very common in academia. Having it is not a sign that there is something wrong with you. An effective way to live with it is to realise that it affects a large percentage of your colleagues and peers too. I strongly disagree with the idea that PhD study isn’t for people from working‑class backgrounds.
That said, it is clear that Pratt’s decision to drop out was a personal one, and partially motivated by financial circumstances. If it was more common for arts and humanities PhD students to receive a big enough stipend to support themselves financially (as those in science and engineering do), fewer people would need to drop out.
Gillian Smith
Edinburgh
• I am from a different generation, but I can sympathise with Wendy Pratt’s university quandaries. I was brought up in a Yorkshire working-class home, though one where education was valued. We were taught at junior school that nothing was beyond us if we worked hard, and also that the best in all forms of culture – in music, art, and literature – was all there for us to grasp, whatever our social class.
I was one of the fortunate ones who got to grammar school, though I was shocked to find that only about 5% of my fellow pupils were from a similar background to mine. Then, 52 years ago, I went “up” to Oxford, and fitted in pretty well, despite hanging on to my northern vowels.
I suppose I was glad to be somehow validated by my degrees, and have been fortunate to serve in a profession and calling that arguably puts one beyond class. Also, for most of my life I’ve been married to a person who shares many of my ideas about Christianity and socialism.
I’m not sure whether there is an authentic working-class culture, as most of it has been subsumed by a confected, meretricious popular culture that fills people’s lives without nourishing them. But beyond the ignorant haters and racists, manipulated by the rightwing press and even darker forces, most working people have an innate decency, which should be respected. I hope that the election of a sane government will herald a reversal in the widening gap between rich and poor, and lead to a more cohesive society, in which everyone’s life can be enriched.
Rev Geoffrey White
Sheffield
• One of the perceived symptoms of Wendy Pratt’s impostor syndrome – the recoil from changing her accent – is, in my view, unwarranted, since it’s actually a normal occurrence. Parents use it all the time with their babies and young children.
Among adults, “style-shifting” may be conscious or subconscious, and is simply one way some of us try to use to communicate and blend more harmoniously with whatever majority tribe we’re in at the moment. Once rationalised and reframed along these lines (as opposed to considering it false or unauthentic), it may help to ameliorate those negative thoughts.
Dr Chris Haughton
Preesall, Lancashire
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