Let Them Decide If You're Qualified
Other people will disqualify us enough without us disqualifying ourselves
Last November, I pitched a presentation for my university’s semiannual Learning and Teaching event.
At the end of each semester, the school’s head of teacher development moderates a series of presentations on innovative, inspiring, or proven teaching practices, delivered by faculty at the university.
I submitted a presentation concept about how the increasing prevalence of artificial intelligence in the classroom can be a net positive for students, but only if teachers respond by becoming more human, embracing more of the soft skills and intangibles that turn their classrooms into environments for learning. I called these “The Naive 9”: enthusiasm, passion, encouragement, inspiration, perspective, dissent, preference, community, and love.
My abstract was one of the four selected to be presented at the event. In terms of subject matter, it’s not hard to see why. AI is a massive conversation piece in higher education right now, as it is just about everywhere. It’s trendy, and timely, and the idea of teachers embracing their humanity likely resonated with the selection committee.
The problem?
I had no idea what the hell I was talking about.
Last June, I was hired to teach in the university’s arts department on the strength of what the academic world calls “industry equivalent experience.”
Basically, it means my professional background makes up for my lack of education or teaching experience. My time as a singer-songwriter and touring artist with Warner Bros. Records, as well as my later copywriting career, got me in the door.
The last time I set foot in a classroom as a student was my senior year of high school. I’ve never taken a college class of any kind, let alone one that would prepare me to be a teacher at a university.
But I love learning, and I love teaching, and I sent an audacious email to the arts department asking whether they’d be interested in hiring someone like me. It turns out that they were.
I have found that this concept of “industry equivalent experience” is either unknown or looked down upon among most of my peers. “I didn’t even know that was allowed” is a common refrain I hear. Also, “Can you even do that?” Or, more simply: “Seriously? You have no degree?”
I should point out that I’m what Australia calls a “sessional academic.” The closest equivalent in America is an “adjunct professor,” although that title comes with a bit more reverence than is given to sessionals like myself. It basically means I’m a gun-for-hire. I’m not on the full-time staff of the university, and I’m beholden to the shifting needs of each new semester. So far I’ve received a wonderful workload, and my teaching load has grown from one semester to the next. But that’s not a given, and it’s certainly not up to me. Each semester, my supervisors say “Here are the classes we’d like you to teach and have the budget for. Are you available?” And I say, “Yes, please, ma’am.”
I’m not tenured. I’m tenuous.
But despite my casual status, I’ve fallen in love with higher education, the university where I teach, and the job of teaching generally. It’s special to me. I care deeply about the work I’m doing.
And so when I saw the email requesting pitches from faculty to talk to about teaching with other people who love teaching, I got very excited. That very minute, I put together a paragraph-long abstract, titled it “A Person in the Room: Radically Human Teaching in the Era of AI,” and submitted it along with the question: “Are sessionals allowed to present at this event?”
Weeks passed, and I assumed I hadn’t been chosen. Then I got an email informing me that I had been chosen, with details about when I would be presenting.
It was at that moment that I thought to myself:
Uh-oh.
I started reading the abstracts from previous events. They had titles like “Decreasing the cognitive load of engineering students through preparative pre-laboratory online resources.” And “Psychological safety as an antecedent to student engagement.” Or “Online case based learning in pre-clinical medical education.”
And every single one, without exception, was presented by someone with “Dr.” at the beginning of their name.
I didn’t have a PhD. I didn’t have a Masters. I didn’t even have a Bachelor’s degree.
And I’d been a teacher for all of one semester.
I was now going to present a talk to several dozen PhDs and experts on pedagogy and educational design, with my data-less, untested, un-researched little idea that we should be a little more human in the classroom.
Then it would be opened up to a 15-minute Q&A.
I was going to get torn to pieces.
I very strongly considered withdrawing. Separate from the possibility of devastating embarrassment, I began to question the ethics of my even participating. I hadn’t misrepresented myself, or pretended I was anything more than a new sessional teacher. But was I inflating my legitimacy by even appearing as a speaker?
If someone was choking in a restaurant, and somebody ran over and pushed everyone out of the way and said, “Don’t worry, I’ve got this,” wouldn’t you make some assumptions about that person? Like they had some sort of training as a first responder or medical professional? If later they defended themselves by saying “Well I never said I knew what I was doing,” wouldn’t that ring a little hollow?
That was going through my head as I considered withdrawing. These were smart people, and they would see right through my lack of experience and qualitative claims, and they would proceed to eat me alive.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized I was right — and that was all the reason I needed to go forward.
These were smart people. They would see right through me if I presented ideas that were unproven, ineffective, or just plain factually wrong.
So I couldn’t do any harm.
I wasn’t going to hurt anybody if I gave a bad talk (except potentially my own reputation and pride.) At worst, I would be a forgettable blip that would be discounted by the more experienced audience. At best, I might bring a fresh perspective to the conversation about what it means to be a human teacher in an AI-occupied world.
So I gave the presentation.
Now, here’s where I have to resist diving into the event itself, and the response it received, and what came after. Because my message in this essay isn’t, “Follow your dreams and everything will always work out!”
It won’t always work out. That’s not the point.
A few months after my presentation, I applied for a job at the university for which I was wildly under qualified. I didn’t get it. Not even an interview. I was briefly disappointed, but not the least bit surprised.
The point is: don’t disqualify yourself. Not ever, not from anything.
That’s not your job. Your job is to push yourself, to go for it, to send audacious emails and ask for absurd opportunities. To believe in yourself despite all evidence suggesting you shouldn’t. Your job is to be your own love-blind grandmother, convinced of your own status as a precious little flower who’s just waiting for someone to see them the way you see yourself.
It’s everyone else’s job to decide whether you’re full of s***, or worth giving a shot.
But you’ll never know if you take on that role yourself. Every day, we tell ourselves that we aren’t qualified to think the thoughts we think, to dream the dreams we dream. We constantly disqualify ourselves.
Leave that up to them, out there.
In your head, you’re allowed to believe you can do something. Anything. And then go actually try it.
The worst they can say is “Hell no.”
Questions for the Comments
What did you go for despite feeling under-qualified?
Becoming a paid subscriber is just $5/month, and gives you access to the following features and content:
Audio versions of me reading each essay, for those who prefer listening to reading
One weekly Wednesday Recs issue with recommendations and links for books, music, other newsletters, and more
Exclusive download links for new songs I release in 2024, available only to paid subscribers of this newsletter
Discussions/hangouts in Threads
Occasional exclusive essays, announcements, and other perks only for paid subscribers
Access to the archives, including every post since the start of this newsletter
Beyond all this, you also help ensure that this newsletter continues and gets the time and attention required to make it (hopefully) worthwhile for readers like you.
Hell yeah. The only job i was ever “qualified” for was as army recruit at seventeen, half way through year 11 high school. Four (fascinating) years later I wrote to a university and said ‘Let me in - I’m a war hero’. I wasn’t - however they did say ‘Sure, just pass everything in your first year and we will let you keep going’. I did. I was never qualified for any subsequent job over the next forty years. The rest of my career(s) consisted of winging it. These included university administration, business communication, managing childcare programs, elearning “expert” (developed programs starting in 1999), contracts manager, indigenous vocational training, and others.
I had an enormous amount of fun, did interesting things and moved on when I saw something more interesting. The “native 9” were very much the underpinnings (even though I guess I never really thought about them like that).
Seventeen years ago I decamped from paid employment and have been wonderfully “rewired”. The current goal is to become a world famous artist (unqualified) and I guess this one is giving me much more fun than fortune.
I am not sure just what is going on there, but am aware that many of the people I have looked to for inspiration were not qualified, in the formal sense, for their roles. And some of the seriously qualified people I have met were never going to make my imagination pop.
I recently read an Atlantic interview with Chinese writer Yu Hua. His story embodies many of the ideas you discuss, and is a reminder that the road less traveled can take you to amazing places.