I may not ‘look like’ a professor, but now I know I belong

From ScienceMag:

Minutes before my very first lecture to first-year undergraduates, I stood outside a locked lecture hall fumbling with my bag, trying to get in and set up before the students arrived. A passing staff member reassured me: “Don’t worry, you aren’t late. The professor will be here soon to set up the room.” Those words confirmed my worst fear: I did not look the part. Doing my best to keep a level voice, I replied, “I am the professor, could you please help me open the door?” This wasn’t the first time in my career I have been assumed to be less than what I am. But it was a pivotal moment, and it forced me to confront a question I had been avoiding: Why did I keep feeling I had to prove I belonged?

As a petite, 34-year-old Indian woman working at a U.K. university, I do not fit the usual archetype of authority. I am frequently mistaken for an undergraduate, a research assistant, or a Ph.D. student. At times, students or university security have simply called me “Miss.” Outside academia, I am fast approaching what is commonly labeled “advanced maternal age.” Inside it, I am treated as too young to possibly be an assistant professor.

For those of us women from the Global South who manage to gain a foothold in Western academia, getting there is only half the battle. Once there, we face barriers that are hard to name. Like many researchers, I negotiate insecurities about research outputs, teaching style, and contributions to my institution and the broader academic community. But I also spend energy proving I belong, energy others get to spend on the science itself.

In my first year, I said yes to extra lectures beyond my allocated workload because I believed doing more was the only way to justify being there. Somewhere along the way, I stopped waiting for others to underestimate me. I started to do it myself. I found myself constantly questioning my own legitimacy and calculating how much of myself I really could bring into the lecture hall, into meetings with students or new collaborators, or even to projects I lead.

When a late-arriving student at an orientation meeting asked, “Sorry, who are you exactly? Are you a Ph.D. student or something?” I was compelled to list my credentials (degrees across India, the United States, and the United Kingdom, and more than a decade of study), as if they could shield me from the assumptions already in the room. Although they seemed to silence the students’ doubts, they didn’t stop those in my own mind.

Now, approaching the end of my second year as an assistant professor, I have realized something unexpected: The real work is not convincing myself I belong, as though this were a confidence problem I could fix with enough willpower. Instead, the challenge is rewiring my own perspectives and my responses to the subtle and persistent messages telling me I’m not what a professor looks like. That includes unlearning my own reflexive responses to those messages, such as apologizing for my own presence, or preemptively using self-deprecating humor.

This takes a lot of vigilance. I have to keep reminding myself that belonging doesn’t need to be constantly earned. When in a recent administrative meeting someone asked whether I was a part-time staff member, I felt for an instant the familiar pull to justify or even apologize. But I caught myself before I acted on it. I said I was faculty and moved on.

Small gestures carry me forward. I keep a note of gratitude from a third-year student on my bedside table. The student wrote that they had not realized how powerful it was to have a mentor who looked like them. I now understand that my presence is not about my journey alone. It is about holding the door open for others.

When a senior colleague nominated me for a teaching excellence award last summer, my first instinct was that there must be some mistake. I am still fighting that reflex, but I am slowly making progress. Now, instead of rushing to justify my presence at the beginning of a lecture, I just set up my computer, look out at my students, and begin. Halfway through this year’s course, two students walked up to me and told me they loved my lectures. I thanked them, and this time, I let myself believe them.

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