Katlin Medjesky | May 19, 2026

Before we end this meeting, I just wanted to say that I see you.

Those words caught me off guard, and I knew that my face immediately mirrored the creeping realization of actual accomplishment and pride. My boss is not a communication expert, her boss is not a communication expert, and I do not work in a building of communication experts. I am the communication expert.

Her comment wasn’t affirmation. It was recognition, and it was unfamiliar. I needed to hear it. That moment exposed something I don’t often name out loud: despite being hired as the communication expert, I rarely feel like one.

What Imposter Syndrome Looks Like in Applied Communication

That gap between what I am and how I feel isn’t unique to me; it is a shared experience among applied communication practitioners. In the field, imposter syndrome often shows up not as insecurity about skill, but as uncertainty about legitimacy. It may show up when a role is to:

• reduce confusion without credit
• advise rather than decide
• sound confident while working with incomplete information
• make complex issues understandable without oversimplifying
• anticipate reactions rather than react to them
• manage trust as much as information

In the space where applied communication work lives, tension and confusion regarding roles are common. This is the intersection of what we’re trained to value and what the work actually requires.

Academic Training and the Markers of Expertise

In academia, communication is a discipline that is concerned with theory, method, and justification. We’re taught to explain why something works, to situate decisions within peer-reviewed literature, and to justify our findings through established frameworks so that arguments can be defended. Expertise can be marked by publications, conferences, and tenure.

This is intentional and necessary. Graduate programs prepare scholars to contribute to shared bodies of knowledge, to make claims that can be tested and debated, and to establish credibility through methods that can be examined and evaluated. In academic spaces, expertise is visible through citation, methodology, and the ability to reason in relation to existing scholarship.

Taking Theory Off Campus

Now imagine taking those principles off campus and into practice. The expert shifts from writing for journal articles and class lectures to drafting press releases and preparing for potential crises. Responsibility changes, too. Communication now has to work for a wide audience with diverse needs, where clarity matters more than citation. This is where decisions can’t wait for complete information, audiences don’t share disciplinary language, and the impact of communication is felt immediately.

Applied work asks the expert to rely on judgment, experience, and context in moments that don’t allow for perfect answers. It is shaped by timelines, organizational barriers, political realities, and audience needs. Audiences may never see the research informing a decision, but they experience the consequences of how that decision is communicated. This is the space where academic training and applied expectations intersect.

When the Signals of Expertise Change

Academic training and theory become a tool for practitioners. Evidence, ethics, and justification, the same principles that guide academic training, are still present, but they are translated, compressed, and adapted to fit real-world conditions. Theory and research support decision-making without needing to be named or displayed. Justification happens internally, even when it cannot be fully articulated outward.

This is where imposter syndrome takes hold for many communication practitioners. Not because the work is disconnected from discipline, or because research is absent, but because the familiar signals of expertise have changed. The work is still grounded in theory, ethics, and evidence, but those foundations are no longer publicly visible in the ways we were trained to recognize. It simply becomes harder to point to the work and say, this is expertise.

The In-Between Space

Imposter syndrome persists in applied communication work because practitioners are asked to hold two systems of value at once. Academic training teaches us to make knowledge visible. Applied work asks us to make understanding possible. Both are forms of expertise, but they are recognized differently.

Practitioners are not typically embedded in spaces with other communication experts. Their daily work unfolds alongside content specialists in their workplace, while their theoretical grounding remains largely unseen. When they return to communication spaces, the applied nature of their work can obscure the theory that informs it, leaving practitioners suspended between two worlds of expertise.

Occupying this space means translating work for multiple audiences, including organizational leadership and fellow communication professionals. It requires trusting judgment in the absence of certainty and recognizing competence when affirmation from leadership or the discipline is inconsistent or absent.

What Transfers

Overcoming imposter syndrome in applied work doesn’t mean erasing doubt or achieving constant confidence. It means learning to recognize expertise when it looks different from what we were taught to expect. The most transferable skill academia provides is not mastery of theory, but disciplined problem-solving. Academia teaches how to approach complex questions in an organized manner: how to define a problem, identify what information is needed, assess the quality of available evidence, and justify decisions within uncertainty.

This process often takes the form of formal research. Questions are refined through literature review, methods are selected, data is gathered and analyzed, and conclusions are presented within limitations. The structure is deliberate. It teaches rigor, accountability, and respect for evidence.

Applied communication work draws on the same habits of mind, even when the form looks different. Research becomes faster, more contextual, and more frequent. Instead of comprehensive literature reviews and controlled methods, practitioners rely on mixed sources: existing data, content expertise, community input, and real-time feedback. Instead of publishing findings, they apply them in real-time.

Redefining Expertise

What remains constant is discipline. Practitioners assess context, weigh constraints, anticipate consequences, and make reasoned decisions under uncertainty. This is not a departure from academic training; it is its most applied form. Research becomes a tool for action rather than an end in itself, supporting decisions that must function in the real world, not just hold up under review.

When expertise is understood as problem-solving rather than performance, applied communication work becomes easier to name as legitimate. The work may be non-linear. The outcomes may be invisible. But the thinking behind it is intentional, ethical, and informed.

Being Seen (Again)

Before we end this meeting, I just wanted to say that I see you.

Being seen, for me in that moment, was jarring because I have long felt pressure to separate “communication expert” into “communication academic” and “communication practitioner.” Her comment brought those two roles together in a way I hadn’t considered. She wasn’t validating a single deliverable. She was recognizing a form of expertise that often operates quietly, between decisions and audiences, research and reality.

That recognition didn’t create my expertise. It simply made visible what had been there all along. Working in applied communication means doing work that resists easy recognition. And yet, it is precisely where expertise lives, breathes, and does its work.

---