What Are You An Expert In?

I love the Salon column Broadsheet. It's a pop-feminist blog, essentially, which covers a wide range of subjects and restricts its outrage to the bare minimum.

Earlier this week, Bay Area journalist Katherine Mieszkowski posted about a project a woman journalist started to teach women to write opinion pieces, because there are fewer female bylines in the Op-Ed sections of major newspapers than there are women representatives in our government. That's pretty sad.

Part of the problem is that women are socialized not to promote their own accomplishments.

• At a recent seminar in San Francisco, Lynne Dory, who has worked as an administrator at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab for 14 years, said, "Oh, I don't really feel like I'm the expert in anything." Other distinguished women listed their biggest accomplishments, like testifying before the Food and Drug Administration or heading a research foundation, last because they didn't want to "brag." Orenstein attests that she hears the same caveats from highly credentialed, accomplished women in every class.

So, the best part is that Mieszkowski ended the post by asking readers to write what they are experts in in the comments. You can read those amazing comments here.

As for me, I'm an expert in: Asian American issues, multiracial issues, creative writing, blogging, fundraising databases,  community arts administration ... argh! this is hard! I'm cringing already! I almost put "expert" in scarequotes and had to restrict myself to italicizing it.

What are you an expert in? And no fudging!