When I was a post-doc, there was an assistant professor who had just won a grant and her career seemed to be going in the right direction.
Around this time, I was seriously questioning if academia was the place for me, and I honestly felt a lot of impostor syndrome. This had nothing to do with the lab I was in. My Principal Investigator was accommodating and very personable. My co-workers in the lab were not problematic.
Yet, I still felt a deep sense of “Are they going to wake up and find out that Temple University School of Medicine awarded me this PhD on accident?! What am I even doing here? I’m no scientist! I only have five papers published. Nobody will take me seriously.”
It sounds funny and ridiculous now, but I struggled with this for a little while.
One day, over lunch, I was discussing with the assistant professor who had just won the grant and I discussed how I was feeling. To my amazement, she said, “You know. I still feel the same way sometimes.”
I’ll appreciate that moment of honesty forever. Every time self-doubt and impostor syndromes tries to creep up in my life, I remember this conversation and charge forward.
Here are 3 lessons on impostor syndrome I’ve learned since that day:
1 – You are probably doing better than you think.
2 – The people you esteem have their moments of self-doubt too.
3 – If you have gotten to where you are ethically, yes these thoughts might occur to you, but it’s important to not give them wings.
The Bold PhD Podcast
If you love biology and art, can you make a career out of that? Well, Veronica Falconieri Hays did, and on this week’s episode of The Bold PhD Podcast, I chat with Veronica about the exciting world of medical illustration as a career path in scientific communications.
Watch the interview on YouTube or listen on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.
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