The Imposter Syndrome
“[T]he internal experience of… [having] a secret sense [you are] not as capable as others thought”.
Anecdotally, The Imposter Syndrome appears to be fairly rampant among academics. At some point during your career, possibly more than once, you will probably look at your peers and think to yourself, “I’m not as good as they are; I am not cut out for this.”
You can look at the accomplishments of those whom you admire and see nothing but a series of successes; you look at their CV and see page after page after page of amazing awards and scientific achievements. When I began my PhD I was struggling to write even a single scientific manuscript; I could not comprehend how anyone could have dozens, or even hundreds, of them.
To quote a more eloquent version of this: “The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.”
The reality is that hidden behind each success were an even greater number of failures. Therefore I have an entire section of my CV titled “Rejections and Failures” which notes every award for which I’ve applied or been nominated and lost, every grant or fellowship I did not receive, and noted how many times each paper I published was initially rejected by journal editors. One of my favorite papers was rejected from 13 journals before being published. Ultimately that paper opened countless doors for me.
So be aware of your limits but don’t let your under-informed perceptions of the world and of others cause you to overemphasize your failures and underemphasize your accomplishments. Talk about your failures and weaknesses. Embracing those things maximizes the probability that you maintain control over their narrative and psychological effects. Furthermore, by doing so, you ultimately reduce the effect of the impostor syndrome in others who look up to you, as they now have better knowledge and a more accurate model of your path to success.
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