The Imposter

Its very common, so much so that it has a name--"Imposter Syndrome." Let me tell you my personal experience with it.

This grad school shit is hard....harder than I even thought. Before August, the last time I took a class was the spring of 2004. Anything I had learned from my basic Bio classes was mostly gone, and everything I had learned in my Biochem classes was toast. So, needless to say I was struggling a bit more than these 21 year olds in my classes that just graduated last semester with Chemistry minors (mine was History btw). Things that other people just breezed through, I was looking at like it was written in Aramaic. Tests that some people got 100% on I was failing.

So, I felt like I was pretending. Like I was playing a part, and people thought I was for real, but some day they were going to find out. My classmates would realize I was stupid and wouldn't want me in their study groups. My mentor would realize I wasn't going to make it and talk me into dropping out. Or, worse, I would just have to drop out because I failed everything. No one realized that I'm not supposed to be here! I can't be a real scientist! AGH!!!!

But, every once in a while something happens that makes me realize that firstly, I'm far from the only one feeling this way. I don't have the highest grades in the class, but I'm definitely not the worst off, and I'm probably right about average. There are things I understand much better than other people, just like there are things those same people understand more than me.

I'm not the only one with ridiculous acne from the stress, I'm not the only one losing sleep and accidentally napping during seminars. I'm not the only one trying to make excuses to get out of lab work so I can furiously work on my take home tests, and I'm definitely not the only one falling behind in my lab work.

Also...things happen that make me realize I am a real scientist. I just have to realize that I am a scientist in training. I'm not expected to be on my own yet. I'm just expected to be learning.

Anyway...I think I've started to ramble (blame the anxiety-induced sleeplessness). The point of all this is that I'm tres excited. I went to a seminar today by one of our collaborators from England. He's pretty famous for gene therapy trials in humans. I spent at least 6 months doing immunofluorescence on eye specimens that had been injected with his lab's vectors, and we published a great paper in which every single IF experiment was done by me. So, when I was introduced to him and he said that he remembered my name as the person with the "beautiful immunofluorescence imaging" I just about shit my pants with happiness (what, you don't crap when you're elated?). It was pretty much the proudest moment in my little scientific career. Maybe I'm not an imposter afterall...