PhD Lesson #1: Don’t be a chicken.
Don’t be a chicken.
I am learning that most academic people, despite the occasional genuine narcissist, are very self-conscious and full of complete, absolute self-doubt. I’ve heard it described as the “impostor syndrome.” I am no exception to this phenomenon. I think I’ve always had this problem, but finding out that a committee of worship-worthy academic professionals thought I am smart enough for the PhD pursuit caused all of my insecurities to amplify at least 100 times.
The Story:
So, the first paper I tried to write as an accepted (but not yet started) PhD student was a position paper to attend a CHI 2010 workshop—Critical Dialogue: Interaction, Experience and Cultural Theory. I really wanted to be at that workshop. My mentor gave me great feedback and was prodding me to keep moving on it and send her a draft. The paper was already officially going to be a late submission (but I had gotten permission via email of the workshop organizer). What did I do? Well, I procrastinated, wrote the paper, re-wrote the paper, re-re-wrote the paper, re-named the re-re-written paper, then, I hid. Yep, I was hiding like a chicken.
I was pretty sure the paper was total crap, and I had no idea what I was talking about. That was probably true… but after I came out of hiding and showed it to my mentor (way too late to submit the paper at all), she says something like, “This would have been a perfectly fine position paper to submit.” What!?
The Lesson:
Don’t be a chicken. If you have an idea, paper, draft, position, thought, or sketch, run it past your mentor or advisor or a colleague or a smart peer. Test it out, talk about it. Oh brace yourself, it’s probably not as crappy as you think. Granted, most people you talk to could probably find something wrong with your idea or argument, but that’s a good thing. Now you know what to address to make it stronger.
I’m not suggesting that you will never have a genuinely crappy idea; you probably will. I know I have some and will have many more to come. I am saying that you will chicken out and write off some perfectly fantastic work. Prevent that sad possibility by not being such a chicken.
About The Author
Samantha
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Author websitehttp://www.samanthamerritt.com/blog/about/
Sam, great advice and an even better discovery.
I have yet to reach this point in my grad school career. Instead, I have had the opposite experience: being faced with the possibilty that I might not get to do what I love after all, causing me to examine myself very closely. I realized that I don’t really have anything extraordinarily good that defines me. The jury is still out on whether that is a good thing.
However, I am still very grateful for your assuring words, especially since I know you and how you really do work in person. (How did I work? I don’t even feel like I did much in undergrad, like I did the bare minimum to meet my standards and that was all.)
I look forward to hearing more of your brain drops!
Thanks so much for sharing this story, Sam! It is inspiring to read something so honest. Even though we’re students practicing in this “safe” environment, it’s hard to remember it’s okay if we don’t get it right the first time.
The most memorable lesson I learned about imposter syndrome, (and this was at Grace Hopper, which I highly highly recommend attending if you have the chance!) is that you never really overcome it. You have to learn to work through it, embrace it, accept it. Those super awesome women we admire? They deal with it, too.
And the best medicine is to hear how super awesome women like you work through it.
Thanks, doc!