Impostor

Like most departments, our runs a series of seminar classes that graduate students, or a subset of them, are required to regularly attend. For example, the animal nutrition grad students meet weekly to read and discuss journal articles in our particular area. There are also monthly seminars for the dozen or so first- and second-year grad students with guest speakers telling us about useful resources on campus. While I don't necessarily need that information (for example, how to use PubMed to find useful peer reviewed articles, which I can do in my sleep), I am technically a "first-year" graduate student so I have to attend. Sometimes I learn something useful but most of the time I listen politely and try not to fidget or doze.

Our speaker this past Monday was from the Graduate Writing Center. I've used the more general services of the writing center that are not necessarily grad-student focused, and found them to be extremely helpful. Last summer, I took in the personal statement for my vet school application for them to review, and they made some extremely useful suggestions that without a doubt improved the document. I have recommended the Writing Center to other students and I was interested in hearing this particular speaker. 

That is, until he flopped out this question as the lead-off to his presentation: "Who in here feels like an impostor?"

I had to pick my jaw up off the table. 

"No, wait," he said, "no need to raise hands. I'll tell you that I certainly do. I know that we all do."

I know that we all do.

I came very close to walking out at that point. But that action would have reflected poorly on the two faculty members present (I couldn't have cared less about the opinion of the guest), and most of the students in the room would not have understood why I was leaving. 

If you spend years of your life studying some bit of scientific minutiae in detail, you damn well better become the world expert on that bit. If you feel like an impostor, you didn't achieve that. You, Mr. Guest Speaker, have now told me that you are not an expert in anything except perhaps self-denigration and low self-esteem. 

To tell a room full of young graduate students, still damp behind their ears from their undergraduate experiences, that "everyone feels like an impostor" is possibly the worst message that anyone could give them. That suggests that no matter how hard they study, no matter how many papers they read, no matter how hard they slave in the lab, no matter that they spent years learning how to navigate within a rigorous scientific field, no matter that they get a good job right out of school, it doesn't matter because they will never feel like they earned any of it.

That is complete and utter bullshit. 

Here is how I see it. When we speak as professionals, at a seminar or at a scientific conference, people come to hear us because they are interested in what we have to say. They don't come to tear us down or trip us up with sophistry or the throwing of rotten fruit. They may disagree with us but that's how science advances. We test ideas, we make observations, we talk about what it means, and we find ways to make a better test or different observations. 

I've had to give several presentations in the department during my time here. One student wrote on an evaluation that listening to me talk about my research "was like having a conversation with me"--and she studies bonding behavior in domestic cats and knows nothing about nutrition.

Just two days ago, I had another student ask me when my thesis defense was going to be (it is in four days) because she wanted to make sure she made time to attend. She said, you are always so confident when you speak. I'd like to be more like that. 

I thanked her for her kind words, then I said, there's no secret. People come to hear you speak because you are the expert in that particular piece of science. They want to learn more about it and they want to learn it from you. Confidence is about your attitude. Be confident in what you know but never be afraid to say "I don't know."

An impostor is someone who practices deception.

I am not an impostor.  

UPDATE: I've learned there is actually a thing called "impostor syndrome." This makes it even more important that shiny, new grad students aren't given this message.