PhD Journey: Week 11

It’s the last week of term, and the first three months of my PhD journey has absolutely whipped by. If I’m honest I’m still trying to find my feet, but I think I’m doing more right than wrong and my supervisors are happy with progress, so I’m not going to worry too much about something that I’m starting to understand for the first time:

Imposter Syndrome

Lots of businesspeople that I’ve worked with over the years have talked about imposter syndrome as something that holds them back and I’ve never really been able to relate. Maybe that’s an indication I haven’t pushed myself hard enough, or that I’ve just been very lucky with the situations I’ve found myself in. Or that I’m just really comfortable at bullshitting my way through things!

Neil Gaiman talks about being ‘convinced that there would be a knock on the door, and a man with a clipboard (I don’t know why he carried a clipboard, in my head, but he did) would be there, to tell me it was all over, and they had caught up with me, and now I would have to go and get a real job’ and I think that’s a variation of what I’m feeling as I get more into research — that maybe the knock on the door has happened and I didn’t notice, and now I’m in a real job all of a sudden! In actual fact I’m sure this is just a period of adjustment to, for the first time in over a decade, being accountable to someone other than myself.

Mike Cannon-Brookes (Atlassian founder) uses that Neil Gaiman quote in his TED talk about imposter syndrome (https://www.ted.com/talks/mike_cannon_brookes_how_you_can_use_impostor_syndrome_to_your_benefit?language=en), which I think was just enough of a pep-talk to get me over my first little dose of imposter syndrome. He talks about getting some great advice, which I’m going to add to my little list of inspirational quotes.

“You’re probably doing something right. Just keep going.”