My Final Boss of Spring 2025

By Gabbi Figueroa

Over spring break, I found myself recounting over and over again how this PhD program “is definitely the hardest thing I have ever done, which I was hoping it would be!” with a huge smile on my face and building pressure in my chest. I know the pressure I feel is coming from the inside, because everyone around me continues to reassure me that I am doing well and have nothing to fear. Yet, I continue to fear that I may not be able to measure up to the expectations I have for myself.

As common as the imposter phenomenon is for graduate students and higher-level professions alike, what is going on here? Why is it that I can cognitively understand the specific ways I am doing well overall as a student, but continue to mount undue pressure onto my shoulders? 

I continue to grow in appreciation for the nuance within everyday psychological phenomena as I move through my social psychological training. I hope that my breakdown of what my imposter experience looks like for me might be able to help you start to tackle those inaccurate assumptions about your ability and competency. 

My initial ponderings of what form my feelings of being an imposter took included self-doubt, indecisiveness, nervousness, and a general strong belief that I am simply not “good enough” to tackle the challenges of everyday life as a graduate student. However, trying to remedy these feelings individually only led to temporary relief from the large overarching sense of inadequacy. What continued to push these thoughts into my mind? Where was the megaphone of disruption emanating from?

As an imaginative and visual person, I often imagine what the inside of my mind looks like. For many years now, I have characterized the inside of my mind as an office with cubicles and whiteboards organized in different arrays depending on the main thought being processed. (Think of the movie Inside Out combined with that one episode of SpongeBob where he forgets his name and must search through the file folders, classic episode!) By personalizing my mind in this way, I have been able to assess my own personal psychological intricacies with more concrete steps. 

Taking a closer look within my mind’s eye, amidst the filing cabinets and desks of imagined workers with my likeness is a version of myself walking the small hallways with a clipboard and a pen. This “Gabbi” is poised in a perfectly symmetrical outfit with a scowl in her eyes and a slight smile on her face while she calmly moves from desk to desk. This is my final boss. Quiet yet tactful in her approach to correcting small mistakes and standardizing those that are not up to perfection. The best description of her strategy begins with the lack of a megaphone. Due to the way I feel pushed back when I make a mistake, I assumed her style would be more intense. Contrastingly, my inner critic’s style of correction is quiet and consistent in a way that assumes her superiority to those completing their tasks. 

My final boss is my harsh inner critic that expects timely perfection, will not allow any room for error, and pushes the notion that we must always be improving. Little does she suspect, she is halting any ability for me to improve. In constant fear of correction from my own mind, I am held constant. Constant is safe, and consistent is predictable, but it is not the way I want to be as a graduate student. I seek to improve, grow, and push my own boundaries as I move through this program. 

By blocking out the kind reassuring voices outside of myself, my inner critic can control the outcomes of the work I do. No matter how well I do on any given assignment, talk, or conversation, my harsh inner critic marks areas of improvement without encouraging positive aspects of my abilities. The control my inner critic seeks is not meant for us as graduate students. Now is the time to learn, make mistakes, and understand the kinds of scientists we want to be in the future.

Now that I know what my final boss looks like, how do I even begin to disrupt her reign over my mind? Stay tuned for my next post on attempting to take the harshness out of my inner critic! In the next post I will go through what has been helping me foster a growth attitude by emphasizing the part I need to play in my own story that has been overrun by internalized expectations.