Last night I had a dream that I had agreed to be in a musical, which has not happened since I was voluntold to be the Big Bad Wolf in my third-grade class production of the Three Little Pigs. I was going to be a character called Eliza, and I thought it was all just going to be good fun. It started out as a laugh—just a few friends putting on a show and being silly. Then things began to escalate, as they tend to do in dreams. I realized I didn’t know the name of the production. I frantically ran around and asked person after person, “Wait, there’s a script?!” I had thought we were just goofing around! “We have to SING SONGS!? I don’t even know how they go!” I panicked and ran through a building that was now a huge performance hall, trying to find the stage. I was terrified because I had absolutely no clue how to follow through on what I committed to, but I knew the other people in the play were counting on me. They needed me.

Thankfully, because it was a dream, I could never find backstage or my fellow performers, and I never had to live through the embarrassment of walking on stage through an opening curtain and then staring blankly at hundreds of people, not knowing a line, not even knowing the melody.
I woke up laughing, but with tears in my eyes.

I have no plans to participate in musical theatre, but I am not unfamiliar with the feelings I experienced in that dream. I bet you aren’t either. Imposter syndrome seems to be just another part of graduate life, for better or worse. I was speaking with a peer from a different Ph.D. program about a year ago, trying to explain the way I felt. “In over my head;” “I have no idea what’s going on;” “I’m doing well and my committee has positive things to say, but I think they’re just being nice.” My friend asked if I had heard of imposter syndrome, and I replied that yes, of course I had. But I knew it was no syndrome for me. I genuinely never know what’s going on.

I felt, and sometimes still feel, that somehow over the years of my education that I haven’t really done anything. I have fooled professors and advisors and mentors into thinking that I’m smart or capable. I sometimes genuinely think that they feel so bad for me that they’re just nice so they don’t hurt my feelings. I look around and see so many scientists and researchers who look like they’ve got it. As if all my peers have had the ideal background, understand the material perfectly, and have years and years more experience than I do. I often tell people that I am “out of my depth” or “out of my wheelhouse,” and one day I took these concerns to a professor who was on my master’s committee and who is currently on my doctoral committee. This is a scientist who I greatly respect, who genuinely knows his stuff, and who has been in the game for quite some time; frankly, not someone who I thought would relate to me.

But I was wrong. He laughed lightly when I told him how I felt and confessed that he wished he could tell me these feelings will pass. He admitted that he still feels like an imposter sometimes, and he thinks that’s just the hallmark of someone trying to grow while being surrounded by people you aspire to be like. Apparently, for many people, imposter syndrome is a constant that you learn to live with, but also one that can drive you to become the best version of yourself.

I remember the conversation I had with my current principal investigator (PI) and advisor before she offered me the chance to do a Ph.D. with her. I told her, word for word, “I have virtually zero lab bench experience. I have pipetted before, but please don’t expect me to know how to do anything. I just really want to learn more.” I think, for me, this is a good approach to imposter syndrome. If these feelings are going to linger throughout my career, I am going to refine them and use them like the tool that they can be.
 
Because I was so honest with my PI about how little I knew, I have often been able to look back to that moment and think, “At least she knew what she was getting into.” Honestly, this thought alone has reminded me that I’m not a disappointment, and I don’t run the risk of my cover being blown, because she knew I had a lot to learn. She knew what she was getting when she got a graduate student. She didn’t hire a postdoc or another professor—she hired a student.

So now that the pressure is off, we can add something extra to our imposter syndrome. Instead of just thinking “I do not belong here,” I correct my thoughts to, “I don’t feel like I belong here, but I have a boss that hired me because she thinks I’m capable, and I will keep showing up!” Instead of “I don’t know anything,” I try to modify it to, “I don’t know much about this yet, but I am capable of learning!”

Academia is a slow process, and growth is often gradual, which can make it hard to recognize. But when I reflect on my career I can see that now, well into my fourth year, I do know more than I did when I started, or even than last year. I am able to discuss my research easily, I can teach a few lab techniques to new people, and I am further along than I was. I think it’s okay for us to recognize when we don’t know anything, as long as we can also:

1. Recognize when we do know something!
2. Decide that we are capable of growth and learning!
3. Remember that “feeling” like an imposter doesn’t make it true.

I still think it’s wild that I’m allowed to be a Ph.D. student, to conduct research and write about it, and to teach people. But everyone who has done these things before was new at some point and then just decided to persist and grow. So why shouldn’t we?

-Kalen Johnson

Kalen is a Doctoral student in the Department of Veterinary Physiology and Pharmacology.