Surviving the first week of my PhD program with imposter syndrome

“There’s gonna come a time in your first semester where you feel like you don’t belong here. But remember that you’re here for a reason, and you’ll be fine.” This was the advice my new lab-mate gave me when I begged her for her biggest piece of first-year advice. And I’m so happy she told me this prior to classes starting.

A little bit of background on me: I’m a female first-year doctoral student in a psychology PhD program. Like the other writer on this blog*, I’d like to maintain anonymity for some obvious reasons and so I can differentiate myself from her, you can just refer to me as second author. She offered her blog as a way for me to get some of my feelings/thoughts out there and I figured that: a) I’m not the only first year doctoral student trying to figure things out and b) maybe potential doctoral students want the perspective of a newbie to inform them in real-time, what my feelings are like.

I just finished my first full week of being a grad student and, like a good millennial, I’ll be giving you a glimpse of it in meme** form.

My time in grad school started a lot like undergrad in the sense that there were LOTS of orientations. However, that is exactly where the similarities end. I feel like I’ve been tossed in the water with the instruction of, “Your application looked the best at the propensity to learn how to swim! Good luck!”

I think it’s important to note that everyone’s advisor is different. Other students in my cohort have an advisor who hasn’t even met with them yet. However, I’ve been meeting with my advisor regularly for 3 weeks (starting prior to classes starting). It’s also important to note that unlike most grad students, I’m starting my grad career not by “teaching-assisting” (TAing) but as a research assistant (RAing).

It’s been approximately 2 years since I’ve done my own research projects, and all of a sudden the world is my oyster. Come up with a study! Here’s some data, analyze it! Oh, by the way, here are your abstract deadlines for the next couple of months! And here’s an undergrad student I want you to teach how to do analyses. And here’s a 500-page book for you to read for next week! And this is not for my classes, this is just my personal research time.

By Friday, when we had a meeting to go over the landscape of the next 5 years of classes and research, I felt completely overwhelmed and the little voice in my head got louder.

You don’t belong here. You aren’t this smart. You will flounder. You aren’t as good as your application says. Your advisor probably thinks they made a mistake. You’re already disappointing them.

Thank god my wonderful lab-mate organized a happy-hour with all of the grad students in my department the Friday of my first week. They all have been so welcoming to me in my first week, and when I shared with them my overwhelmed-ness, they listened and then smiled, and all had the same thing to say: “You will be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiine.”

Which takes me back to the opening quote my lab-mate told me, before I even started. She, and all of the other PhD students assured me that this is a completely normal feeling. That we all are so smart we begin to wonder about how we could possibly be in the same place as the person beside us. And the reality is only 1-2% of the U.S. population have PhDs, so we are few and far between.

Instead of doubting myself and feeling defeated, I need to keep my chin up. I was chosen out of hundreds of applications for a reason. And it’s because the faculty believed in me, and it’s my job to prove them right.

The next 5 years are going to be hard, agonizing, and sleepless. I will most definitely cry in the bathroom and I will most definitely have nights I need to throw books across the room. I’m not expected to know everything just yet – just expected to push myself to figure it out on my own. I’m not used to the complete independence yet, but that’s okay. So, I’m going to silence that voice in my head and push myself. And in 5 years I’ll be able to look back on this time and laugh, thinking about how I doubted myself. Because I will make it.

*The author is referring to another anonymous author, PhDoing Life.
** Head over to the source blog to take a look at this meme.

This story was published on September 3, 2018 on PhDoing Life (available here) and has been republished here with permission.