Impostor Syndrome

By Robert Chapman, Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow, School of Chemistry, UNSW

 

Despite a reputation for an overinflated ego, it seems that most academics are actually pretty insecure. From the grad student who’s wondering if they’ll ever finish, to the postdoc who’s anxious about landing the next job, from the junior lecturer who’s desperate for grant money just to survive the next couple of years, to the professor who’s scrambling for significance, so many of our colleagues live in fear. Impostor Syndrome, as it has come to be known, is one of the main drivers of this fear and has been the topic of more than a few studies [1,2]. It’s that creeping sense of professional inadequacy and self-doubt that causes people to question their place. It prompts us to say to ourselves: ‘I don’t belong’, ‘I’m not good enough for this’, ‘I’m a fraud’, and it seems to be particularly acute in competitive environments like academia where everyone is brilliant – where being at the top of your class is just average.

 

If you, like me, are tempted to think that better results in the lab, a paper in a top journal, a nice lectureship, or a prestigious fellowship will solve the problem the facts disagree with you - Impostor Syndrome seems to be no less pronounced at our most prestigious institutions. Prof. Cherry Dean, a former Dean of Harvard’s School of Engineering and Applied Sciences is one of many who have described an overwhelming sense of being a fraud, a phony, of not being good enough for their jobs, despite much evidence to the contrary [3].

 

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that the answer is to recognise that we are not alone and say very firmly to ourselves “I AM NOT AN IMPOSTOR”. We’re encouraged to stop comparing ourselves to colleagues, recognise that failure in research is the norm, to pick ourselves up and keep on plodding – success will surely come. No doubt there’s much good advice in here, but it feels to me that mixed in with this self-help approach is the secular prosperity gospel which promotes ‘The power of positive thinking’ as the solution to my problems.

 

Christians have a beautiful alternative answer: Impostor Syndrome is actually about identity. The Christian has been made new – made alive in Christ. We no longer need to live for the success that the world offers, because our life is now hidden with Christ in God. Our significance doesn’t come from the quality of our research or from esteem of our colleagues – it is given, gifted to us by God. We are his dearly loved children by grace through faith, and not by works (so that no one may boast).

 

This is liberating stuff (or at least it should be). Because of Christ, my confidence in declaring ‘I am not a fraud’ is not based on a self-help belief that I’m smarter than I give myself credit for, or even on the recognition that everyone else feels the same way. I’m not a fraud because first and foremost I am not an academic at all. I am a child of God. At this point I happen to be engaged in research, investigating his world that we might care for it better, but when my research is not going well I’m free to be honest about it. When experiments fail my identity isn’t called into question. When grants or jobs don’t come my way, God is still in control and He still cares for me. I am significant not because of the job I have or how I compare to others, but because of what He has done for me.

 

Because it’s about identity, Impostor Syndrome is not unique to academia, it manifests itself in my Christian walk as well – ‘one day everyone’s going to realise I’m not the Christian I should be’, ‘My identity is bound up in my work’. Again grace is the liberating truth I need to remember. He grants me freedom to confess my faults, forgiveness for my failures, a certain hope for the future, and the strength to plug on in the work I have been given to do. If only I could remember this.

 

1. Woolston C, Psychology: Faking it. Nature, 2016, 529, 555

2. Laursen L, No, You’re Not an Impostor. Science Careers, 2008

3. Kaplan K, Unmasking the Impostor. Nature, 2009, 459, 468