Who am I? As a grad student, the answer can change depending on when I ask myself the question.
If I’m feeling confident and excited with some of my results - then I’m a cancer researcher, forwarding the scientific community! If I’m reading papers to prepare for a qualifying exam - then I’m a mere student, just trying to prove that I know enough to get by. And finally, if I feel stuck, like I am making zero progress in my work - I fear that I look lazy and unmotivated.
These identities don’t just feel like societal projections of who I am. Each one feels like a small truth, and fights to dominate my own sense of self. This can become very confusing when one day I feel like I’m digging into some really cool science, and the next I can hardly focus or care enough to read a single abstract of a single paper.
In these moments of internal conflict, it’s easy to feel like an imposter.
At this point, it’s easy to get caught up in a spiral of negative thinking: Does this make me a bad student? Am I working hard enough to merit a degree at the end of this? How can I be contributing to science if I feel like I don’t know anything? So if these thoughts can be triggered by our own research - often something we love - how do we cope with this?
Although these moments of questioning and self-doubt can be painful and confusing, know that you are not alone. As students and researchers, we are constantly learning and wandering head-on into the unknown. That’s what makes science so exciting - but of course it’s scary! We are trying really hard to figure out a world that nobody fully understands.
It is difficult but important to recognize that your degree does not define who you are as a person. If you’re not getting results you expected because biology is being biology, this does not make you stupid. One day of burnout and reading novels instead of manuscripts does not make you lazy. Somebody else’s publication after 2 years of work, does not make you worthless.
As students, we need to work hard to dissociate our sense of self from our sense of progress in our degree, because this can make us inaccurately and negatively judge ourselves. I also personally don’t want my own emotional wellbeing to be dependent on the behaviour of a small worm.
Know that regardless of the lens you feel society sees you through, you are valued and loved for who you are.