Thank you to Scicurious for hosting a carnival on this subject.
As a woman in engineering, I expected to feel impostor syndrome quite strongly, but so far, I just haven't. I can find myself in a room as the only woman, and I barely notice. Am I some magical super-confident oddity? Not really. But even if I don't think I'm the best at ___, I still feel like I deserve to be where I'm at most days.
As I've been reading some of the brilliant posts around the internet, it seems that authors largely find in one of two categories: "best students" who no longer are, or people making a large leap from their background.
I've talked before about my SciGrandmother, and my other family members in STEM fields both in and out of academia. Clearly, I'm not making a large leap away from my background. Even at GiantU, I have a family support network, in the form of an aunt who is a professor in a biological field. She helped me find a mentor in my own department to help me deal with some of the nonsense that is my advisor. Having someone who is not a formal chain-of-command mentor has been incredibly helpful. When my own advisor was editing at the rate of molasses, he was willing to read my manuscript and give me feedback about organization and writing style, even if he didn't know all of my science.
As far as the "best student" thing goes, I've never been the best student at everything, thanks to my sister. It's been a life-long competition, with me winning some subjects and her winning others. We're fairly close in age, and very even in ability. I've had years to get used to having someone who was better than me. I'm better at math, she's better at writing. I'm better at music, she's better at drawing. And eventually, I've gotten to the point where that's ok. The best days are when one of us can say to the other "It's so helpful having a sister who's better at ___ than I am".
Lastly, I'm often just too damn busy think "I need to do x, y, z, alpha..." to think I'm not good enough. If I can't do everything, it's probably because there's so much of it. Every so often, I lapse into thinking I'm incompetent because I haven't finished everything, and then I vent to a lab mate, and they remind me I'm working on 3+ projects.
So what advice can I offer others? Find and cultivate a support network of various stages and fields. Find a peer you can vent with, find a mentor who's not your advisor (admittedly, this can be very tricky), make friends in other departments and other groups. Find someone who will tell you that what you do is awesome (that isn't a family member). Have trouble reaching out to people? Join Twitter, read blogs, form a virtual support network. Seriously, the blogosphere is full of supportive people from all sorts of career stages, even if it's dominated by biologists.
Showing posts with label networking. Show all posts
Showing posts with label networking. Show all posts
Friday, April 13, 2012
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Conference Lessons
Apparently will I was away, my blog got listed on Inside Higher Ed's Around the Web, which is totally awesome and unexpected. Hello to any new readers!
Last week's conference was my first time attending a specialty conference, instead of a more general mega-conference. It was wonderful to get to really know people, even if it's not in my thesis field. I learned a lot of science, but I also learned a lot about completely unrelated things, like fire trucks, nuclear waste managements, and the Episcopal church. This conference really encouraged spousal attendance of the social events, making it the first conference I've met a priest at.
Things I learned from the conference:
1) Talking to people socially at lunch and coffee break is a great way to get them to ask questions about your science later. Even if you know no one, just ask to join the table/circle, and listen for a while. Next time you see them, they may actually start a conversation with you.
2) Presenting a poster after your PI gives a talk brings more people to your poster, and gives you a chance to clarify those things your PI may be overselling. Unfortunately, my PI isn't very fond of this method, so I may not have many more opportunities for this type of thing.
3) Being visually distinctive can be a very good thing. I was wearing a rather unique hat for the outdoor portions of the conference (again, more social events than I'm used to), and people would start conversations with me about my hat which could then meander towards the science.
4) Lessons in how to effectively nag my advisor from his former student. Since my advisor tends to be cranky when his blood sugar is low and forgets to eat, bringing pastries to meetings can help, apparently.
5) Your thesis research doesn't define what you do by any means. I've heard this before, but talking to older professors, it was really good to hear that with specific examples. It also made me feel better about working on such unrelated projects, because it'll help open up a wider range of post-doc options later.
6) Networking is partly about being in the right place at the right time: by sitting near the right person, I was told about a faculty opening (if I were actually graduating) that I may otherwise not have found out about because it's a cross-department listing (i.e., an EE department looking for a materials person).
7) Lots of ways to simply expand on the PTWD and make the second pair of papers more substantial stand-alone papers, instead of merging them into one.
8) People are really nice about lending their cellphones when yours has tragically died. I was able to actually call my husband on his birthday briefly, and schedule a taxi courtesy of other people's phones.
9) Playing certain pieces as an instrumentalist ruins them for future listening. I still really dislike Beethoven's Violin Concerto, even though I last played it in 2003.
Last week's conference was my first time attending a specialty conference, instead of a more general mega-conference. It was wonderful to get to really know people, even if it's not in my thesis field. I learned a lot of science, but I also learned a lot about completely unrelated things, like fire trucks, nuclear waste managements, and the Episcopal church. This conference really encouraged spousal attendance of the social events, making it the first conference I've met a priest at.
Things I learned from the conference:
1) Talking to people socially at lunch and coffee break is a great way to get them to ask questions about your science later. Even if you know no one, just ask to join the table/circle, and listen for a while. Next time you see them, they may actually start a conversation with you.
2) Presenting a poster after your PI gives a talk brings more people to your poster, and gives you a chance to clarify those things your PI may be overselling. Unfortunately, my PI isn't very fond of this method, so I may not have many more opportunities for this type of thing.
3) Being visually distinctive can be a very good thing. I was wearing a rather unique hat for the outdoor portions of the conference (again, more social events than I'm used to), and people would start conversations with me about my hat which could then meander towards the science.
4) Lessons in how to effectively nag my advisor from his former student. Since my advisor tends to be cranky when his blood sugar is low and forgets to eat, bringing pastries to meetings can help, apparently.
5) Your thesis research doesn't define what you do by any means. I've heard this before, but talking to older professors, it was really good to hear that with specific examples. It also made me feel better about working on such unrelated projects, because it'll help open up a wider range of post-doc options later.
6) Networking is partly about being in the right place at the right time: by sitting near the right person, I was told about a faculty opening (if I were actually graduating) that I may otherwise not have found out about because it's a cross-department listing (i.e., an EE department looking for a materials person).
7) Lots of ways to simply expand on the PTWD and make the second pair of papers more substantial stand-alone papers, instead of merging them into one.
8) People are really nice about lending their cellphones when yours has tragically died. I was able to actually call my husband on his birthday briefly, and schedule a taxi courtesy of other people's phones.
9) Playing certain pieces as an instrumentalist ruins them for future listening. I still really dislike Beethoven's Violin Concerto, even though I last played it in 2003.
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