Thursday, March 25, 2010

Feelings of Fraud and Inadequacy in Grad School

I keep starting to write this post and then stopping.  This subject is very difficult to write about; it's very personal and one of my deepest professional insecurities, and I don't think I'm alone.  You see, I was talking with a couple of fellow grad students not too long ago, one senior student like myself, and a fellow a few years younger than us.  We were discussing data quality and publication, and I admitted that sometimes I feel like a fraud - sometimes I think my good data is all in my head, I'm imagining it, and someday soon some experiment is going to unravel my entire body of work.  The other old salt agreed with me, while the young pup exclaimed "What, you mean those feelings don't go away with success?!?"  All three of us were affected by classic impostor syndrome.  I read that women are more often affected by men, although anecdotally I was the only woman in that conversation.  I wonder if this is more common among certain fields or regions.

What I find even weirder is that as I achieve higher levels of success with my project, these feelings seem to intensify - the more I participate in the scientific field, the more chances there are that people will discover what an idiot I really am. 

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Winter Wonderland


 I meant to post this photo a while ago.  I snapped it one saturday afternoon when walking home from work.

Wednesday, March 3, 2010

We do meat substitute right

The Olympics are the ultimate junk TV.  I sit in front of them, mindless, for hours, pretending to know something about the hammer, Salchows, and backside rodeos*.  They keep me up late at night, cheering for the good ole USA.  But also?  They have a lot of commercials.  A LOT.  And I noticed a new commercial for KFC promoting their new boneless fillet, which they promised would be

 BIGGER
MEATIER
JUCIER

Meatier? What in the everliving fuck was there besides meat in their "chicken" before this fillet?  Sawdust, crayon shavings and glue?  How the hell can one meat be meatier than another meat?  They sell plain fucking chicken, for chrissake, it's right there in the name!  I NEED ANSWERS, PEOPLE!  I...I think I need to go take a shower now, I feel unclean.



*Not, as I learned, a gay porn maneuver.  Heh.  MANeuver.