Battling Mania: Reflections of an Impostor Genius
My non-academic friend recently told me she loves extreme people, referring to me and my roommate, a fellow student at my university. Extreme - I liked that. It had a better ring to it than crazy. In fact it made me feel like a superhero.
This statement got me thinking of the times I had seen my fellow PhD students exhibiting signs of extremity; see-sawing between feelings of genius and grandeur based on some research or writing breakthroughs, only to be followed by a bout of negativity about the worthlessness of their project. This streak of insecurity made them work ten times harder and eventually propelled them back to a state of confidence. Confident, that is, until the next meeting with their advisor when they started feeling like Pinky, rather than the Brain, all over again.
After leaving my friend that day I began to wonder whether my extremity - cycling between mania and insecurity - was an inevitability of my position, or if there was some other way to live out my years as a PhD Candidate and earn my position among the scholars and experts I admired.
Searching for an answer I sought out a workshop on campus about the “Impostor Syndrome,” a notorious and common “ailment” of recently matriculated PhD students (particularly women) that causes them to feel like their admission to their program was some sort oversight; that any day now someone will discover they weren’t supposed to be there. “Impostors” use this concern to fuel their thoughts about failing as a scientist and strengthen their doubts about the quality of their work. I related deeply with this syndrome since I seemed to slide back to it every time I was rebounding from a particularly successful and buoyant week.
In a room full of weary students the workshop leader gently explained that what impostors have is a definitional problem of what “good enough” means, not a qualitative problem of actually not being good enough. Impostors define what it means to be excellent in a way that sets them up for disappointment. Like the ball of a pendulum they rush forward, hands outstretched toward some illusion of genius, but slow just before reaching the top of their arc, only to fall quickly back in the other direction when they can’t meet their own outlandish goals.
She suggested that instead of asking: am I good enough, you should be asking: do I have good working habits, am I proactive at soliciting feedback, am I on track to complete my project? Set your intention to be like Lao Tzu embarking upon a journey of a thousand miles, one step at a time, rather than Buzz Aldrin, preparing for a speedy jaunt to the moon. Let your modest successes build upon each other gradually, creating a foundation of calmness and confidence, rather than walking a tightrope to grandeur. One day you may find that the support you have created for yourself has lifted you firmly to where we always wanted to be – the top.
So, to all my fellow extremists out there: instead of waking up each day with the goal of saving the world, why don’t you just embrace the amazing and talented scholar you already are? If you can recognize and internalize your day-to-day progress on the path toward excellence you will soon realize that you don’t need to fly to be a superhero, you just need to keep being you.
This statement got me thinking of the times I had seen my fellow PhD students exhibiting signs of extremity; see-sawing between feelings of genius and grandeur based on some research or writing breakthroughs, only to be followed by a bout of negativity about the worthlessness of their project. This streak of insecurity made them work ten times harder and eventually propelled them back to a state of confidence. Confident, that is, until the next meeting with their advisor when they started feeling like Pinky, rather than the Brain, all over again.
After leaving my friend that day I began to wonder whether my extremity - cycling between mania and insecurity - was an inevitability of my position, or if there was some other way to live out my years as a PhD Candidate and earn my position among the scholars and experts I admired.
Searching for an answer I sought out a workshop on campus about the “Impostor Syndrome,” a notorious and common “ailment” of recently matriculated PhD students (particularly women) that causes them to feel like their admission to their program was some sort oversight; that any day now someone will discover they weren’t supposed to be there. “Impostors” use this concern to fuel their thoughts about failing as a scientist and strengthen their doubts about the quality of their work. I related deeply with this syndrome since I seemed to slide back to it every time I was rebounding from a particularly successful and buoyant week.
In a room full of weary students the workshop leader gently explained that what impostors have is a definitional problem of what “good enough” means, not a qualitative problem of actually not being good enough. Impostors define what it means to be excellent in a way that sets them up for disappointment. Like the ball of a pendulum they rush forward, hands outstretched toward some illusion of genius, but slow just before reaching the top of their arc, only to fall quickly back in the other direction when they can’t meet their own outlandish goals.
She suggested that instead of asking: am I good enough, you should be asking: do I have good working habits, am I proactive at soliciting feedback, am I on track to complete my project? Set your intention to be like Lao Tzu embarking upon a journey of a thousand miles, one step at a time, rather than Buzz Aldrin, preparing for a speedy jaunt to the moon. Let your modest successes build upon each other gradually, creating a foundation of calmness and confidence, rather than walking a tightrope to grandeur. One day you may find that the support you have created for yourself has lifted you firmly to where we always wanted to be – the top.
So, to all my fellow extremists out there: instead of waking up each day with the goal of saving the world, why don’t you just embrace the amazing and talented scholar you already are? If you can recognize and internalize your day-to-day progress on the path toward excellence you will soon realize that you don’t need to fly to be a superhero, you just need to keep being you.