My Life as an Imposter

I work in a lab. Let me change that sentence a bit. I 'work' in a lab. But I guess a better way of putting it would be 'volunteer'. I volunteer in a lab. Yes, that sounds better.

In the winter break, I was fortunate enough to earn a golden opportunity to help out in the Whiteley lab at UWA. The head, Winthop Professor Andy Whiteley, was the same guy chap who started the MicroBlitz project. I guess there were certain perks to working on the outreach team for this long. My efforts were rewarded, is how I see it. Anyway, I seized this opportunity without giving much thought: I get to work in a professional lab! A lab accessible only to postgrads and other faculty members. Hell yeah, I want this. They call this a pilot internship program, I think. 

Throughout my internship, I was working under the supervision of a PhD student, Ben. In a way, you could imagine this Ben-Theo interaction as those daunting supervisor-PhD student relationships. Ben's great though. I'll do a future post detailing the things I 'work' on in the lab. For this post, I'd like to talk about a problem obstacle I've faced in the past weeks: imposter syndrome.

Imposter syndrome is usually known as a self-diagnosed psychological phenomenon, where the person suffering from it thinks they don't deserve to be where they are today and don't deserve to enjoy their successes. Their current status is usually dismissed as luck; being lucky to have made it this far, lucky to be in the right place at the right time. Several studies have been conducted to understand where the syndrome is prevalent. I'm not sure if there's a proper academic paper to back this claim up but I believe this problem is also apparent in the scientific community, particularly people who've just started their research careers (e.g. postgrads and early career researchers).

I think you know where this post is going. I feel that I have a 'mild' case of imposter syndrome. I don't feel like I truly belong in that lab. And why should I? The lab is a place where real academics do real research. It's really not a place for an undergrad, let alone someone like myself. Due to the nature of my (informal) internship, Ben doesn't get additional payment or anything for supervising me. It's a completely voluntary task. In other words, he has his own work to get through, on top of looking after me. He's got his experiments to think about, papers to read, reports to write up and everything else a postgrad has to worry about. Needless to say, he can't be in the lab all the time to watch my every move. So that means, I'm working solo in the lab. To be honest, I'm totally okay with working in the lab alone. But it isn't that great if your experiments don't turn out the way you want, time and time again. That's the real issue here: I haven't been able to pull off anything successful lately.

And why would they work anyway? I'm a crummy undergrad. I've only ever held a pipette three times before I started this. I don't have any background in the stuff I do in the lab. Oh, did I mention I'm an undergrad? Personally, I feel worse-off than other postgrads. I'm sure they'd be able to pull themselves out of the imposter trap by telling themselves 'Oh wait, I can do this. I graduated with first class honours!'. But what do I have to save myself?  In a way, I literally got this internship opportunity because I was helping out in the office when the idea was brought up. 'Maybe they got the wrong guy', is all that's circling in my head.

I feel guilty. Guilty that I'm eating up all of Ben's time. Guilty that my failed experiments end up wasting lab resources. Guilty that I'm wasting value samples sent in by our valuable citizen scientists (who probably think someone with an actual degree was handling their samples). Is this how it feels like to have imposter syndrome? A whole bunch of negatives stacked against you? 

Heading into the lab used to be an exciting time. Ben would be there to teach me something. I'd work all day and watch how my gels fluoresced brightly when I shined UV light on it. Things are different now. I (dare I be ungrateful and say?) dread going in, knowing that my experiments probably won't turn out well. My samples would look crap, and then I'd have to go tell Ben I failed the experiment. He'd have a mixed expression on his face. And then he'll tell me to take a break and pack up for the day. I go home feeling like I've accomplished nothing. Rinse and repeat. 

Don't get me wrong. This is a rare opportunity and I would definitely keep it selfishly to myself, despite doing a sh*t job. But every time (literally, every single time) something goes wrong, I question myself. 'Do you really deserve to be here?' 'Why can't you do anything right?' 'Why can't my experiment work just this once?' 'Umm...yeah I should probably call Ben for help...'

I don't really know where this entry is going. Definitely not with a surprise 'Oh but I found a way to fix it' heading! I'm just glad I managed to get this off my chest. I want to start afresh. But what if the same mistakes come back again and again. The day I tell them I ran out of samples to reuse will be the day they know how much of a fraud I am.

I want to end this by asking: Does it sound like I have a bit of a imposter syndrome dilemma going on?

 



Figure 1. The results from a recent experiment I conducted. As you can see, it's a mess. What you want is for all the columns to have a single band forming a straight line across the row. What I got were not-so-bright bands, missing bands, double bands and a bit of smearing here and there. Also, if you look at the 8th column on the bottom row, you'll see a very faint band. That wasn't supposed to be there... Looks like I contaminated something! Yay.



 

 

Listening to It's Not Right For You - The Script

Lab-ing,

TK