Humans in Science

In the absence of any desire to actually write a post myself, let me point you towards an interesting series of essays on mentoring and self-confidence that I’ve read recently.

First is “I’m Good Enough and I’m Smart Enough: Impostor Syndrome Part I”

followed by “Belief in the Absence of Proof: Imposter Syndrome Part II” and finally

“I Really Am Good Enough and Smart Enough: Imposter Syndrome Part III”

Thanks so much to mrswhatsit for writing these! Still encouraging us mousy young women….

As she says:

Learn to say these words:

“Thank you.”

The next time someone says to you, “Wow, you must be smart,” (this often happens to me after I say that I’m in graduate school for cell biology and frankly, it embarrasses me) do not demur (like I usually, do—hey, it’s a work in progress!) – say, “Thank you.” You ARE smart. Stupid people do not get to where you are in life.

This reminds me a lot of the advice that Stephen Fry once received from John Cleese.

BikeMonkey writes:

the highly confident PI is not good for the imposter syndrome trainee

but I am not sure that an unconfident PI such as myself, who lets the young women in her charge see the bumps and warts of handling it all – family, grants, travel, article submissions, is such a great example and will thereby bring new, liberated scientists into the coterie. I think I’ll end up just turning them off. At least I’ll have been honest about what it’s about! In the comments, “neurolover” justly discusses the use of precise positive reinforcement to get past these moments of self-doubt:

…be specific about praise with your trainees: not “great talk!”, but details about why the talk was good. Then, when the person starts going down the imposter syndrome path, they have factual information to draw on to counteract it.

FemaleScienceProfessor (as cited by BikeMonkey above)  also shares some encouraging thoughts about what makes her tick efficiently and get her professional job done in a satisfactory manner. Kudos to her.

A female, mature scientist writes here about how she decided she no longer has the calling to mentor anymore. I think it’s great she realized it and is not trying to poison anyone’s life, which is what would happen if she kept on with new students. I don’t agree with all of her conclusions by a long shot, although I recognize shades of some of her caricatures. It is all about trust, after all, and it seems hers has been tried too much (and I bet you, that of some of her students as well).

Lastly, I would recommend A Hand Up: Women Mentoring Women in Science, edited by Deborah Fort and sponsored by the American Association for Women in Science. But only to those on the first half of the career path – through postdoc level, I’d say. It’s a kind of surrogate mentor – “she did it, so can you”. It was a little short on practical advice, but a pleasant if meandering read. Just by requesting it at your library, you’ll be sending a positive message.

Posted on Saturday, November 3rd, 2007 at 11:22 am Categorized as:General

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.

You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.