Impostor Syndrome in science

Interesting:

A person can have experiences that directly lead her to feel like an impostor, such as repeated remarks about her age, probing questions into her expertise despite a strong technical background, or jokes about a woman’s science capabilities. She can be reminded that she is no more than an object to some, by reading about studies showing women’s bodies are interpreted as objects but men’s as people. And a person can internalize these experiences and feel less competent, such as when she second guesses her invitation to an elite science conference, to a major blog network, or to a tenure-track position *cough not me cough*. This second-guessing based on stereotype threat can actually lead to, in the case of gendered impostor syndrome, women actually sounding less competent than men, but only when communicating with men about their science.

So, I was saying how my blogging came out of impostor syndrome. My confidence lies in teaching and outreach (notice I didn’t say my strengths, more on this shortly). And I have a tendency to throw myself into activities where I am confident so that I don’t have to deal with the feelings of, well, un-confidence. So against the general advice given to tenure-track faculty at research-intensive institutions I immediately got involved in a major teaching and service initiative that has drained a lot of my time and effort, and I started to blog. Now, teaching, service and outreach are activities that faculty should devote a lot of time to. And all of this work has actually had a positive ripple effect on my research in terms of building relationships in my community, university, and discipline, building a name for myself as an innovative teacher, improving my writing skills and general anthropology knowledge, and emboldening me to pursue a more biocultural research focus. But it’s unclear to me whether these ripples were worth the huge whirlpool of lost time that could have gone to writing manuscripts and proposals.

Am I living a life I can be proud of? Most certainly. Am I pursuing teaching, research, service and outreach projects I deem important? Absolutely. Have I organized my time in such a way as maximizes my case for tenure?

No. No, I have not.

And this different budgeting of my time – a product of feeling like an impostor in my job and actually thinking the stuff I do is important – is what has been on my mind lately. The question is, how does one be a faculty member that does what is right while not shying away from the work that earns you research accolades, publications, grants and tenure? To be clear, being a faculty member that does what is right, by my personal standards at least, is one that is strong in research as well as teaching, service and outreach. This might differ from a tenure committee that emphasizes a focus on research accomplishments, but not by much.

Here’s the thing: I think my research kind of rocks. Let me try and state this again without the typical, gendered equivocating: my research rocks. I don’t think it’s the kind of research that Nature or Science will ever value (haha, except that this is a Nature Publishing Group-funded blog!), I don’t think Natalie Angier will ever knock down my door to interview me among a legion of my grad students and postdocs in a fancy, center-funded laboratory. But I think that the questions I ask, the way I frame my research, and the evidence I have gathered is going to have a lasting, meaningful impact on my field and, I hope, on clinical women’s health research. I have a perspective that could radicalize our understanding of human reproductive ecology, and project ideas and upcoming pilots that will test whether this is the case.