Introduction

“What am I doing here?”

This is a question we all ask ourselves, likely over and over again, every time we’re adjusting to a new role, and it can feel really, really uncomfortable. If it even caused a twinge of panic as you read it, you’re not alone and I’m happy you’ve found your way here. How do we answer this question, when we ask ourselves quietly in the middle of the night; when we’re in front of an audience; or when we’re caught off guard in the hallway by a more senior colleague mid-dash to the departmental kitchen for another coffee?

As a grad student myself, I’m writing this article with grad students in mind, but I hope that it will be useful for anyone at any level trying to answer this question while doing science in or outside of academia. At multiple points in graduate school, feeling like I personally didn’t have a good answer ready in any of the above situations led me through intense cycles of imposter syndrome, anxiety, and shyness around my peers that took a long time to work through. While journeying through one of these cycles, I realized that there were two big aspects of my academic learning curve that seemed unrelated but were actually colliding to cause my anguish: 1) difficulty in articulating my answer to the question “What do you do?” in different contexts and 2) my confidence in the novelty and relevance of that work I was doing and the ideas I was developing. In the first several years of graduate school, the amount of new information we synthesize as well as the number of ideas we come up with and then discard are both enormous. Meanwhile, we are developing a new identity as researchers, introducing ourselves to new colleagues, giving presentations, and trying to explain what graduate school even is to our friends and families. It’s a lot to process all at once!

From this realization, I created a worksheet for myself, with prompts written from the kind and encouraging perspective of my “inner voice,” so that I could practice mapping, connecting, and communicating my ideas in different ways. I’ve since realized how very not-alone I was in my struggles, and I’m hoping that by sharing this worksheet I can help others (you!) cultivate and clarify your own inspiration and confidence, so you can get through those uncomfortable moments a bit easier. It’s basically a guided journaling exercise to help you get unstuck from a variety of different mental roadblocks you might be experiencing as you clarify your research vision.

The purpose of this worksheet is to create a mindful, judgment-free space and time to think about ourselves and our research through a variety of lenses. In doing so, we can identify what we’re excited and passionate about, how those different pieces connect into a cohesive story or thesis, and how to communicate all of this to different people. I’ve realized that by practicing how to communicate our goals and ideas to different audiences, we can actually clarify our focus and build our confidence in those ideas, and iteratively, communicating them will become easier.

The worksheet can be found here, and is split into four parts:

1)   Interest mapping

2)   Who are you?

3)   “What do you do?”

4)   Putting it in writing

I recommend taking about an hour for this worksheet and answering the prompts on paper. Perhaps in a park with flowers and birds, or somewhere cozy with a nice tea. I hope it will be a helpful resource for you! Additionally, if you’re in an information-absorbing mood, keep reading: I’ve put together some tips and resources below about how to communicate your research to different audiences, and how to cultivate confidence in graduate school. Finally, I’ve also included some resources I’ve found helpful for understanding and combating imposter syndrome.

Tangible Tips

• Develop a core narrative for your research that can be quickly adapted for different audiences. A helpful structure is the ABT, or And-But-Therefore method [1]. This narrative structure helps to draw clear connections between different parts of your research in a concise, engaging way. It follows this format:

[First detail that is true and observable] and   [Second detail that is true and observable OR this data exists],  but  [problem statement],  therefore  [this is how you are addressing the problem].

While the ABT method isn’t included in the worksheet I made, you can practice using it to answer many of the questions. If you try this, think about the specific words and phrases that need to be adapted for each audience – learn to identify jargon [3-4] and points of confusion by pretending you’re reading it as different people in your life. What would they need more clarification on? Do you need to include that specific term as well as the clarification, or is there a simpler or different way of explaining it? Then, practice your ABT with those people (see the next few points below) and ask for their feedback.

• Practice communicating your work to different audiences, not only for the purpose of building communication skills, but to clarify your ideas. By talking through your work over and over again with different people, you’ll quickly start to notice which parts you get most excited about and which parts you skip over. From these data, you can identify what parts of the work you’re developing are actually most interesting to you, and put more of your focus on those aspects moving forward. On the flip side, you’ll also get feedback from the people you’re describing your research to – When did they get the most excited, or when were they confused? From analyzing your conversation, you can learn a lot about how your work intersects with others in your field, as well as identifying sticking points or knowledge gaps that you can continue to work on. This is why it’s especially beneficial to talk a lot about your research early on in grad school (see next point).

• Talk to everyone, everywhere, especially before you feel “ready.” Looking back on my early years in grad school, I can see more clearly now that instead of isolating myself and being embarrassed by the lack of clarity I was experiencing, I could have enjoyed the process of exploring and sharing my half-baked, messy ideas, developed them faster, and had my confidence boosted by external validation. I think there can be a pervasive sense in grad school that you never quite know enough (to raise your hand after a seminar, to challenge an idea in a discussion group, to provide counter-examples, hot takes, or novel ideas...) but the sooner you can overcome this feeling, and start putting your ideas and questions out there, the more fun you’ll start to have and the more inertia you’ll build in your scientific work and growth. I was reflecting with a friend recently about these struggles, and she said that it just clicked for her one day that “she was there to learn” and that by definition as a grad student, she was expected to have questions, not have all the answers, and make mistakes. I loved that perspective, and it helped me to further overcome some anxiety I was still carrying. We’re in training, and we can embrace that by encouraging a growth mindset [7] in ourselves and our peers!

• Get comfortable networking, but for reasons that feel natural to you. Collect perspectives and seek interesting conversions that inspire you and/or push your comfort zone as an act of practicing your communication skills, rather than trying to “make professional connections.” Speaking for myself at least, the latter sounds incredibly daunting, but framed the first way, I’m much more excited to go to professional social events. If you’re on the hunt for new perspectives and fun conversations, you’ll be more relaxed about talking to anyone regardless of their perceived importance in your field, and you’ll naturally make a good impression as well as a strong professional network over time.

• A note on imposter syndrome. When unpacking the question “What am I doing here?” as though it were a heavy box of complicated items, every person will find their own unique set of circumstances, strengths, and insecurities inside. These items might include confidence and self-esteem, a sense of community and belonging, familiarity with their field or topics of interest, or comfort with and previous experience communicating to different audiences in different settings. Notice that nowhere in the box is our “ability” or “worthiness” - perhaps we expect to find these in the box (or fear their absence), but those qualities are actually the postage that brought this box to us, in this moment, to this question. Hopefully I haven’t stretched the box metaphor too far. In other words, pushing ourselves to grow and pursue new challenges takes us out of our comfort zone, and while these new steps in life are built from our prior accomplishments and skills, it’s easy for that discomfort to turn into imposter syndrome. Imposter syndrome is a bit tangential to the main topic of this article, but in case this is something you’re struggling with, as many people in academia do, I’ve added a section of resources below [10-15] that I have found to be helpful.

Useful Resources

How to communicate your research to different audiences

[1] “‘And, But, Therefore’ Statement,” SESYNC, 13-May-2019. https://www.sesync.org/for-you/communications/toolkit/and-but-therefore-statement.

●    This website provides more details on the And-But-Therefore narrative structure for communicating your research.

[2] CES, “Six ways to share your research findings,” Medium, 26-Jun-2018. https://medium.com/@effectiveserv/six-ways-to-share-your-research-findings-238549409534.

●    This article emphasizes the importance of “knowledge translation” then gives you six excellent tips for how to go about packaging your research effectively for different audiences.

[3] “Science communication: How to avoid scientific jargon,” AGU. https://www.agu.org/Share-and-Advocate/Share/News-media/Jargon.

●    A very quick list of tips that can help you avoid jargon while communicating your research.

[4] T. Sanderson, “The up-goer five text editor,” The Up-Goer Five Text Editor. https://splasho.com/upgoer5/.

●    A text editor that highlights anything that isn’t one of the most common 1000 English words. I love this for how challenging and eye-opening it is!

[5] S. Schweitzer, “Generating new research ideas: 3 ways to get inspired and follow through,” SPSP. https://spsp.org/news-center/spspotlight-july-2016/generating-new-research-ideas.

●    Three quick points of inspiration for generating research ideas from conversations, reading broadly, and all aspects of life.

[6] M. Tanguay, “How to mind map to visualize ideas (with mind map examples),” Lifehack, 26-Nov-2020. https://www.lifehack.org/articles/work/how-to-mind-map-in-three-small-steps.html.

●    How to build mind maps, for anyone unfamiliar with this technique of organizing ideas and brainstorming.

Growth mindset and confidence in graduate school

 [7] K. Gies, “Responding to uncertainty through a growth mindset,” University Affairs, 13-Jul-2020.https://www.universityaffairs.ca/career-advice/responsibilities-may-include/responding-to-uncertainty-through-a-growth-mindset/

●    A great article that explains what a growth mindset is, how it is beneficial in grad school, and tips for how to practice developing one.

[8] S. Tynen, “Getting in the mindset-6 tips to build your confidence in Graduate School,” Colorado.edu, 05-Aug-2019. https://www.colorado.edu/graduateschool/2019/08/05/getting-mindset-6-tips-build-your-confidence-graduate-school

●    I really like this article about how to get into a positive mindset (specifically around the writing process, but I think it applies to other aspects of grad school as well). They provide six tips for retraining negative thinking (also known as negative self talk).

[9] N. Chtena, “Simple self-love for grad students,” GradHacker, 29-Jan-2017. https://www.insidehighered.com/blogs/gradhacker/simple-self-love-grad-students

●    This article about self compassion in academia might seem tangential to confidence, but it’s not! They provide some great tips for boosting self compassion, confidence, and setting healthy boundaries.

Imposter syndrome

There are hundreds of articles, books, podcasts, and TED talks that cover all aspects of imposter syndrome. I’ve collected just a few of them here:

[10] G. Abdelaal, “Coping with Imposter Syndrome in academia and research,” Portland Press, 15-Jun-2020. https://portlandpress.com/biochemist/article/42/3/62/225249/Coping-with-imposter-syndrome-in-academia-and

●    A great article aimed at folks in scientific fields. It explains the feelings of imposter syndrome and some big yet subtle changes you can make to your behaviors and perceptions to combat it long term.

[11] P. Grey, “Four tips to ward off impostor syndrome,” Nature News, 13-Aug-2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02408-z.

●    Four more tips to combat imposter syndrome.

[12] C. Woolston, “How burnout and Imposter Syndrome Blight Scientific Careers,” Nature News, 23-Nov-2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-03042-z

●    A sobering article about the prevalence and severity of imposter syndrome, burnout, and “John Henryism” in STEM.

[13] M. Campbell, “Feeling like a fraud: Impostor syndrome in STEM,” Technology Networks, 07-Oct-2019. https://www.technologynetworks.com/tn/articles/feeling-like-a-fraud-impostor-syndrome-in-stem-324839

●    Another thorough and highly relatable perspective on feeling like a fraud in STEM.

[14] S. Feenstra, C. T. Begeny, M. K. Ryan, F. A. Rink, J. I. Stoker, and J. Jordan, “Contextualizing the impostor ‘syndrome,’” Frontiers, 13-Nov-2020. https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.575024/full

●    An open access perspective article with lots of citations for anyone looking for a jumping off point into imposter syndrome literature. It covers the clinical-psychological perspective on the syndrome, as well as multiple levels of the social-psychological perspective (societal, institutional, and interpersonal).

[15] “The 5 types of imposter syndrome (and how to overcome it!),” Science of People, 25-Oct-2021. https://www.scienceofpeople.com/impostor-syndrome/

●    A lighter article with videos and memes, that outlines the “5 types of imposters” and some excellent “fixes” to try for each one. I really love this one!

Acknowledgments:

Many thanks to the SciCATS team for their recent workshop series on science communication, where I learned about the ABT method and other narrative structures, how to manage/minimize jargon, and how to more effectively engage with different audiences across a variety of mediums (e.g., this article!). A big shoutout to the Germain lab and other friends and colleagues for all the discussions we’ve had about how to develop research ideas and how to grow and encourage confidence in ourselves and each other throughout our careers. I developed this worksheet from these conversations.