When I pictured my ‘adult’ life in academic science, it never looked anything like what it actually turned out to be. Trained as we are through the ranks, the neophyte scientist is constantly exposed to her bright future stretching ahead in clearly demarcated steps: PhD, followed by a few postdocs, then slotting into a university job with its own internal steps all the way up to full professor. Every working research institute she inhabits is a core sample through these ranks, with examples of every stage freely available for inspection and wistful admiration.
My own path, clearly, was the complete opposite of orderly. But recently I’ve become aware that, despite the untraditional nature of my advancement in the past few years, I am nevertheless now doing a grown-up scientist’s job in practice, if not in title. My official moniker, ‘Principal Research Associate’, is suitably vague, indicating that I’m a PI without a permanent job. Accordingly, my contract lengths are short and frequently refreshed, fuelled entirely on soft money. In discussions with various funding bodies and prospective alternative employers in the past month or so, it’s clear I’m lodged into a no-man’s land, too senior for most schemes (having passed the dreaded ‘expiration date’ of x years from being awarded a PhD) and too junior for those that require a firm tenure-track commitment from the university.
So what’s a girl to do? A more senior colleague may have accused me of ‘having my head buried in the sand’ recently, but another way of looking at it is that I’ve just getting on with the science. And the results have been a real joy. I’m involved in several amazing collaborations, have brought in small grants and PhD studentships, have been the co-author on a number of papers in the unit, and am supervising a number of junior researchers working on my projects. My H-index and publication record are strong, and I’m being returned in the Research Excellence Framework. At a recent American conference, I met all my major competitors and confirmed that I’m on the right track. The intricacies of the pathogen-host interactions I’ve been studying unfold like a flower of astonishing complexity, facilitated by the vast array of patients we have that kindly consent to being studied. When I open the lab door every morning, there is a spring in my step as I wonder how the previous day’s experiments have gone.
I still feel insecure sometimes, of course. Last week I travelled to meet a fellow academic to see if we had some common ground for a small collaboration. As I was ushered into his office and watched him speak with assurance, I felt like he was the real thing, while I was just an imposter. Looking at it objectively, however, we seemed about the same age, probably on equal footing with regard to experience. When I looked him up in the directory later, though, I found that he was considerably younger than me, having been appointed only this year and having received his PhD a full decade after mine, with a current publication list as short as mine had been in the late 1990s. So what was it that made me feel so inferior? Was it his gender? His confidence? Or was it something about the word “Lecturer” stamped on his door nameplate, making me feel like a junior post-doc all over again? Words are powerful things, and titles do matter.
I’m happy to report, however, that I’ve surmounted a real milestone in the past few days: the submission of my first two last-author papers.
By the convention in my field, the last author is the lab head, the one in charge, the source of the ideas. The big cheese. Last authorship is the territory of those that have finally made it, wherever or however ‘it’ may be. Perhaps ‘it’ isn’t something that has to be the top rung of a well-worn ladder of newbie dreams. Perhaps ‘it’ is just the place where you finally land, by whatever means necessary, and where everything just clicks into place.
Congratulations. 🙂
FWIW I have exactly one (1) paper where I am listed as “co-corresponding author”, which is hardly the same as “senior author” in the last-in-the-authorship-list sense. And none of those. So well done you. 🙂
But, Richard, *you’re* a grown up!
See, I’d not even put myself in the same league as Richard W, who seems *far* more grown-up than I. So it just goes to show that there are many metrics measuring success, many of them having nothing to do with papers. I just wish there was wider recognition of this amongst the bean-counters.
“Perhaps ‘it’ is just the place where you finally land, by whatever means necessary, and where everything just clicks into place.”
That’s lovely, Jenny. And, I think, true.
Congrats on your first last-authored papers. That’s quite an achievement. By the way, you most certainly sound like a “grown-up” scientist to me.
By “far more grown-up” I hope you don’t mean “old and stodgy”. 😉
I am still jealous of your lab-head and senior author positions. Grown-up or not, I have never achieved anything like independent PI / lab head / group leader status. So my “well done you” comment stands. 🙂
Great to meet you in person the other day, BTW. 😀
So good to read these thoughts and findings. Congratulations on your first (two!) last-authored papers! Hope it goes well through submission process and publishing!
Maybe ‘it’ is that thing, that certain thing that can’t be defined “when you are in it but rather when you have passed it and looking back”? As in you know that you were a teen when you realise that you’re not reacting like a teen anymore? Or, as you describe after going back from meeting the lecturer and looking up the facts realising your own achievements and senior status? (or maybe I’m just a little tired and confused this Sunday morning)
I’m getting “aha” moments (it?) when I talk to younger (in science years) people and realise that I have some experience and can help – last month a post-doc needed advice on how to write a paper and getting feedback from her mentor/collaborations and afterwards she followed up and replied “you really know this stuff, thanks a lot!”. Makes me realise that while I’m ‘young’ I’m not a ‘baby’ anymore. Maybe I will achieve grown-up status in my head soon – approaching 40 as I am…. Small moments in time 🙂
Imposter Syndrome is a matter of perspective. Confucius he say: you are aware of all your own failures, but of others you see only their command performances.
Take heart from the following koān from the Tao of Jew, the Guide to Jewish Buddhist Wisdom, which reads that the Holy One preaches that there is no self. But if there is no self, whose arthritis is this?
But I digress.
Consider that your young colleague might be in awe of your extraordinary extracurricular activities. I bet he’s not a published novelist.
In any case, I always find it refreshing to associate with young, intelligent and interesting people. It makes one feel young, intelligent and interesting. I am in the middle of a side project that does exactly this, concerning which I shall blog soon.
which is the primary reason I switched to the business I’m in now.
(Note to self. Find the CSS for ‘q’ tags on OT and make them look like something.)
BTW I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up (I’m 51)
“I felt like he was the real thing, while I was just an imposter. Looking at it objectively, however, we seemed about the same age, probably on equal footing with regard to experience. When I looked him up in the directory later, though, I found that he was considerably younger than me, having been appointed only this year and having received his PhD a full decade after mine, with a current publication list as short as mine had been in the late 1990s. So what was it that made me feel so inferior?”
I wish I knew. I still feel this way around certain colleagues (and I *have* tenure), and I wish I knew how to acquire their attitude of confidence, as it clearly helps in a number of respects.
Love your conclusion; I’ve arrived at the same via a slightly different path. I also love cromercrox’s remarks. Congratulations on your recent submissions!
Thanks for your kind words, all. Heather, you’re going to laugh, but as a fellow American I think you might get this – one of the things that made my colleague so imposing was his posh British accent!
Defintely! Perhaps we are also awestruck by and envious of people whose sense of natural entitlement is so undented as to be convincing in its own perfection.
For what it is worth, of all the events of the science/collaboration trip to your side of the pond, the seminar at Dundee was no biggie, and in meeting you in person I felt a bit the imposter. When I forced myself to look at it objectively in the moment, it didn’t matter that we were participating in the scientific process at different speeds. It mattered that we were participating in it together and moving something forward. Upon that realization, I calmed myself down, and felt comfortable enough to order another cider to go along with our dinner of fried foods. That night is somewhere in my list of 10 favorite days of my life.
Dear Overseas Collaborator – sorry I only belatedly saw this comment. I can’t believe you feel that way! You’re a hotshot prof with your own confocal microscope! 😉
Seriously though, it was great to finally meet, and it was indeed a great night.
The ‘I feel like an imposter’ thing is why I left post-doc work. I felt like I’d sneaked (snuck?)into the grownup area and might be asked for ID any minute. I think it is a lot to do with confidence.
I didn’t even know that it was called ‘Imposter Syndrome’. I thought it was just me.
Congratulations on finding ‘it’. And on the last-author papers. Well done!