imposter syndrome again
It's recruitment time for my program and we've all been asked to be buddies for the prospective students. One student who won't be coming to the recruitment activities is a C'lander, so I volunteered to be his buddy via email. I just googled him and discovered that, not only did he work with the only C'landian researcher deemed to be up to Prestigious U standards in my field, he won a SuperFancyPants Award in C'land that pays a huge amount for grad school anywhere in the world. I didn't apply for it because it was so completely out of my league, so again I'm feeling like it was a big mistake that they let me in here.
Interestingly, all the press releases about it in C'land say he's planning to use the award at Prestigious Research Institute on the opposite coast of the US. I wonder if Prestigious U is just a safety school. Maybe that's why he's not coming to recruitment.
posted by Lucy @ 5:30 PM
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comments
6 Comments:
I always worked with prospective students during recruitment events and was always happy I didn't apply with their classes. :) You're there because you're brilliant and deserve to be there. I'm very confident in that fact. It just becomes very difficult to see within some graduate environments (mine included). Hang in there - and remember that you're farther along than these applicants are. There was always some help in thinking of that for me. :)
i always feel this way, too. except they don't let me near prospective students anymore. so at least they trust you that much. they must think you're a little bit okay :)
Katie, the way my experiments are going, I'm not feeling further along. This guy already has a first author paper, too... (although it is "only" a review)
Anastasia, they're pretty desperate to get anyone to be a buddy at this stage, I think.
Oh well. At least I get the free fancy meals. Or maybe not, since I won't have a buddy here, unless they're really desperate and give me another one as well.
You know, I have never once spoken to a single prospective student in my department. Hmmmm. I'm thinking I should be more paranoid about that than I am.
Anyway, I hope you still get the free meals! :)
try sitting on an admissions committee or two. when you see their GRE's and CVs and letters you start to feel like a huge mistake. when i first did this at my grad school (Prestigious U on the West Coast) i seriously asked around about how many times a person was mistakenly admitted. i wondered if there was a "bette" out there they got confused with me. were they slapping their heads when they figured out their mistake?
it's depressing.
but to them you look experienced and smart and you are exactly what they want to be. so just remember that when you are hanging out with them. and definitely get the free (good) food. it's probably the one time a year it's not pizza or stale tortilla chips + a vat of salsa!
Oh, Lucy, I know what you mean, even though I haven't had anything to do with any prospective students. Seriously, it feels like my department is full of these child prodigies who are winning awards left and right (especially the 22-year-old first-year MA who was just transferred into the PhD program, meaning that -- at the rate my comps are going -- at this time next year, she'll only be a half a year behind me). It's easy to feel like the deadweight in the department, and to completely discount yourself due to unfair comparisons.
I believe in you, Lucy. And I think that your Prestigious University was exactly right in taking you.
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