16th September, 2021

After a few days of fielding fantastic questions form incoming masters-level students, the level of insight in their questioning has left me in one of those periodic phases where I feel like I don’t know what I’m doing. I’m tired, and my confidence has dropped in correlation.

Oftentimes, that feeling of not knowing what you’re doing, and flying by the seat of your pants, can be conflated with something else. The sensation of not knowing what you’re doing is more likely to simply be that you don’t know the answer to an interesting question. As scientists, we live in doubt, searching for answers. In such moments of low confidence, when you feel like you don’t below, it can be conflated with not having the tools or the skills to work towards the answer you don’t yet know.

Not knowing the answer to a question is not the same as not knowing how to get to the answer.

This is what' I find is easiest to forget in the moment where you feel like a fraud, tricking students into working with a complete novice.

Inevitably, this links to the so-called Imposter Syndrome (it’s not a syndrome, actually, it’s the Imposter Phenomenon…but more on that when I discuss my related book project another day). Feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing can link to feelings of being underqualified and of being a fraud, even when your track record evidences the opposite case.

Careers and projects are often expressed in memes where the idealism is a straight line, from question straight to answer, or from career plan to dream job. The reality is the contorted, cranked, twisted, and winding curve that sits along side the wildly unrealistic straight line. That reality often hides in the moments where you feel like you don’t know what you’re doing.

Where are those moments where you most feel this way?

How might you develop a better awareness that not knowing the answer does not mean you are unable to get there?

If you have a question for Marc, upload an audio recording for it to be featured on a later Q&A episode!