Impostor.

Impostor syndrome (IS, happen to be my initials)

I was looking at Twitter and saw a post about the Science Online 2013 where they had a session about impostor syndrome. 

This is something I still feel strongly even today. In graduate school and the first few years of my postdoc, I always saw it as a negative thing. It certainly can be devastating if it gets to the point of 'I am an impostor, I am a mistake' (which is something that I thought for years; still do sometimes). This form of the impostor syndrome prevents people from trying new things and even tinkering around to find things that might work. It prevents action. 

The healthier form of IS

However, there is a healthier form of impostor syndrome that I'm trying to keep in mind more. It's the 'I'm new at this and don't feel like I belong, but that's OK. I'm learning. I'm trying something new. I'm stepping out of my comfort zone. Stepping out from the cave. Feeling awkward doing it.  But you're Daring greatly. Like with this blog. It's not as if I'm setting the blogoshpere on fire with my amazing posts. I do this because it's fun for me. And maybe I'll learn a thing or two through doing it. 

The challenge

One of my challenges I set for myself this month is to be more extroverted. Which means talking to more people I just see when i'm out and about (just saying an audible 'hi', with eye contact counts). I feel very awkward about this. And I've done OK with it so far (no Earth shattering moments of having a long conversation yet). I am pushing myself to do things in the lab that are new to me and I don't know if they will work or not. While these are all good things, it is hard to implement. It goes against my nature. 

Tomorrow's another day to work on being, not simply trying. And another day to practice getting to a healthier mindset with the impostor syndrome.

Academic mastery vs. real world mastery.

I like 'The Big Bang Theory'. I can see myself in the main characters of the show (not Penny as much, but I'm not an attractive blonde girl from Nebraska who sometimes turns out to the be smartest one in the room when it comes to life in the real world). 

Which brings me to the point of this post (which again, I'm sure has been hashed to death by others in a more engaging way). 

There's an episode 'The Friendship Algorithm' where Sheldon talks about learning how to swim over the internet. He later learns to rock climb by the same method. 

When Sheldon does attempt to actually rock climb, he makes it part way up the wall until he realizes he's 'high up' (5 feet, at most!), gets really scared and can't move up or down. And eventually faints and falls off the wall...'hanging there like a huge Salami' as Barry Kripke describes it. 

Funny scene, but also speaks to an issue I know I struggle with. Being in my own head too often. And when confronted with something practical I need to do, I freeze in fear. If it's something new, it needs to be studied to death first (it is kind of amazing that Sheldon gets anything done, but perhaps because he's a theoretical physicist, his work truly is all in his head and he just needs to write it down in publishable form). 

I may be doing better but I'm still too perfectionist for my own good. It's hard to separate striving for excellence with trying to be perfect. Obviously, the former is fine, the latter is crippling. Jason Moore shared this series on academic perfectionism addresses the issues I definitely still have- almost at an unconscious level. I do it automatically with writing, it's part of the reason I write here. to get over it (it's partly helped). I haven't read the whole series, but the first installment nails the problem...I can't wait to read the rest of it. It is targeted towards faculty, but think the issues apply equally to grad students and postdocs. 

The level of certainty I seem to need in things is higher than for most other people. Like Raj on 'Big Bang', I have trouble talking to women (at least ones that I don't know..I'm OK w/ female friends). It's perfectionism + needing certainty of outcome for me to proceed. 

Trying to live purely intellectually is what I've done for so long that it's hard to learn a new way of doing things. Or to do what Sheldon doesn't, try to get over fear, get out of my head into the messy uncertain world and try as many new things as possible. It's where my resolutions are centered this year. I have no doubt I'm in for a world of mistakes.

Lifehacker was once again helpful with a timely post about taking small steps towards addressing anxieties and fear. As I do with this blog, I guess it means exposing myself to the real world. 

So this year, I am working on being the master of my academic work, but also to not be as paralyzed by the real world either. Through small steps. Let's see how I do...
          

Ever on and on.

'The Hobbit' opened this last weekend. And this JRR Tolkien verse came to mind in thinking about my post this week:

"The Road goes ever on and on // Down from the door where it began. // Now far ahead the Road has gone, // And I must follow, if I can, // Pursuing it with weary feet, // Until it joins some larger way, // Where many paths and errands meet. // And whither then? I cannot say."

'The Hobbit' was one of my favorite books growing up. I'm taller, don't have furry feet and only have one breakfast a day, but in my attitude towards adventure, I am decidedly Hobbit-like. Bilbo had to be forced into adventure. I'm barely there in my own life. I stay safe in too many ways.

I know one theme in this blog is to serve as an example of what not to do as a postdoc. It's really the most useful function I can serve. 

How do I push myself to be less risk-averse? And when I say risk-averse, I often feel that I don't 'deserve' to use the fantastic digital tools we have access to these days. Or it's OK that I have a Gmail account, but couldn't possibly sign up for two; That's for people who have 'real' things going on. Nor use all of its features to enhance my productivity, organization and life. Staying small and in my comfort zone is usually where you can find me and I find that frustrating. I'm not enough and so don't get to partake of what everyone else does routinely.

Being timid isn't good for a life in science or anywhere else. SciCurious wrote this post about what she wished she'd known in grad school. Wish I'd known them better too; the commenters have some great suggestions too. I would say that mistakes are harder to take in an environment when your scientists are having a harder time finding steady jobs where we make a decent living for our level of education. It's enough to keep me up at night...so many stupid mistakes.

I watched 'Losing Control' this evening and came away with the message that applying laboratory and scientific thinking to everything isn't a good idea to be applied to life generally. The movie does capture the thinking (or at least my thinking) of scientists and our world pretty well.

I know I've mentioned 'Daring Greatly' ad nauseum in my posts. It really is a good book & I think Dr. Brown has hit upon something pretty profound (at least to me). For this post close to the end of 2012, I've decided to do Dr. Brown's checklist for 'wholehearted living' as printed in "Daring Greatly", page 8. Wholehearted isn't a term that resonates with me, but I see what she's getting at- Let's see how I'm doing:

Wholehearted living feature on the left. whether I've achieved the goal or not at right in bold (followed by annoying asides I like to make...:

1. Cultivating Authenticity (letting go of what others think): No (though I am progressing; unabashed Whovian here). 

2. Cultivating Self Compassion (letting go of perfectionism): Yes/No (Now that I know what self-compassion actually is, I'm practicing it more,  still have to remind myself very actively to not let the perfect be the enemy of the good).

3. Cultivating a Resilient Spirit (letting go of numbing and powerlessness): NO, not really. @#$%! 

4. Cultivating Gratitude and Joy: Yessish...I'm doing ok with gratitude. Joy is hard to come by.

5. Cultivating Intuition and Trusting Faith (Letting go of the need for Certainty): NO.  

6. Cultivating Creativity (Letting go of comparison): NO, though I think I'm doing a little better here. Comparing things is just what scientists do. 

7. Cultivating Play and Rest (Letting go fo exhaustion as status symbol & productivity as self worth): NO! 

8. Cultivating Calm and Stillness (letting go of Anxiety as a Lifestyle): NO (Unfortunately :-/).

9.  Cultivating Meaningful Work (Letting go of self-doubt and "Supposed to": NO (I too often feel I'm supposed to be _____. Blank = better, married, wealthier, more tech savvy, more practical, bolder, extroverted, less depressed). 

10. Cultivating Laughter, Song and Dance (Letting go of being cool and "Always In Control": NO.  

Of course, this is subjective scoring on my part, but it does reflect how I feel (I started this post days ago and am coming back to my initial answers and I feel the same now as I did then. I don't have a definitive yes at all. Ouch. Something to work towards. This blog is a help as well I think: I hope I've found my voice this year. Or at least am more comfortable expressing myself- keeping things in hasn't done me any favors (I realize writing on the internet may not be the best way of expressing my views/doing something useful, but I do like to write it). If I help someone (even myself) function better in the world of science (by being mostly an example of what not to do), then this blog has done its job.

Here's hoping 2013 sees the launch of Ian 3.0. 

Learning deeply.

I recently finished reading "What the Best College Students Do" and it fits in with what I've been writing about in my blog. I've had a few weeks since I finished it to think about it, so I thought I'd share my thoughts about how it might apply it to my own life as well as how this might impact my teaching practices and how I think about them. I am writing this from memory, so any content I talk about is what I am recalling (best way to review a book, almost certainly not).

The book is definitely not about how to get good grades. Ken Bain focuses a lot more on what he calls 'deep learning'. It is basically learning from a vulnerable and authentic place, a theme I've run across again and again in my readings this last year. 

This is contrasted with those he calls 'surface learners', who just learn what they need to get the grade or pass the exam. In other words, getting good grades to please someone else, not themselves. Sounds very familiar.

The profiles of 'deep learners' in the book include a lot of very prominent people, including Stephen Colbert and Neil deGrasse Tyson (two of my favorite people), but also other people who are not as well know but who he considers to be deep learners. What they all have in common is a curiousity about the world and a particular perspective and passion they found to follow through with. I found myself wishing I had that kind of clarity when I was younger. Sadly, I, like many others, were fixated on doing well in school as an end. Of course, that's not really the point of getting an education. 

The book starts off with a course taught at a college in Texas called 'integration of abilities' that sounds like it would have been torture for me to go through. The whole idea was to get in touch with the rhythms of your own mind, perceive the world in multiple ways, break things down and build them up again. Basically getting in touch with what matters to you, linking your interests in disparate things together. From there, you go off and learn what you need to do to succeed. 

In the book, he highlights research about having a 'growth mindset' as opposed to a 'fixed mindset' (the former is far superior I'm learning in my own life now). Bain also goes through studies of how the brain best learns, what is a good use of our time (reading, writing, e.g.) and having self-compassion (basically accepting things that happen, not ripping yourself apart, and moving on). 

In sum, I would say the best college students take a Bayesian approach. They incorporate new data, new knowledge into their current model of the world. All these people also seem to take chances and be very self-assured. They also try, fail, try again and learn from their errors. They embrace failure as a way to learn. Almost the opposite of perfectionists.

As for how this will affect how I teach, or create the learning environment for students, I think it is a challenge to create a deep learning environment. But there are some things I will incorporate such as giving students chances for ungraded trial and error before a graded task is assigned. Also, having students keep a journal of their class appears beneficial as well. However, I think there are limits to what individual teachers can do; there do need to be cultural and institutional shifts that focus less on tests and more on truly measuring learning (the two aren't necessarily the same thing). 

In my personal life, this is the message I've been trying to incorporate into my mind for the last year. Be vulnerable. Embrace failure. Try and try again. Do new things as much as possible. Ask whether you learned something new each day. Take chances. Bomb and realize that it's not that bad; it is survivable. I still feel like I'm trying to find what I truly care deeply about, or at least need to get out from under the large amount of shame I carry around with me most days which really does drive my disconnection from the world (I'm reading up on this more- reading Brene Brown's book 'Daring Greatly'). I really want to come in from the cold and am slowly wending my way back into connecting and possibly learning deeply.