Wednesday 11 January 2012

Imposter Syndrome

Ever felt like you're not really competent to do hard physics things?  Like someone is soon going to find you out?  It turns out to be a pretty common thing.  I wonder if it's more common amongst physicists.  Anyway, Peter Coles, who blogs under an anagrammatic version of his name as, umm, erect poles, I think, has a nice post about it here.

I have certainly felt this way.  The fact that I don't so much these days is probably less a change in how I think of my own abilities, which probably never go up in time, but more a realisation that I am not so different to others.

1 comment:

  1. I am not a physicist; I just happened to stumble upon this blog post. With that said, I doubt that physicists question their competency/abilities any more than their colleagues in other academic fields or even in business. You won't believe how many times I've heard a brilliant IT specialist, Revenue Cycle manager, etc. question his/her ability to perform a task. :)

    In short, we probably all have these moments of self doubt :)

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