How to effectively deal with Imposter Syndrome and feelings of inadequacy: "I've somehow convinced everyone that I'm actually good at this"
I found two practices helped me a lot:
Reinforce what you know. The biggest problem with being an academic surrounded by other academics is that you're constantly being confronted by things you don't know. Even worse, it often seems like everyone else knows something that you don't know.
You don't need me to tell you how demoralizing that is. The fight is to go back and review what you do know, and reinforce your expertise in your subject area. Most academics are polyglots; choose some random thing you've studied, learned, or even just considered previously, and review it every now and then. It'll help you view the progress you're making.
Engage non-academics. You don't realize how much you know until you talk to the other 99.99% of people who don't know what you know. (Confusing sentence...) Write blogs, offer to give visiting lectures at a school or workplace, work as an intern or consultant in industry, champion a political cause related to your research. There are so many ways you can make use of your knowledge, and doing so will definitely help massage your ego which has been bruised by many semesters of feeling inadequate.
It's hard to even think of a time when I didn't feel like an imposter. I would tell myself constantly that I was succeeding only due to luck, or having spent more time working as opposed to having any actual ability, or the fact that as an international student I had a very different background from my peers and therefore had an unfair advantage, and so on. At some point in graduate school when I came across the phrase 'imposter syndrome' I finally realized that I am not alone and started to get over it, to some extent.
Here are some things that have helped:
- Knowing that this is a real thing (I'm not alone!) The mere fact that there is a name for what I was feeling was a big deal. Imposter syndrome is a documented phenomenon that many people have to deal with. I sometimes go back to the wikipedia page just to remind myself of this.
- Knowing that several bigger, brighter academics have felt (or feel) similarly inadequate on occasion. It's easy to convince oneself that while imposter syndrome is common among grad students, maybe only the 'non-imposters' actually go on to succeed - knowing that even the academic superstars I look up to sometimes doubt themselves helps to remind me that this is false.
- Forcing myself to look at the empirical data. I imagine some other grad student, with exactly the same achievements as mine and ask myself what I think about them.
However, honestly, this is very much work-in-progress for me.
The Harsh Reality: They Do Exist
Before I met my roommate, I thought that I was one of the most intelligent people that I've ever met, pretentious, I know, but just being honest. When the material was upper-level undergrad or graduate level, I studied, but even at a top tier university, I got amazing grades with much less effort than most of my peers, which was convenient but in an odd way depressing and isolating; however, my grades dramatically changed after a lot of personal losses (this is relevant, see below).
I'm sure a lot of us are in awe of well renowned professors--if you're an academic, they're like rock stars, at least to me they are. I've always looked up to these people, they make me feel like there's a place for me in this world. Anyway, as a result of being extraordinarily depressed, I lost almost all of my confidence. Unfortunately for me, this was when I met my (now) roommate, which made me feel so much worse.
There are people who say that they don't study when they really do. There are people who appear to be really smart when they're really not. There's a major difference between knowing a lot of facts and actually being intelligent. My roommate is quite literally the most brilliant person I've ever met, including several Nobel laureates. After living with him, I discovered that he actually doesn't study, at least not like most people do. He can read something once, at a ridiculously fast speed--quite literally he can read a full textbook page in under 20 seconds and comprehend everything. This is not limited to any particular domain. There are countless times that I have gone to him with high level mathematics problems from disciplines that he's not too familiar with, and he's able to not only understand everything almost immediately, but he can synthesize beautiful solutions and explain the concepts to me better than my professors who've been in the field for years. I know it sounds unbelievable, but I assure you that it's true.
My roommate was a major stumbling block for me. After meeting him, I began to doubt my intelligence even more. If people like him exist, what the hell am I going to do? How could I possibly compete with him? I went to speak with a few of my professors to essentially ask them if they were like my roommate. If they all were, then I knew that I had no place in the academia. Fortunately, out of all of the professors that I talked to, every single one of them said that they struggled a lot. While some of them knew one or two people like my roommate, they reassured me that not only did they put a ton of work in and struggle, but they also doubted themselves all the time, and most still do.
I guess what I am saying is that sometimes it can make sense to feel like an imposter. Some people are just geniuses, and I do not use that term lightly. In the end, 99% of the best of the best of the best still struggle a lot. It's okay to struggle, it's good. It means that you're learning. For what it's worth, if you're accepted into a PhD program or lab or what have you, the admissions committee/PI made a conscious decision to say that they believe that you are good enough. I don't care if you think that you got in because you knew someone, and that person recommended you. (A) that happens all the time, and (B), they actually went out of their way to recommend you. They put their reputation on the line for you. They wouldn't do that unless they believed in you--these are really intelligent people, you didn't trick them. Finally, for the people who only think that they got to where they are because of hard work and not natural intelligence, I say to you (A) that's probably not true (smart people tend to think that because they struggle with stuff and finally understand it, that everyone can and that's patently false) and (B) you're more likely to be successful than someone smarter who doesn't put in as much work. Sorry for the really long answer, but I hope it helps someone. It made me feel better just writing it. Cheers!
EDIT:
One last thing, the more one travels down the rabbit hole, the more one realizes just how little they know. This can lead people to question their intelligence. It's pretty ironic, you're becoming more informed and because of it you feel less informed. In this case, you just need to take a step back and realize that true mastery is impossible. It should be a good feeling to learn that which one did not know before. It's doesn't mean that you're stupid, it means you're getting smarter. If you think that you know everything or even can know everything, then perhaps you are not that intelligent.