Oscillation and Deprecation

FAEP (see my blog list) recently posted about oscillating between feeling on top of the world and overwhelmed in her assistant professorship. I remember feeling the same swings in graduate school, and I used to tell myself that it meant I was exactly in the right place. I think being in a stimulating environment is worth the trade-off in self-confidence from time to time (or else maybe I'm just a sucker for punishment). Otherwise why would I keep running back to just such an environment despite the lack of $$? This is in contrast to my experiences in industry where at times I felt so bored I would literally start counting down the days until my internship was over (this was after I had already bugged every manager into giving me extra projects to keep me busy). [In general, it seemed that the size of the company scales proportionally with the time workers spend just browsing the web and their personal email. I suppose that's what happens when you have so many levels of bureaucracy that everything slows to an over-engineered trickle of progress.]

On another note, I'm not sure I've heard any men (even incompetent ones) express the lack of self-confidence that seems to plague so many of the talented women I know. A friend of mine told me about a woman she admires who has an MD from Harvard Med School, a PhD from MIT, successfully leads an amazing research program, and still is self-deprecating. Another accomplished woman I know, a full professor at a top MRU, called herself a loser once for what she considered a publication rate that wasn't good enough. I was thinking, man, if you're a loser, the rest of us might as well quit and go home!! Humility is a wonderful trait but it has limits. I wonder if there's something to be said for women needing to be able to show confidence more often, even if they're just faking it for the sake of all of those who look up to them.

That being said, I often share my past insecurities with young students when they seem to need it. I think it helps them relate to me, and builds them up. Maybe the moral here is to be more aware of how we present our insecurities to the world (eg, yes when it helps students, no when it's presenting your research to a room full of faculty).