“I was just the lucky one” is the statement given by a researcher who has submitted his dissertation and has been complimented by readers and a panel of judges. It is the group of experts in the field who has read the dissertation and approved it to be very good. But, the majority of the times, researchers are not able to take this compliment and think of themselves to be incompetent. They believe that they are frauds and have fooled people around about the research dissertation submitted. Such symptom of this researcher is about Imposter Syndrome.
Work is suffered due to Imposter Syndrome. If you are not confident about yourself and your hard work, it creates a gap in communication. With this, long term effects on the minds of researcher could be fatal. It is important for researchers to understand that whether they belong to PhD course or not is not their worry because it is someone else’s job. A researcher should only focus on his research and submit an excellent dissertation that reflect his hard work into it. Researchers need to be diligent in their work and rest will be taken up by approving authorities.
Taking constant feedback about the work submitted at various levels or stages can help fight this syndrome. Even reading the paper submitted in the initial days, of course, can help combat this syndrome, because the researcher will check on his improvement over last submitted paper and will start to feel confident. If a researcher continues with this Syndrome, it may lead to depression, stress, anxiety, hopelessness and guilt.
In academics, Imposter Syndrome is live a living condition rather than a syndrome. Many of the researchers fall prey to this. This starts in the initial phase of academics wherein judgement about work is not very actual and feedback is given in brief. This results in stress and apprehension about oneself. People start getting uneasy with success. They start to find themselves as frauds who have been just fooling authorities and they believe that eventually, this fraud face will be unmasked. A researcher in such situations, needs to understand that success is based on certain positive parameters achieved and this is the result of hard work and efforts put in. Success should not be taken up lightly and needs to be cherished, it should be motivational and should not be taken as a shock.
Writing a dissertation is a challenge taken up by a researcher and this endeavor should not be understood in a wrong way. Instead, the focus needs to be on improving the writing skills and process of dissertation.