The Intimidation Factor

There are going to be times, many, many times, in your career where you will meet people that intimidate you.

Perhaps they are a superior whose knowledge and experience seem daunting. Then your intimidation might be the result of absolute respect. I have felt this kind of fear a lot with my profs. They are brilliant, seem to know everything and their approval is the only thing that matters. Even once you discover that they are but human, your determination to impress overpowers your common sense, and every encouraging word or disciplinary act moulds ever move you make.

Then again, perhaps it is some up and coming scientist, wide eyed and naive, but who you know is much smarter than yourself. You fear that the future of your science won't be written by you, but rather them. You are intimiated by their potential to overthrow you, and you will be forced to live in a cardboard box and eat ramen noodles for the rest of your life. Fear not! Except for the few arrogant ones that no one likes and therefore will get turned away from jobs more often than not, those younger/ less experienced than you will look up to you and seek your advice simply to not trouble the waters and occasionally to be liked (see paragraph above). So don't fear them, encourage them and help them become better scientists. Most will know their place, and remember: science is a team effort.

The final category, and possibly the most terrifying of all, are your collegues. Those that are also recent graduates, looking for the same funding and the same job/academic opportunities. These are your true enemies, the one's you keep closer than your friends. You are in your own arms race, constantly keeping up the Joneses.

Or are you?

As I have recently discovered, everyone has the one-up on each other in some way or another. While a collegue might have more experience in one field of interest, you might have more experience in another. They wrote a longer thesis, but you wrote a more concise one. They went away for school to a expensive university, but you understand the value of money, don't expect your supervisor to come up with all the funding, and are ready to spend gruelling hours writing grant proposals (see last post). When you sum it all up, life, work and school experience, 95% of us are on equal footing.

I am living this out right now. Some of the other interns on paper seemed super intimidating. But as I get to know them, I find that I have experiences they don't, and even though they've had more experience in marine biology, they aren't entirely sure what they want to do in the field. I think depriving myself of it for so long forced me to really think it through and consider all the options ahead of time, which might in the end make me a better candidate for graduate school or jobs in the future.

So refuse to be intimidated! Except by your superiors, they are actually frightening. But as for the others, we're all just trying to learn new things and expose the world to new knowledge. Science can't happen from one person alone, so don't waste time being intimidated that you could be using to fuse two (or three) brilliant minds together to make the future of our planet a better one.

Speak Loud.