Reflections on a year of being a physicist

I am hesitant to call myself a physicist. In fact, when someone asks me what I do for a living, my usual answer is: “I am a PhD student”. Maybe that is the answer they wanted. Maybe they are more interested in how much tax I pay (none) and whether I can still get a student discount at Urban Outfitters (I can) than what I actually do day to day. But, for arguments sake, if they did want to know what I spend a considerable chunk of my life doing, the answer would be: “maths, coding, reading papers, rereading papers, meetings, teaching undergraduate students, collaborating with my peers, going to conferences, filling out forms so I can go to conferences, and drinking caffeinated drinks.” I guess if I was on the other end of this conversation, I would reply “so you’re a physicist?”

With that out the way, I want to reflect on my first year (and a bit) of being a physicist. 

Last year, I joined the Higgs Centre for Theoretical Physics at the University of Edinburgh. I was excited, eager, and thoroughly underprepared. Having previously achieved a cushy First in my integrated Master’s degree, I thought I would be surrounded by people in the same position as me – a solid foundation in a few areas of physics, but little to no knowledge in the research field I was about to enter. I was (kind of) wrong. 

Very quickly, I realised the students making up my cohort were no short of brilliant. And not just that, they had research experience in the very field they were starting their PhD in. Meanwhile, I was desperately sitting in on every Master’s course I could find that might help me figure out what a ‘soft anomalous dimension’ was and why on Earth I would want to spend the next four years studying it. It wasn’t long before I’d figured it all out – no, not what the soft anomalous dimension is. I’d figured out that I didn’t belong. It must have been a terribly embarrassing admin error that I received an acceptance email (which I didn’t – I was told I had a place on a live zoom call). 

It wasn’t until many months later that I really understood why I felt that way. Put simply: everyone does. Well, almost everyone. You might think that scientists walk around thinking they are smarter than everyone else, but for the majority the reverse is true. Not only did many of my peers go on to admit that they felt insecure, fraudulent, or just downright stupid, but throughout the year I heard academics at the top of their field express how they are “the worst physicist” they know or that they are not a “serious mathematician”. 

So did I ever get over that feeling? Not really. It still crops up from time to time – in meetings where I have nothing to contribute or seminars where I’m so lost I couldn’t even tell you which parts I didn’t understand. The difference is that now I can accept that this feeling is just part of academic life. I am far from alone in feeling like an imposter and it is not a sign that I’m not cut out for this work. 

Is it possible to create an academic environment that doesn’t breed these sorts of anxieties? I don’t know. Maybe that’s a discussion for another time. But for now, I am happy to say that I am a physicist, even on the days when I feel like I’m not.