>> The root of my imposter syndrome somehow comes from the fact that
my interests are really interdisciplinary and I work in a lot of different areas,
which means that my background and
my education has really sampled from a lot of different fields.
So my undergraduate degree was in engineering and
then philosophy and then I went off to math grad school and
then now I'm working in a computer science and engineering department.
And so, the exciting thing about that is that I get to work and
interact with lots of people and think about all sorts of really cool project and
problems and hard problems about different fields.
But the tough thing for me and where I feel like an imposter sometimes is that,
I don't have that body of a shared experience
that some other people have if they've just started in one track and
gone through that track their entire education or career.
And so, sometimes I feel like I'm going to have these big gaping holes in my
background or my knowledge because I didn't take that one,
Processing Architecture course or that I didn't take that one.
Really heavy duty whatever it is there's like this fears in the back
of my mind that I'm just not going to fit what a Computer Scientist looks like or
what a mathematician looks like because my journey is a little bit different.
And then, on top of that there's the fact that women are under represented in
both of this discipline and so sometimes I get caught up in myself about some,
my insecurities will show through and it's not going to reflect poorly just on me,
but on all women and maybe I should just not cut out for it.
And then, I have to take a deep breath and step back and say,
actually I do have a lot of experience and I have done a lot and what I find works
really well is to make connections with other people and work collaboratively and
solve those really good problems and really hard problems.
And by keeping at it and keeping working and making these accomplishments and
having these accomplishments.
Little by little, I feel more and more like I belong, and
like this is the right path for me.