Table 1 Research Success & Survival Workshop for Trainees during CPRTP Orientation
Workshop Section | How the section is designed to achieve learning objectives |
|---|---|
What does it mean for you to feel like an “impostor”? (3-minute essay) | Prime students’ mindset about IP; explain that researchers are trained to be pioneers and commonly feel different emotions, but the goal is to persist! |
Doing research requires “stupidity”30 and “failure”31 | Acknowledge situations as possible opportunities for IP (i.e., acceptance into prestigious program with other highly achieving students); excellence in research requires embracing uncertainty; normalize feelings of “stupidity” and experience of failure and rejection as routine in science and research exploration, even beneficial and necessary to do impactful research. |
Benefits of failure/rejection (individual brainstorm & share responses) | Explore new perspectives of failure, rejection; guide them to derive benefit from failure, how to get the most from feedback; approach as process of learning. |
Impact of impostor phenomenon (“why do we care about IP?”) | Define IP; group brainstorm activity to discuss why it is important to know about IP (connect with barriers to learning, goal achievement, career advancement). Students explain in their own words how IP might have impact on them or their peers. |
Impostor phenomenon sources and triggers (small group activity) | To identify sources and triggers for IP, trainees share experiences and identify themes (evaluation/competition, prestigious programs, “high powered” researchers, experiencing success/seeing other trainees’ success). |
Anti-impostor phenomenon strategies (small group activity) | Identify alternative approaches to sources/triggers they identified earlier to prepare for future IP experiences. [Acknowledge having areas for improvement does not mean being a fraud, being wrong or saying “I don’t know” isn’t catastrophic, know how common IP experiences really are, etc.] |
1) Re-define success for yourself; and 2) Qualities of successful scientists | Students are challenged to recognize that being successful is not about lack of failure (citing “failures” from Nobel laureates). Ask trainees to define what they mean by research success (impact, advancing science, etc.). Encourage use of informational interviews to explore how senior researchers define success for themselves. |