As a graduate student, I am rather often assailed by self doubt and utter confusion. This is a documented* affliction: called "Impostor Syndrome", it happens when accomplished people in any field have the inability to accept their accomplishments or competency as legitimate. Basically, it's that little gnome in the back of the grad-student brain that reminds a person to feel like a fake, and that at any moment, they'll be found out as such.
Now, normally I accept these feelings of inadequacy and roll with it. I sublimate the impulses to run away, and try not to be the student who overcompensates via attempts at one-upmanship.° Sometimes it doesn't work.
Today, I was feeling pretty accomplished, and sent a text message to G-face to announce this fact; I did not initially notice the current in the text that undermined my own accomplishment. Her response was both typically apropo, and typically wonderful:
Growing up, my dad had a photocopied poster in his plant. It was a frog in a bird's mouth. You couldn't see most of the frog; just its legs were dangling out the side of the birds mouth and it had its hands around the neck of the bird. The bird looked out from the poster perplexed at the frog's tenacity. Underneath, the caption read, Never Give Up.
The moral of this story is that self-doubt ain't nothin' when you got friends like mine.
Notes:
* Though according to everyone's favorite ill-advised sourcebook, Wikipedia, it's not part of the DSM-IV.
° Also known, in some circles, as "the douchebag."
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